Games Archives

You’ll never guess what Slovenia’s in fifth place in.

How did people waste their time before the Internet? Was it even possible? I suppose television and radio were around, but I’ve never seen a t.v. show that asked you to “tap on the glass of your screen a thousand times.”

This game does. The object of clickclickclick is to click on a yellowish-red box… forever. Or as close to forever as you can imagine. Some people have already come very close, because Slovenia is currently fifth out of 216 countries. Japan is currently in first. (I’d be surprised if it wasn’t) while Chile (??) and Poland are currently the other two medal holders.

Slovenia is a mere 250 million clicks from first place. Nothing that couldn’t be accomplished in an idle afternoon.

(Via the appropriately named Kratkočasnik)

I got this question about roundabouts right.

I often complain about Slovenian drivers but it’s nothing personal. I just hate that they keep trying to kill me. My philosophy is: “Let’s share the road in peace, and not slam into each other in roundabouts” but judging by what I see every day on this country’s roads, I’m hopelessly in the minority.

I constantly see accidents on one of the three roundabouts that are on my way to work. And it’s always the same scene: two guys standing next to wrecked cars, yelling at each other about who’s to blame.

Judging by what I’ve seen, I’m also one of the few people who actually understands the dynamics of roundabouts. But I admit that my knowledge ends there.

In fact, after taking this online driving test (Slovene only) I now realize that I’m a disastrous driver as well. What can I say? I feel at home now.

Feel free to post your scores in the comments.

The ultimate geographical challenge: 210 Slovenian municipalities in 10 minutes.

I often get chided here by people who love pointing out how poor Americans are at geography. The conversations usually go something like this:

Slovene: “So you came here from America, huh? Did you ever see that one video online where they ask that American guy where America is and he’s all like “Dur dur dur, I don’t know.” Ha, ha! Americans are so stupid!”
Me: “Great, thanks.”

So, over the weekend, I put together the ultimate test of Slovenian geography skillz. Nevermind 192 countries in 10 minutes, here’s:

Frankly, I’d be impressed with anyone who gets even half of them in that time. And I’d be extremely impressed with anyone who gets all the ones that start with “Sveti.” It’s incredibly difficult.

Post your results in the comments, and good luck!

Where Slovenia’s euros are traveling to.

EuroBillTracker is:

“…an international non-profit volunteer team dedicated to tracking Euro notes around the world. Each user enters the serial numbers and location information for each note they obtain into EuroBillTracker.”

Basically, i’s like the European version of Where’s George?

There obviously aren’t too many entries for Slovenia yet, at least compared to a country like Germany, which is basically one gigantic, indecipherable smudge.

Interestingly, you can also break things down by city, so you can follow euros from Ljubljana, Maribor, Koper, Murska Sobota, etc..

So far, the site has tracked an astounding half a billion euros. I created an account and entered a 20-euro bill: it immediately told me that it was an Italian note, printed by Banca d’Italia in Rome. My inner geek smiled.

Now we’ll see where it goes.

(Thanks Matej!)

Memory: A History of Slovenian Graphic Design.

The Memory Project was created by Slovenian artist Martin Bricelj and there are three versions: Regular Memory, Slovenian Graphic Design Memory and Slovenian Industrial Design Memory. (I can’t link to them individually because the site is all flashed up.)

They’ve also added a Central European edition featuring five other nations. There are some very nice pictures here, including a Schnitzel photo by our very own B5.

Unfortunately for me, I was terrible at memory as a kid and time hasn’t been kind to my hippocampus. These days I consider it a personal triumph if I remember to put pants on in the morning.

(Via Ihre Excellenz)

Players meet & greet in virtual Piran.

The Slovenian Tourist Organization (STO) and AV Studio have put together something quite nifty. This game allows you to piddle around Slovenia, chatting with other players (mostly angry adolescents, it seems) while also visiting eight key spots in the country: Piran, the Postojna caves, the So�?a valley, Bled, Ljubljana, the Pohorje mountain, Prekmurje, and a spa.

I spent a few minutes with it, during which I saw the word “pedr” (fag) about three dozen times, and responded to any questions directed at me with quotes by Danish existentialist Søren Kierkegaard. (It’s the ultimate conversation killer.)

You can play the game yourself by clicking here. (pops in a new window)

(Via Pri Alenu)

The World of Warcraft Map knows no Slovenia. (source)

The Slovenian WoW enthusiast Erunno claims he recently tried to participate in the World of Warcraft Movie Contest, sponsored by Xfire. Basically, players of the game in the U.S. and EU were invited to make in-game movies in the categories of dance, comedy and drama. The deadline was yesterday, and the entrants are competing for thousands of dollars worth of prizes. (Why weren’t there things like this when I was wasting countless hours in front of the NES?)

According to Erunno, when he submitted his movie he got this harsh response:

"World of Warcraft Movie Contest

We are sorry but the following rules need to be followed:
Article 2: The competition is opened to anyone aged 15 or more residing in France, in Belgium, in the United Kingdom or in Luxemburg, or anyone aged 18 or more residing in Germany, Austria, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Norway, or in other European States, except Vivendi Universal Games International personnel and their family, affiliates or business partners or Xfire, Inc. personnel and their family, affiliates or business partners. The contest is also be co-organized in the United States (see above for US rules.)

More over the rules on: http://www.xfire.com/xf/modules.php?name=XFire&file=cmspage&body=xf_wow_contest_rules

The send movie named: Mug of Ale: Old Member will not take part on the XFire Movie contest. Why? Slovenia is not in the European Union or even in Europe.

We thank you for Understanding,
XFire entertaiment "

Now that’s hardcore. I first thought it might be faked because the English is so poor. (In the last part alone: "Send" instead of "sent," "on" instead of "in," there’s no "your" in front of Understanding, which is also needlessly capitalized) However, the official contest rules are full of similar errors. Since Erunno blames "the French" for the reply, this could have explained the imperfect language.

Some Slovenian WoW gamers have raided the official forums in response, but so far I haven’t seen any official response or apology and admins at Xfire have kindly replied. See the updates below and the comment from Wyndairn!

(Thanks freddie!)

UPDATE: A siteadmin at Xfire has posted this in response:

"Obviously someone is just trying to paint a bad picture of us here at Xfire. I am the only who responds to WoW movie entries and I did not write that letter. Ask anyone that got a rejection letter and they will tell you that it is done in much better taste. We respect all of our users here at Xfire. Here is some logic that might help clear things up:

1. No one here would never spell Xfire "XFire"
2. We are not and have never referred to ourselves as "XFire entertainment"
3. Slovenia is allowed to enter our contest

I hope this clears things up.

–emmbeegee"

UPDATE2: (Sorry, can’t stop myself.) After reading some replies by people at Xfire, it seems that Erunno is probably the victim (or perpetrator) of a hoax. I’ve cleaned up this post a bit to reflect that. Thanks to people at Xfire for taking the time to step in and comment!

Slovenia attacked by UFOs!

Carniola ravished by dinosaurs!

Verboten stained with coffee!

You can make these, and many more disasters, by clicking here.

(Via Metafilter)

A screenshot from the Slovenian arcade game Tenis.

crni writes:

"The other day I was looking for some really old games and found this site. It’s run by a Slovenian guy, Tomaz Kac. It’s about old YU and Slovenia related software and such, it’s pretty interesting to me, because I used to live in Slovenia back in those days, when there were no copyright laws and pirating was legal and advertised in the papers and all that."

The site contains lots of goodies: old text adventures, arcade games, utilities, educational programs, cracked games/programs and more. You’ll need an emulator to try some of the games. I used the Spectaculator (free, Windows-only) but there are others. Most of the games I tried were fairly difficult, but maybe I’ve just lost the touch. (I’m currently trying to kill myself in the text-based game Samoumor. So far, no luck.)

I also asked crni for some recommendations. He wrote:

"Well, an interesting game is Kontrabant, because it’s taking place in Ljubljana and you take the role of a smuggler trying to put together a computer. Back in those days all trade was gov’t controlled and people used to smuggle a lot of electronics. There were no copyright laws and actually, Radio Student would "broadcast" a game once a week. For about 5 minutes all you’d hear in the radio was a lot of squeaking and if you recorded it all on a casette, you could play the game at home."

He also notes that: "Tomaz Kac wrote a re-make of a great puzzle base game Head over Heels." If you like puzzles and mazes, that one is definitely for you. I seem to have a talent for getting lost in them, or not being able to resist the urge to hop into boiling lava pots. But that’s just me.

Here’s the page: ex-YU Computer Scene.

(Thanks again crni!)

The geography olympics. Click to play.

The Geography Olympics lets you take a geography quiz on behalf of your country. The quiz is 200 seconds long; during this time you have to correctly name 10 random countries. Slovenia’s cumulative score is currently 61.624, putting it in 65th place worldwide. I’ve played twice so far, managing to push Slovenia’s score up an incredible 0.135%.

The current number one is, oddly enough, Grenada, followed by Romania. The United States is in 101st place, while Taiwan is dead last.

You can take the quiz here: The Geography Olympics. (Just select your country and go!)

(via My So-Called Blog)