You know, it’s gratifying that there are people out there that cherish the old ways. I was on Boardgamegeek recently (back up after being inexplicably down for a week) and was catching up on some old geekmail. One of these was a comment from the designer of the old Avalon Hill game WIZARDS. I actually don’t own that game, nor ever played the physical game, because, well, it kind of came and went when I was a youngster– I never saw it in a store. But I love tile based games like this (and the far more complex MAGIC REALM), so I have downloaded and played the Java implementation of Wizards on the dewkid website. It’s a fun pastime, not anything that floats my boat like Colossus does, but it retains the game play and funky artwork of the original nicely, and so it’s a nice diversion. I hadn’t looked at that site in eons, and the geekmail reminded me of it again.. so I popped over, and upon browsing the site for updates, noticed that Robin had made a java app based on the old SPI Time Tripper game. Now this was a development that brought back a flood of nostalgia. I had owned Time Tripper once– and played it, regularly. I inflicted this one on my friends many times. We all liked the premise of the time-tripping Vietnam squaddies encountering hordes of generic bad guys from various realms of history and fantasy. A great game, and a great idea for a java implementation. I have to hand it to people like Robin, they really are the salt of the earth, making stuff like this available for free. Well done!
