Is PC Game Finder the AltaVista of PC gaming information? From its title page you can either do a keyword search or browse games by category and title. Your request yields sites that contain information organized by topic (review, demo, and so on). Surprisingly, the reviews center around the same few online magazines, which makes me wonder if PC Game Finder looks for sites itself or depends on outside sources for content. For example, being a Marathon fan, I noticed there were no resources beyond a couple of reviews and demo FTP sites. Even typing in Doom yielded nothing on fan sites containing WADs or levels. Still, if you want to want read a review of a particular game, PC Game Finder is another helpful resource. - Brian Hostetler
Maybe I'm just a little too suspicious these days, but when I see a cutesy pastel site that promises puzzle-solving pleasure, I immediately start looking for the credit card submission form and the cheesy ads. Youll find none of that at Omnibus, which makes me wonder if its possible that Omnibus creator is actually a puzzle fan without a hidden agenda. Apparently so. Heres the scoop: You get several word puzzles each week whose solutions you use to sound out the answer to the master riddle. It sounds a bit weird, I know, but I think we've all seen this sort of thing before, so it wont take long to grasp. Omnibus is not for the terminably impatient, as the solutions can take days to be posted. - Brian Hostetler
Looking for a game that's a cross between Daytona and Burning Force? Well, lucky you; Ubisoft recently released a dark, futuristic racing game called Pod that should meet your expectations. The Pod site offers quite a collection of content for Pod owners. You can download new tracks and cars to add a little extra to your game, construct your own Pod car in the Garage, or read the brief but interesting How We Did It expose. Some of the navigation isn't as smooth as it should be, which may discourage casual viewers. However, for anyone who wants to enhance their copy of Pod or just grab the demo, this site is an excellent starting point. - Brian Hostetler
Only 20 percent of the approximately 1000 Playstation games released in Japan have been released in the West. Sound interesting? If you look beyond the thick, wannabe-hallucinogenic graphics at Freddy's Anime Playstation site (By fans, for fans), youll find a wonderful resource for Japanese Playstation games. Reviewssome of the longest game reviews I've ever read on the Webcodes, previews, and an occasional movie bump up the content level to turbo. - Brian Hostetler
Hyper Space is the catheter of gaming sites. Hmmm, how about this: It's the head-on collision of gaming sites. Well, whatever it is, when you see it coming, you immediately wince. The handful of reviews here dont contain screenshots, much less reasonable spelling. And after that you get merely a couple of previews, codes, links, and a whole lot of wincing. Hyper Space leans towards news, and it does a fairly decent job of covering Sega at the expense of the others. If you can see past the poor writing and annoying background images, you might find something to chuckle over. - Brian Hostetler
With Steven Spielberg's gaming company Dreamworks as a partner, Gameworks recently opened a large indoor arcade center located in Seattle. The Gameworks site offers only a few details about its setup but provides PDF files from recent media stories to fill in the details. Currently, the pictures from opening night make up the main attraction at the site. And because MTV hosted the event, youll find plenty of images of Beck and Coolio doing their thing. Amazingly, the site features neither Shockwave games nor contests, although it does offer an interesting QuickTime VR movie of the main gaming room. You can also shop around for Gameworks gear in the shopping area or access directions so you can go to Seattle and see the place yourself. - Brian Hostetler
The GamePage is some sort of random PC gaming site that's in a truly sorry state. Reviews are culled from other sources, and sometimes theyre merely text files you have to FTP to view. (I guess it takes too much time to use nearly any modern word processor to save them out as HTML.) The biggest draw here is the demos; the site provides links to a handful of mostly European FTP sites that might prove worthwhile to gamers on the other side of the Atlantic. The author makes only occasional updates and certainly apologizes for his tardiness. - Brian Hostetler
Site of the month!!
Alex Trebek can eat my trivia dust. After playing the You Dont Know Jack online trivia game, Im devoted to the shiny-happy bald guy featured on the Netshow site. Currently, the site offers two different games to play: the You Dont Know Jack Netshow, comprised of general useless knowledge and outlandish humor; and the You Dont Know Jack Sports Netshow, where you can test your jock knowledge, belching included.I opted for the intellectual sporting challenge first and then waited through the gimmicky effects, background noise, and a couple of annoying commercials. (Note: no combination of keystrokes will skip over the commercials. I tried them all.) I registered as Butchjock because I felt like oneI even high-fived myself and yelled out a few burly, Yeahs. Well, let me tell you, no creative name manipulation could have saved me. I answered the opening question about logrolling correctly (who couldnt?), but after that I got creamed. It was like Julia Childs playing a game of tennis against Andre Agassi. Several negative thousand virtual dollars later, I spit on my buzzer (the letter B) and moved on to the general trivia. Ahhhh, no men belched in the background as the game loaded, and on came the Im a Little Teacup theme song. Relief. I confess, some of the questions are dumb and others are next to impossible, but nonetheless, I felt like a winner. And win I did, over and over. Plus, I even sailed through the gibberish riddle, What rhymes with îVery Scary tight-bun Barry? (Trust me, its not Hairy Mary looked like Larry.) So follow my lead and go kick some butt (or get your butt kicked) yourself. And while you rack up the cyberdough, imagine the big prizes you can win each month at the site: Were talking mountain bikes, rollerblades, and cash $5000 for the month of May. With all of those goods at stake, I did some research and uncovered a sure-fire way to wincheat. The way I figured it, I could register under a fake name (Bob, for instance) and memorize all of the questions. Then I could go back and sign up under my real username (say, Sylvester) and get all of the questions right. I even made reservations in the hills of Tahoe for my mountain bike trip ... and then I read the small print. Drat! Your score is meaningless in determining who gets the prizesall you have to do is play both Netshows every week to be eligible to win. Oh well, I suppose that just makes cheating easier; if I register several different usernames, Ill up my chances of winning. That way Ill be sure to score some cash.... - Kaliel Roberts