Yahoo! Mail Ultimate Championship Games is a series of four short mini-games created to promote the improved Yahoo! webmail service in the UK. Each one has a distinct e-mail theme and is incorporated in a slick, nighttime gameshow-like style complete with videos and a futuristic neon-purple interface. While advergames are usually hit or miss, this one delivers some surprisingly entertaining mini-games without going overboard on the sales pitch.
Drag & Drop - Four colors of icons drift down from the top of the screen. Drag them to their corresponding folders, but be careful, as the folders shift positions every once in a while!Multi Mail - Click on the "Compose" tabs that appear and type the word that is shown on the screen. You start off with simple words but progress to things like "boomerang" and "flummoxed" later on. This really tests your typing speed and multitasking skills. Can you work like a cyborg with multiple brains?
Preview Power - An icon is shown at the bottom of the screen and you must mouse-over the small mail icons above to find the matching image. It would be easy, of course, if the small icons didn't shift every time you got a match.
Keyboard Shortcuts - A sequence of e-mail related icons appear on the screen and a timer starts ticking. You must enter keyboard shortcuts as quickly as you can. Get to know the icons and what key(s) go along with them so you can stay ahead of the clock.
Analysis: Skeptical of any casual game made to promote a product, I was pleasantly surprised to see the games on the Yahoo! Mail Ultimate Championship site. Not only are they interesting, but they're a bit unique and are presented in a very stylish setting. I really enjoyed Multi Mail for some reason and played through it a few times just to confirm how amazingly talented I am. The games feel a little thin after you play through them once or twice, but the initial bang is definitely worth a coffee break or two. Click.
Thanks to Jon for sending this one in!
Nice little reminder of why I switched to Gmail...
The games are rigged, I keep playing preview power and each time I get down to the last icon, it'll give me something I can't match and I'm forced to wait out the clock and get the silver.
I donnot consider this jig worthy.
Heaby adloaded stuff, not much game innovation.
The game doesn't really work that well on my Mac, there's lag and delay that prevents it from being much fun at all. I click on the mail to drag and it frequently does not respond to my click.
The presentation is gorgeous, however.
Ran extremely slow, and I could not turn down the quality to compensate. Preview Power became unplayable because the icons kept shifting, which cost me precious time while I waited for them to settle. Also, it's possible to get any score you want on keyboard shortcuts quite easily. Simply keep mashing all the combinations as fast as possible and you'll get all of them. The only limit is your boredom.
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