Yoshio Ishii, of Nekogames, succeeds in the ambitious endeavor to redesign Breakout. And while the game is still about destroying bricks to clear the board, what's gone is the boredom the game usually suffers from when trying to get that last brick or two. Instead, what we have is more of a twitch game where reflexes rule the landscape of a simulated (and antiquated) vector graphics display.

This version of Tetris is very friendly indeed. Bright, clear visual and sound effects accompany your every move. A three-tiered strategy guide and a basic history of the game are just a click away. Even if you think you're burned out on Tetris for life, give Tetris Friends a try. You might just re-discover what once made this your favorite game in the world.

You kids these days with your Halos and your Gear Wars and your Half Lifes... you don't appreciate what we had to work with! Back in my day, we didn't have no fancy-schmancy high-end graphics in our shooters! No complex storylines, neither. We didn't even have a jump! You know what we had? We had Doom.

An arena shooter even casual gamers can enjoy, a sort of mash-up between Asteroids and Space Invaders where you pilot a tiny craft against waves of incoming enemies (which happen to be aliens and geometric shapes). Power-ups appear from time to time to give you a hand, but otherwise its just you and your reflexes keeping you alive.

Japanese Mahjong is a completely different game from the tile-matching Mahjong Solitaire. A cross between Gin Rummy and the fictional Dragon Poker, this is one game that will definitely take a while to learn, and even longer to master.

Think of the classic Space Invaders mixed with a dash of Galaga and you'd have a pretty good understanding of what Titan Attacks! is all about. The classic "aliens descending from above" scenario is showcased with a stylish, blocky pixel motif featuring a richer move-and-shoot routine than classic predecessors. Titan Attacks! took the golden age concept and loaded it with a variety of new action elements and ship upgrades.

If something considered "retro" gets remade, is it still considered retro? Such is the question to ponder while playing Arcadia Remix, the juiced-up retro remake of Gamelab's multitasking classic, Arcadia. This newer version adds to the retro insanity with more mini-games and gameplay features to make your head explode in a neon rainbow.

Proximity is a classic turn-based strategy Flash game that is somewhat like a cross between Risk and Go. It is surprisingly simple to learn and takes about 5 minutes to play. You can play against the computer, or against a friend at the same computer.

You all are in for a treat. King's Quest III is a classic from the early age of graphic adventure games. Originally designed by Roberta Williams and publisher under Sierra Online, the game has been completely re-made by Infamous Adventures in the Adventure Game Studio engine and released as a free download. They even have a voice-pack! Somebody canonize these people as saints.

BrettspielWelt is a free, online board-gaming community based in Germany but open to players from around the world. Many excellent board and card games, ranging from casual fun to serious strategy can be played online in one place: BrettspielWelt ("board game world").

Mythic Marbles is an action puzzle game of skill that is very simple to pick-up and play. It offers an engaging and rewarding experience to anyone that can appreciate the simple and subtle strategy of a good game of marbles. And even if you've never played marbles before, you're in for a treat. :)

Torus Games from Jeff Weeks and Geometrygames.org is the name of a free downloadable set of 8 simple games for Windows and Mac that, rather than being played on a 2-D plane, are played on the surface of a torus. Here you will find a twist on classic games like tic-tac-toe, pool, Minesweeper (called Apples here), and even a bizarre version of chess.

A brand new game from varStudios, the creators of Neon Wars 2, has recently graced the internet: Abstract Sea. Using simple but stylish visuals and a nice electronica soundtrack, the game puts you in control of an armed ship at sea fending off enemy attacks. The game has a very visceral feel to it with screen-shaking explosions and a few power-ups floating atop the deep blue sea.

Jussi Kari at ooPixel has just finished a new update to his version of the classic game of the same name, Samegame. And while this is essentially the same game as Samegame, there are some improvements that make this version even more addictive than the original.

Doctor Who Cyber Assault (or Cyberman) is a Risk!-like game from the BBC that incorporates several minigame-like elements into the main game. Move your units around the board to conquer new territory, then try and outwit your opponent with rock-paper-scissors-type fights. And when you take a territory with an enemy base, get ready for some gun-firing action.

In Flatland, it is your mission to destroy wave after wave of... things. You get points. OK, the idea isn't completely original, but the design is quite interesting. At first you start off in a tiny ship with litle armor and a miniscule weapon. Destroying enemies will cause them to explode in an array of large blocky pixels, the collection of which upgrades your ship. The interesting bit is that collecting an odd number of them gives you an odd shaped ship until you gather more and regain composure.

Snake Classic takes this simple game mechanic and gives it new life with catchy music, tons of gameplay options (how many dots to grab, sound effects, etc.) In addition you get to choose what colors your snakey protagonist will have using a grid of dots that looks like something out of a kid's dream box of marbles.

Wired is a classic-style puzzle game the author, Vlad Kvitnevski, has taken and molded into something new and entertaining. The concept itself is one that you've probably seen before: Connect wires from one location to the next. It is a casual game perfect for a rainy day, as it's something you can get hooked on and complete without the hairs on your head going gray, or being ripped out.

Halloween Hangman is a simple, cute, and rather amusing Halloween-themed game of hangman. Choose letters from the tiles on screen and try to guess the mystery word or phrase. Make a wrong choice and the smarty-pants skeleton hanging from a rope will hand you a snide comment or two.

Spheres of Chaos is gorgeous in motion, with extremely smooth animation amid literally hundreds of enemies and explosions (and up to 8 simultaneous players!). Far more than just a nostalgic tribute to Asteroids, SoC is a fascinating, unique and memorable classic in its own right.

Jakub has built an impressive portfolio of gorgeous designs for Web games that can be licensed and re-branded as advergames through Oystergames of Poland. He recently sent me links to a couple of his latest games, and while each one features somewhat common gameplay, the presentation and attention to detail is of the best I've ever seen in Flash.

Featuring a couple of new and more difficult enemies, and controls that allow for more variation in gameplay, Neon 2 succeeds in taking this very enjoyable idea to the next level. Ali has done a fine job at updating an already excellent shooter and making it not only better than the original, but also into a somewhat different experience. Sure it looks similar, and yet it feels different.

Sudoku Craving is a great resource for sudoku addicts looking for their daily logic fix. The interface is clean and elegant and, in addition to keeping track of your personal performance on each puzzle, comment boards and high score charts encourage community participation and competition.

Panic is a simple and stylish arcade game made in homage to a classic on the Commodore 64, Astro Panic. Made in Flash and sporting an impressive new soundtrack as well as eye-pleasing particle effects, Panic plays like a cross between Space Invaders and Pang.

Classic style arcade gameplay recreated in Flash, SwfRoads is an absolutely brilliant fast action driving game with simple controls, great minimalist visuals and an energizing soundtrack. Take to the sky in your spacecraft and navigate the geometric terrain of each of the game's 18 selectable roads.

Skatefall is John Freeborn's tribute to one of the earliest platformers, the Atari 2600's Pitfall! With a bodacious new skateboard, online scoreboard, bonus items and powerups, 2D platforming has a new name: Skatefall Harry. As a homage, Skatefall is extremely effective and faithful; the graphics and sound are perfect and the difficulty, while formidable, is appropriate.

Three Degrees is a variation on a classic casual game, and it is played by clicking on groups of the same color to eliminate them from play. Of course, the larger the group the more points awarded. It is a very simple game to pick-up and play, a nice variation on a classic, and one that you will likely find yourself playing again and again.

Hunt the Wumpus, by Gregory Yob, was one of the very first ever computer games back in the days of mainframes and punched cards. This version was created by Brian Newtz using an interactive fiction engine he built in PHP, called pFiction, which he hopes to release as open source someday. In the meantime, and to get your pfix of classic computer gaming, you, too, can Hunt the Wumpus.

Jussi and Marko, Flash game developers at OOPixel, borrow a little gameplay from several classics and wrap them all together into one nicely polished and addictive game. Asteroid Adventure is an arcade action game that will be both familiar and new to anyone that has played Asteroids before.

Nethack is a classic singl-player (randomly generated) dungeon exploration game that runs on a wide variety of platforms, and yet each implementation uses the same game engine. But whether graphics or text-based, emphasis is on discovering dungeon detail rather than just killing everything in sight.

Chris Benjaminsen of Cosgames has come up with a simple and yet intensely effective multiplayer version of the classic arcade game, Asteroids, playable in any browser with the Flash plug-in. Each player (up to 16 in a room) pilots a ship in an all-out deathmatch, melee style, with the objective being to rack up more kills than deaths. Mad multiplayer mayhem, classic arcade style.

A stylish Flash Breakout clone from GameDesign, Block Kuzusi demonstrates a great deal of respect for its roots while offering just enough originality to feel fresh. It is one of the better versions Breakout I've seen online, and well worth a look.

Dice Wars is a unique new turn-based strategy game from Japan. Using nothing but dice and a randomly generated territory map made of hexagons, the game is similar in gameplay to that of the board game, Risk, though much simpler and quicker to play. The objective is to conquer all territories and eliminate all your opponents by attacking them with dice.

Rainbow Wars is a retro-style arcade shooter available as a free download for Windows, and it is one of those rare finds that becomes an instant favorite once you see it in action. Sporting similar controls to that of the classic Robotron, in which two joysticks are used to control movement and firing separately, this game captures the essence of a classic arcade experience in a well-developed albeit small package.

You may remember the name Hannu Pelkonen as the creator of the infectiously addictive typing games, Letters and Words, both of which were previously reviewed here. He now has a new game that was recently added to his collection at 2addicted, and this one is based on a familiar classic arcade hit from days gone by.

Almost twenty years old, Woody Pop isn't as visually stunning or innovative as recent titles such as BreakQuest, but the collision detection and level design is solid, and the bright, chunky pixels still look good.

SameGame (pronounced sah-meh-gah-meh) was created in 1985 by Kuniaki Moribe and has since appeared on devices as diverse as the Super Famicom, several Texas Instruments calculators and even home tv recording unit Tivo. This Flash implementation created by Jussi Kari plays very smoothly and the stripped down aesthetic suits it well.

BreakQuest is great fun, and it raises the bar to a dizzying height for future Breakout clones. The presentation and attention to detail is top notch, as are the pleasing sound effects and visuals that include some very impressive particle effects. Most importantly, the wide variety of levels is so compelling you will actually want to unlock and experience every single one of them.

Breakit 2 is a brand new game from Terry Paton in which he takes classic casual gameplay elements from Breakout and Arkanoid, and energizes them with stunning Flash graphics and a high-tech soundtrack. The result is a gorgeous game that is a lot of fun to play.

This Java applet game impressed me with the old-school charm of its scrolling tile-based worlds, its quirky characters and dialog, and its addictive gameplay. And yet the moment the game begins you realize that this is no ordinary Web game. Immediately you are teleporting back to the glory days of the SNES, and from there your task is to seek out the one last sprout, which is the one item you need to open the final gate.

Hot on the heels of our Massively Multiplayer Pong review, Plasma Pong, a downloadable Windows game, takes the old favorite table tennis formula and fills it with liquid plasma. Using fluid dynamics you can push the ball around the screen or charge for a cannon shot. The game ends up playing more like a visual experiment than a serious Pong clone, but it's worth a few minutes of playtime nonetheless.

It was 1982, the year of Rio, H2O, 1999, Steppin' Out and Thriller. It was also an excellent year for video games with the classics Robotron: 2084, Joust, Q*bert and Mr. Do, all being released to arcades. If you were living back in the day it is likely you are already familiar with these popular favorites. If not, then get prepared for a blast with fast action fun from the past, and all delivered within a browser.

It was 1982, the year of Rio, H2O, 1999, Steppin' Out and Thriller. It was also an excellent year for video games with the classics Robotron: 2084, Joust, Q*bert and Mr. Do, all being released to arcades. If you were living back in the day it is likely you are already familiar with these popular favorites. If not, then get prepared for a blast with fast action fun from the past, and all delivered within a browser.

Zork! is a text adventure, which is a form of interactive fiction, like a cross between a novel and an RPG with some escape-the-room type puzzles thrown in. Originally conceived in the late 1970's by a research group of MIT, the first game of the Zork! series has been ported to PHP for your gaming pleasure.

One of the first playable games available from the promising Dot-Invasion studio, Meteor Busters is a simple and beautifully designed top down shooter. If you're already a fan of shmups or retro pixels, you'll probably appreciate Meteor Busters. The graphics are lovely and extremely polished and the gameplay is fun while it lasts.

With apologies to those on Macs and non-PC computers, I simply had to follow-up the jaw-dropping visuals of Triglav with another creation by the same team. In fact, it was this captivating clone of classic Breakout gameplay that led me to the SmokymonkeyS site to begin with.

Take a trip through the history of games with a brand new Flash game offering from the MTV Obsessed website. MTV Obsessed: The Game contains roughly 20 mini-games that are organized within levels called "eras" that must be unlocked by playing through the Time Travel mode of play.

Toulouse is played with three to five human or computer players, and a well designed interface and beautiful presentation make this web-based version user friendly and highly enjoyable. The folks at AsoBrain.com have also recently added the option of playing with up to two expansions to the original board game, making this as involved a Carcassonne experience as one could hope for.

Klax 3D is an action strategy game in which the object is to catch colored tiles as they fall off a conveyor belt and stack them into horizontal, vertical, and diagonal rows. A fun an addictive casual game that has been around a few years, this Flash version is actually an adaptation of a classic Atari arcade game from 1989, also called Klax.

Bloomin' Gardens is a strategy puzzle game in which the object is to line-up rows, columns or diagonals of five (5) or more matching flowers to eliminate them from play. The more flowers that match, the higher the score awarded. The game is actually a clone of Lines, and it has the feel and appeal of a classic casual game: it's easy to pick-up and play and yet difficult to master.

Another one for the classic games section, I made a reference to this game when reviewing Swarm due to the way the enemies swarmed onto the play field. Galaca is a Java applet 'clone' of the classic action arcade game Galaga. Originally created by Namco and released as a coin-op amusement...

As a tribute to the classic Atari Centipede arcade game from 1980, Emil Korngold has attempted to recreate the game in Flash. The game is still in beta form, and yet his attempt seems to capture much of the action and addictive gameplay of the original. Other than using the mouse...

There's a lot to love about LightForce Games in Athens, Greece. Nick Kouvaris, and his wife Helen, develop Flash games as a hobby and make them available to play on their LightForce Games website. Most of the games are clones of classic puzzle games, and yet all of them are presented with a simple and consistent style.

There's a lot to love about LightForce Games in Athens, Greece. Nick Kouvaris, and his wife Helen, develop Flash games as a hobby and make them available to play on their LightForce Games website. Most of the games are clones of classic puzzle games, and yet all of them are presented with a simple and consistent style.

There's a lot to love about LightForce Games in Athens, Greece. Nick Kouvaris, and his wife Helen, develop Flash games as a hobby and make them available to play on their LightForce Games website. Most of the games are clones of classic puzzle games, and yet all of them are presented with a simple and consistent style.

A Worm's Life redefines the classic game of Snake and turns it into a fresh new experience. The game features an array of elements that change-up the gameplay formula of the simple arcade game and transforms it into even more addictive, fast action fun.

This version of the classic game of Snake is remarkable in that it comes with source code and a complete tutorial explaining the code by its author, Strille of Sweden. Available on his website, the tutorial is a great way for anyone to get started programming games in Flash. The...

A while back I posted a DHTML version of the classic meditative strategy game, Mahjong Solitaire, as it was the nicest version of the game I was able to find. Until now. Enter bijvoorbeeld multimedia's rendition of the game, and it's done in Flash. From Amsterdam, this version of Mahjong Solitaire...

It shouldn't be surprising that from the world's smallest website comes the world's smallest games. From British game and Web designer Alan Outten comes this very tiny website, only 18 pixels wide by 18 pixels high, yet it is packed full with games such as Pong, Pacman, Footy, Space Invaders, Asteroids, Pinball, and others. Everything old is new again.

This Mr. Driller clone, created in Flash by Max K., is a decent version of the original game by Namco. Driller uses the arrow keys for movement, and the space bar for drilling. The object is to drill down through the blocks as far as you can without running out of air, or getting crushed. The level of difficulty determines how many rows of blocks y...

This pair of Flash games, hosted on Nobelprize.org, teaches you about the physics of liquid crystals while playing. Crystallite is an action puzzle game, similar to Tetris, where you position the falling blocks by rotating them before fitting them in their place. Use the right and left arrow keys to position the blocks, and the up and down arrows ...

The 1982 classic arcade game of Q*bert, re-created in Shockwave for online play over the Web. The object of the game is to move your Q*bert around the play field, hopping onto each square to turn it to the target color shown. While the default keys to use for movement are U, K, H, and M, the game does allow you to change them to suit your preferenc...

The classic game of Qix, released by Taito in the arcades back in 1981, and brilliantly reproduced in Flash by Drunk Men Work Here. In the game of Qix, the object is to claim portions of the play field by drawing Stix, or block areas, with the cursor marker. Enemies to avoid include: the Qix, a stick with trails that moves erratically about the un...

VirtualApple is a website that boasts over 1100 disk images of Apple II, IIe, and IIgs games and other software. Through the use of an ActiveX application and an Apple IIgs emulator, you can now enjoy Apple II software from years gone by, and do it all online using Microsoft IE and Windows—though, ironically, there is no current support for M...

I did a double-take when I first saw this on a French Flash games site. Fighters were the one genre that I had seen very little if anything done in Flash, yet now you can relive those arcade glory days by playing Street Fighter with your friends, on your computer. Julien Philippe has created a version that allows you to play single player against ...

Tino Zijdel of The Netherlands, aka Crisp, has created a remake of the classic game of Lemmings, originally developed by DMA Design, and coded it using JavaScript and DHTML! The game is beautiful and works very nicely if you have a recent browser (Mozilla, Firefox or Opera) and a 500MHz+ CPU.

Played just like the old plastic game of Battleship that used red and white pegs to record hits and misses, except this Flash version does all the hard work for you. First position your fleet on the board, then all you have to do is click on a square to fire torpedoes.

Also known as Table Tennis, this Shockwave game is from the folks that bring you the websites Mini-Clip and Shockplay. The game plays exactly like any ordinary game of Ping Pong, with you playing against one of three selectable computer players.

Jumble.com has launched a play-online section that features Jumbles done in Shockwave, with a new one added every day. This version of the classic puzzler adds a timer, scoring, and even a hint feature if you really get stumped. Word puzzles are a good way to keep your mind sharp, and to give your fingers a break from all those button-mashing games.

I came across this version of the original Prince of Persia game recreated in Flash, and wanted to share it. The original game, created by Jordan Mechner and released in 1989, used an animation technique called rotoscope to give the characters human-like qualities. It was also a lot of fun to play. So check out this special Flash edition and get a taste of what the original was like.

Written in Flash by Johnny Slack, an interactive multimedia technology student at Purdue, this version of Duck Hunt uses the mouse for aiming and shooting. It looks, acts and sounds just like the original (though it offers only one mode of play).

While on the subject of Pacman, several months ago there was a posting on Slashdot games about a Japanese programmer who re-created Pacman entirely in an Excel spreadsheet. Upon reading the story I was both amazed and curious, so I downloaded the zip file from the site linked-to in the story. And it really was Pacman, right down to the cut scenes b...

Another classic game, and this one needs no introduction. Arguably the single game that injected the most excitement into arcade video games during their infancy. Original game: copyright Namco, 1980; this version hand-coded in Flash by Paul Neave.

What may be one of the oldest games ever played, Mancala is simple to learn and yet difficult to master. This cute Flash version of the game is played using snails for stones and features both single player and multiplayer modes of play. Created by the talented folks at RocketSnail Games in British Columbia.

I just came across this fantastic Asteroids recreation called Hot Rocks from Shawn at Hot Flash Games, and boy does it rock! Very authentic classic gameplay with a serious modern soundtrack that just... ROCKS! Shawn did an excellent job designing the sound for the game, as it contains a mix of classic Asteroids samples and some phat rocking beats. ...

Lately, I've been wanting to play a game, called Mastermind, that I used to play a lot when I was in high school, but couldn't find a decent version of it anywhere online. The versions I did find were either buggy or weren't much to look at. So I made a better one.

This is simply amazing. Someone that goes only by the name of Voxel, has created a 3D version of the original Metroid game in Director! By taking the Metroid tileset, he built a utility that allows him to convert 2D sprites to 3D sprites, and then he uses those to build the levels of the game.

This billiards game from the UK at BlastBilliards.com has a unique twist: it's a race against the clock to get all the 'balls' in the pockets before time runs out. Your score is dependent upon how quickly you sink each ball. Nice and solid presentation, and the ball physics are fairly realistic. Click. Check out all the other BlastBilliards type...

Back in the day, Space Invaders, by Japanese company Taito, was one of the coolest games to come along as it was one of the first (if not the first) electronic game ever to offer open-ended gameplay. What that means is that it's impossible to 'beat' the game, the aliens just keep coming at you relentlessly.

From the BBC show featuring the same Blobs comes this cute little Flash game that is actually a bit of a challenge. Similar to the classic Lunar Lander game, the objective of Blob Lander is to fly and land your spaceship gracefully.

Another favorite of mine is this game by Squid S O U P. Snake delivers classic-style gameplay in a 3D Shockwave implementation. Very nice indeed.

Bubbels is a strangely addictive Flash game, like Bust-a-Move, from the Netherlands. There are actually five (5) different versions to choose from.

Why is this game so addictive? Is it because it's easy to find at least a couple of words? It certainly can't be because I always end up at the bottom of the scoring list. Click....