Long before the TV show “24″ there was an early PC game, circa 1987, called “24 Hours”. The game was made similar to “San Francisco Earthquake - 1906″ in that is was programmed in BASIC and Assembler and was designed for the Radio Shack TRS 80. Like Earthquake, it was a text based game with no graphics at all. Many felt that it was simply a cheap knock off. But the game was not without its interesting points.

The start of the game was very similar to Earthquake. A man awakes to find out that his wife has been kidnapped and frantically begins his search, having been informed that if he doesn’t bring the ransom in 24 hours, she’ll be killed. The clock then starts ticking. The game is actually played in real time. Every second you play, another second in game time goes by. So you literally have to finish this game in 24 hours. And thus, the chase begins, focusing mainly on modes of transportation, of which there are plenty.

The guy starts out hopping in his car and driving all around town looking for clues. He stops at diners, liquor stores and magazine stands talking to people along the way. He finds some items along the way and buys others. Each item leads him to a new clue.

The early portion of the game covers a large area of the city itself and eats up about 4 of the 24 hours. It was apparent that the game was designed so that each section took up 4 hours, since there are 6 sections in the game.

The second section begins when the guy finds his way to the train station. Here, he has to leave his car and hop on a train. On the train he meets a number of passengers who also give him some clues. Ultimately, these clues lead him off the train at a certain stop. If he doesn’t get off, it’s okay as the train just goes back and forth like a subway. Eventually he’ll find the right stop. This also takes about 4 hours.

After getting off the train the next section is all on foot. The area covered will eventually lead you to an airport where you rent a private plane. The clues found that ultimately lead you to this conclusion, of having to board of plane, are rather convoluted. But if you think outside the box, you’ll figure them out. In the meantime, 4 more hours have gone by and you are now 12 hours into the game and halfway to either finding the guys wife or watching her die.

The plane trip takes you to a field. The field itself is a huge maze that leads to a cave. Finding the cave itself is very hard as the maze is huge. This part of the game takes another 4 hours to get through the maze, which is done on foot. We are now about 16 hours through the game.

Once in the cave you find some tracks. It appears the cave is some kind of underground railroad. Ultimately you find a small one passenger train that you have to figure out how to run yourself. The tracks in the cave seem to go all over the place. In a sense, you are in another maze. This takes another 4 hours to get through to the end where you find your wife.

Here is where it gets interesting. Your wife is handcuffed to something in the cave. The cuffs don’t have a key. Instead they have a combination lock. In the meantime, there is a bomb in the cave set to go off in 4 hours. There is also a complex code box on the bomb. Enter in the right code and the bomb will be defused. Enter the wrong code and it blows up. You have to decide. Do you defuse the bomb or try to figure out the combination for the handcuffs and get your wife out?

You better hope you have more than 4 hours when you get to this section of the game because either option you choose is going to be close to impossible to solve. This is the most frustrating part of the game. The end is ridiculously hard.

Whoever made this game must have loved torturing people because this game is one of the most frustrating things you will ever play.

But oh what a load of fun it is. Even without the graphics.

Michael Russell

Your Independent guide to PC Games

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Learning how to play your favorite mah jong games online can allow you to play anytime you want. If you want to play in person, you have to find people to play, who know how to play, and who have the time. Playing online allows you to play any time of day you like and to explore your abilities against all sorts of people from all over the world.

There are a number of versions of mah jong online that you can play. So you have to decide what you like to play then learn how to play it online. Online the hundreds of mah jong versions from the world over are represented, which means you can always play what you want when you want.

First, if you are in an alone mood there is solitaire mah jong. In this online version of the popular Chinese tile gambling game, the object is to clear the board. Though that is not any different than regular solitaire, in mah jong versions you have to incorporate principals of the game in order to clear the tiles. You can play alone and you can kill hours doing so. Also, you will strengthen your skills for when you play the regular version of mah jong.

When looking at how to play your favorite mah jong games on online, you have to consider the original Chinese version of the game. You can go to a number of websites where you have the opportunity to sit at tables with other players and test your skills. Since there are so many versions of the game out there, you can actually choose what kind of table you sit at usually. You will then be playing with those who enjoy the same version you do.

Finally, look for unique versions of the game online as well. When you play online you will find that there are likely versions you have never seen before, learning them and learning the strategies only make you a better player anyway. While you are on the internet playing you may as well consider the chance to widen your mah jong knowledge and abilities.

So learn how to play your favorite mah jong games online, but also take the time to explore mah jong options. You will find that it can not only make you a better player, but also make you a better thinker. The game, after all, means game of a thousand intelligences.

You can find your favorite mah jong games online by a simple web search. Go to a search engine and search to find the site that works best for you. Find an interface you like, and a version of the game you enjoy. When you play against others from all over you will become better at the game and prepare yourself for the next time you play in real life with your friends. So learn how to play your favorite mah jong games online and you will be better at the game, more entertained, and have a chance to see how others play.

Simon Oliver has an interest in Recreation & Hobbies related topics. To access more information on free mah jong game or on mah jong online, please click on the links.

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One of the best ways a majority of us relax, stay engaged, stave off boredom, or even blow off hours at work is to play gamesvideo games, computer games (you do know there are a few addictive games in your word program, right?), or online games.

I own over a hundred games from the ever-wonderful bigfishgames.com. I regularly visit gaming sites on the Internet as well. One, I still check out quite a bit is actually a free - boxerjam, great name isn’t it? never mind that these are where I played my very first games online the very first timein the early eightiesI went online. (Those were the days when you would dial in, wait while the screeeoooobongbongbong sound that would later absolutely drive up the wall).

One game that I have been playing quite a bit lately, and I am absolutely hooked on is Pogo. You can play at three but you have to put up with intermittent advertisements. But really, paying to play games at Pogo (and I’m sure at other equally fine sites) is pretty cheap anyhow if you want to go that route. Especially if you prefer to stay at home (because you find that people now drive you absolutely nuts), never spend money on anything other than food and shelter, and deserve (as every human does) the mind altering of fact that playing games affords.

Believe it or not they are actually some benefits to Lane is games other than just for its entertainment values. Let’s take a look at a few:

1.Such platforms or networks or whatever they are called these days allow games to return to their natural form. You can play games like Checkers, a version of Scrabble, or Canasta, for example, with a robot that is programmed so that you can choose them to lead skill levels that are predetermined by you. And the new avatars (mini-me cartoon representations of players/members) have very human expressions like smiles, frowns, even human like expressions that can be seen when winning a round, losing a game, conceding to a set or match.

2.In-game chat for real-time games means you get to play games and communicate with others as you play, anywhere in the world, live. You don’t hear from them three days after you emailed or snail mailed a message; you don’t wait ten minutes as if you are stoned and swearing you took way too long to answer that question; you type back and forth to people all over the world. If that’s what interests you. You can, of course, choose to either play games against the computer program itself or human counterparts of your choosing.

3. There are benefits of the previous listed points which include such things as, gaming online enhances social skills because you have to deal with others, breaks down barriers, encourages the human sentiments of empathy and sympathy (for anything important to the online/human acquaintanceslife issues, feelings, attitudes about hard games or dull ones or games acting up); and, in my estimation, beats having to play games alone.

4. The miracle of online game playing systems also encourages altruism and contributes to technological knowledge development, on whatever level. People with like-minded interests tend to help others, chat, manipulate pc commands/controls, play unfamiliar games, and, in general, have a great deal of fun and are acting with each other. It’s a beautiful thing.

While we now know, too, that when you play games (of any mode and of certain types), those games help to sharpen some of our mental faculties, Alzheimer’s, and, in my coo-coo world, the insanity of such needful mental aberrations as ADD, ADHD, and OCDthough this last benefit is not necessarily empirically proven. There has been quite a bit of research done on this topic and you can bet there will be a whole lot more to come.

So to play games is to invite motivation for beating your personal best, to perform in competition-mode (though this is very understated), to compete and try to win some money if that’s at stake. Our earliest ancestors no doubt liked to play games and were amused by them. Even if its these tokens that are virtually real but virtually useless for anything other than virtual activities. Whatever the case, it all translates to F-U-N.

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