Following its release in February of 2007, Peggle Deluxe for the PC was not a game that a self-respecting hardcore gamer wanted to be caught playing. The game is colorful, it’s made by PopCap (the guys who make those jewel games that your sister plays), and it has cute anthropomorphic animals that you don’t even get to kill. Although Peggle rose in popularity throughout the year, it wouldn’t pique the interest of the hardcore crowd until just before the release of Valve’s Orange Box in October of 2007. At this time, someone with the business acumen of, at the very least, Warren Buffett’s tie, decided that taking a special version of Peggle — a game where you shoot a ball at pegs and then watch stars and rainbows happen — should have Valve game characters tacked on to it and be released on Steam for free under the name Peggle Extreme. This move paid off for PopCap in spades: sales of Peggle Deluxe skyrocketed, and PopCap went on to port it to the iPod classic, iPhone, World of Warcraft, and Xbox Live Arcade. In 2008, a full sequel titled Peggle Nights was released for the PC; this sequel would later be bundled with Peggle Deluxe and ported to the Nintendo DS. The version I prefer to play, and will recommend here, is Peggle Nights for the PC.

Peggle’s key to success and mass appeal (once PopCap had everyone’s attention) lies in its simplicity and the constant stream of feedback and rewards given to players. Each level is a board with blue and orange pegs on it. Shooting a ball at any peg results in points, flashing lights, and positively reinforcing sounds, but the victory condition in Adventure mode is to clear, at the very least, all of the orange pegs. Green gems exist on the board as well; these are power-ups whose effect depends on which of the eleven characters is being played. The real action begins once Adventure mode is completed and Challenge mode unlocks. Any character can be chosen in this mode as the victory conditions vary from stage to stage. No matter the game mode, Ode To Joy plays over top a fireworks display upon every victory.

It was difficult for me to reconcile writing about Peggle; it’s such a successful and popular game that covering it felt redundant. I make an effort to cover uncelebrated games foremost, but I decided that Peggle is too important to PC gaming (and video game culture in general) to ignore it. Although each games’ levels are unique to them and Peggle Deluxe is still worth playing, I recommend Nights over it because it has smoother graphics, an extra character, and PopCap releases free seasonal level packs for it. Nights and Deluxe are available on Steam separately for $9.99 each, or as a bundle for $14.99. Peggle Extreme is, as always, free on Steam.

Ryan Scott (of GFW Radio and LAN Party podcast fame) has a new show called The Geekbox. Each week Ryan Scott, along with Karen Chu, Greg Ford, Andrew Fitch and Ryan “Master” Higgins gather at Comics Conspiracy in Sunnyvale California to record The Geekbox podcast. The Geekbox is something of a spiritual successor to GFW Radio and LAN Party by virtue that video games are not the main object of conversation. Rather, the crew discusses all things “geek” as they come up. World of Warcraft, Burn Notice and Lost are some recurring topics in the first three episodes. Other conversation concern things from comic books to Andrew Fitch’s dating life.

Not to be overlooked is Area 5, a new production company made up of former GameVideos employees. Their debut project, CO-OP, is a video podcast produced in the same general style of The 1UP Show; roundtable video game discussions with relevant gameplay footage displayed throughout. The first “arc” of CO-OP is a two-parter called “Reflection”. Therein, the Area 5 folks invite over their former co-workers to discuss their favorite games of 2008. Both videos together tally up to about 45 minutes. While CO-OP is free and hosted at YouTube for now, Area 5 may move to a subscription model in the future. There is no telling yet.

Finally, Rebel FM is trucking along. Audio quality has improved immensely thanks to the new equipment they were able to purchase with listener donations. As I said in my last 1UP-themed post, they plan to continue the popular Backlog segment from 1UP FM. Their first game was selected on-air this week, and it is Call of Cthulhu. Discussion about that game sounds like it will begin on next week’s episode. I have not played the game before and have meant to for years, so I think I will try to play along. It’s available for Xbox and PC and there is a Rebel FM post with information on where to acquire it.

That would be one of the main attractions to Dungeon Runners, as is the case with many games of this type: loot! Everybody loves loot, especially when it has whacky names, and loot in Dungeon Runners does not disappoint. Actually, everything in the game has whacky names. Upon entering the game from character creation you will find yourself standing in the middle of a small, forested enclave, face to face with none other than The Noobosaur! I almost wish I were making that up, but that’s the name of the small, red, dragon-like creature who helps to acquaint new players with some basics of the game. Humor is another big motivator in Dungeon Runners; most of the game is satire of the entire RPG genre. Even the city names. The first one you’ll come to is called “Townston”. From there, provided you’re on one of the two PVP servers, you can venture to “Pwnston”.

As can be expected with just about any free MMORPG on the market, there are a few catches when playing Dungeon Runners on NCSoft’s dime. However, I wouldn’t be covering this game if they weren’t completely tolerable. The most invasive imposition will be the presence of a banner displayed at the top of your screen at all times. At 1680×1050 resolution it takes up about 85px of vertical space. This will typically be advertising some other NCSoft property such as Guild Wars, Lineage or Tabula Rasa. They aren’t monitoring your activity for the sake of targeted ads or anything, and you actually get used to it being there quite quickly. I believe this is the only catch worth discussing ad nauseum, so below I will list the rest of the things that being a paying member nets you, according to Wikipedia:

• Voice chat
• Access to two additional pages in the bank for storing items, while non-paying members receive only one.
• Additional 2 bank pages (unlocked at lvl50 and lvl100 respectively)
• Stackable potions up to 10 (as opposed to 5)
• Access to all Rare (Gold), Epic (Purple) and Mythic(Rainbow) items
• Login queue list priority
• Access to the Member Only world
• No Advertisements
• 15% More Gold and Experience
• Pay less for King’s Coin items

Believe it or not, the timing of this post is actually quite coincidental, in light of recent announcements. I had been planning on covering this game for a couple of weeks. I think it worked out pretty conveniently as I am sure there are a lot of people that are jonesing for this type of gameplay. Best of all, it’s free! Provided you don’t mind dealing with a few of the annoyances I listed above. If those prove to be too much for you to deal with, the game is actually quite cheap to subscribe to. Since the client is free to download, a month of play costs you only $5. Unfortunately, there is no discount for paying quarterly or annually, but if you buy the retail box, 6 months of membership is included. I was lucky to catch it for $12.99 at GoGamer during a 48 hour sale, but it’s back up to $17.90 now. Additionally, Amazon has it for $18.99 and I believe GameStop will begin stocking it this week. Considering the cost is less than 6 months of membership would normally cost you, there’s no reason not to go with the retail box.