The Sentinel's Crazy Flash Games

posted by The Unicow
posted 8/17/2007 2:06:19 PM

As a big nerd, I'm fond of online Flash games. As a follower of the news, I'm not crazy about the local Sentinel & Enterprise newspaper or their lousy reporting and massive conservative bias. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that the newspaper I regularly mock has a bunch of Flash games available to play on its website!

Yes, that's right. The Sentinel website is home to a bunch of nutty Flash-based games! Could it redeem them? Join me in the Sentinel & Enterprise Arcade after the jump!


Number 1 on the Sentinel's "Top Games" list is Super Mario Bros. I love Super Mario Bros! Clearly, I need to play this game!

Now, let's get one thing straight. Just because something says "Super Mario Bros" doesn't mean it is Super Mario Bros. In this case particularly it actually means it's a weird knockoff which uses similar art assets and has crappy level design, but also throws in the Nintendo logo. So it's probably illegal. Here's what it looks like:

Okay, it's got pipes and something resembling a Goombah (which ran into me while I was busy taking a screenshot, argh!). It's also clearly not the real 8-bit Nintendo-approved Super Mario Bros, which looks like this:


Yeah, that's a considerable difference! Shame on you for getting my hopes up, Sentinel Arcade! This is just a rather poor Mario knock-off of questionable legality!

Moving on, I decided to check out the other Flash games they have. There are a bunch available (though they seem to mostly be lifted from Miniclip.com). I played through numbers 2 and 3 on the "Top Games" thingy: Mini Cup Rally and Rural Racer.

Okay, they suck. Here's a screenshot of Rural Racer. I'm the tiny red car that looks vaguely annoyed at how the stupid tiny white car keeps kicking my ass because it's impossible to not steer into walls:

Well, perhaps the problem is that the "Top Games" are a poor sample of what's good. Sort of like how "American Idol" is really super-popular but makes me want to jab an icepick in my ear. Therefore, let's dig deeper!

Feeling brave, I ventured to the "Action" section and selected Stunt Guy. Actually, it seems to technically be called "Stunt Guy Sphen", which is the weirdest spelling of the name "Sven" I've ever seen. Regardless, the idea is to jump over some buses and so forth with your motorcycle. Sort of like Evel Knievel but without the cool name.

I had a few problems. There seems to be no way to actually control the bike, and holding the accelerate key down for half a second sends you well beyond the speed of sound. After numerous tries the best I could manage was going 687 mph and somehow ending up in the back end of a cow...


Okay, this isn't going too well. Let's try something a bit less dangerous.

Moving on to the puzzle section, I was drawn in by Wheels of Salvation. I was hoping it was some sort of crazy religious thing where you're Jesus and you have to ride a 4-wheeler to Galilee to punch Judas in the nose. Or something like that, I didn't really spend a lot of time in Sunday school.

In reality, with this game you have to get a little pseudo-Indiana Jones guy out of a dangerous lava-filled pit by jumping him onto rotating cog-things. Yeah, it sounds really dumb, but it's fun! You just keep heading up until you eventually get to solid ground and away from that damn lava (which actually moves really slowly anyway).

On a side note, why the hell is lava so prevalent in video games? In my 30-odd years on this planet I have yet to encounter lava, yet it's constantly threatening me in video games!

Anyway, here's a screenshot. See that little guy in roughly the middle? That's me!



So anyway, this game is pretty fun. Also, it's super easy. At least for the first few levels, which is honestly all I bothered with.

Reveling in my newfound confidence after doing well at the easiest game in the world, I headed over to the "General" section. There was where I found the intriguingly-titled Bloody Pingu.

If you've ever spent time in a bar with one of those horrible touchscreen things that mostly play Flash games (and sometimes show naked ladies in a disturbing fashion) you may have seen Pingu. In my experience it has been a polar bear smacking a fish with a club in an attempt to achieve the optimal trajectory to get it to go really far. It's sort of fun... if you're drunk.

However, if you're sober and the game is "Bloody Pingu" and you're some sort of creepy Yeti-thing whacking innocent penguins into a minefield with a giant spiked club, and if they spew blood the entire way, it's sort of less fun.


In fact, it's actually downright disturbing. Look at all that blood! Does any penguin deserve that sort of shabby treatment? And am I the abominable snow-monster from those creepy Rankin-Bass Christmas specials? What the hell, Sentinel?

Okay, enough of this.

I played a few more games, and there are indeed a few fun ones to be found. The Metal Slug game is okay if you like Metal Slug and don't mind getting blown up by jerk-ass helicopters. Don't bother with Excite Bike (possibly my favorite game ever) because the link is broken. But there is some decent stuff to be found, admidst a whole lot of really really terrible and questionably legal Flash games.

If you want to play the most awesome Flash game ever though, I suggest you skip the Sentinel entirely and go play Rose & Camellia, which as far as I can tell is all about women slapping each other. Enjoy!

Tags: flash games, sentinel & enterprise, entertainment
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