Arcade Game Central

FUN Technologies, one of the world’s leading online casual gaming providers, has announced that it is partnering with GSN, “the Network for Games,” the entertainment industry’s leading producer of interactive television, to televise the first annual million dollar Worldwide Web Games™ championship, formerly known as the Skill Games World Championship™.

The GSN/FUN Technologies collaboration brings millions of casual games players worldwide an unprecedented platform for interactive entertainment. Hosted by SkillJam and WorldWinner, both subsidiaries of FUN Technologies, the Worldwide Web Games will bring some of the world’s top casual gamers to the Renaissance Hotel in Hollywood for the finals on Saturday, September 9.

“We are thrilled to be able to bring our TV audience the first-ever Worldwide Web Games,” said Rich Cronin, president and CEO, GSN. “We are always looking for ground-floor programming opportunities and are excited to be able to present this new realm of competition to our viewers who love playing casual games online at GSN.com.”

The qualifying competitions are already underway at GSN, SkillJam, WorldWinner, and other top online games sites. Players from around the world qualify for the championship by competing in any of three of the most popular skill-based games: Bejeweled 2, Solitaire or Zuma. The high-scorer in each online competition will be flown to Los Angeles to compete in the live semifinal and final round tournaments. The best all-around player will be crowned “World’s Best Casual Gamer” and be awarded the $1 million grand prize.

Of the estimated 70 to 100 million people worldwide who play casual games, two-thirds are women, more than half between the ages of 25 and 54. “The million-dollar grand prize brings a new level of awareness to the millions of people playing casual games,” said Lorne Abony, CEO of FUN Technologies. “Through our partnership with GSN and AOL, we’re giving our players the opportunity to transcend their current game play experience and enter a whole new level of entertainment.”

Learn more about the Worldwide Web Games
Compete at SkillJam
Compete at WorldWinner

Atom Entertainment has announced they have launched a redesigned version of their Shockwave.com gaming portal. The new site features over 300 games, including online and multiplayer games which are all free.

“Today we’re entering a new era in online gaming by redesigning the site to appeal to the wide demographic base of casual gamers and offering advertisers a breadth of choices to reach our growing audience of 25 million casual game enthusiasts,” said Dave Williams, CMO of Atom Entertainment. “We’ve made the site more appealing for game players, and more flexible for advertisers who are trying to reach this audience in innovative ways.”

“Our unique, ‘all you can eat’ subscription model provides unlimited, ad-free gaming across hundreds of games with broad appeal to all family members,” he continued. “We have a huge community of game players visiting Shockwave each month and we would like to give those users more options to communicate with one another, play head to head or collaborate on game play.”

Shockwave.com provides the best free online games and downloadable games to more than 25 million people each month.

Give Shockwave a try

Forbes.com has an interview with Andrew Pedersen, vice president at Electronic Arts’ Pogo.com, which offers both free casual games and a subscription-only portal which boasts 1.2 million customers.

“Part of the appeal of casual games in the work population is that in a 15-minute work break you can play five sessions of your favorite game and feel very satisfied. It is a way to relax,” says Pedersen.

Pogo offers a variety of online casual games. They’re a little short on arcade games, but feature a nice assortment of card, word, and puzzle games.

Play games at Pogo now!

GameColony.com, an online provider of multi-player skill-based tournaments for cash prizes, has introduced its 19th online game - BuckMan. BuckMan is an exciting twist on a classic Arcade favorite, PacMan.

Playing the game is very simple - control your BuckMan by using the arrow keys on your keyboard. Have your BuckMan avoid the red spiders and eat the yellow dots as you maneuver it around the board. Try getting the rotating Bonus Dollars when they appear. When pursued by red spiders, have your BuckMan eat the Power Pill — a bigger yellow dot initially located in each of the corners of the board. After consuming the Power Pill, the spiders will turn green for a while. Green spiders will try to run away from BuckMan and BuckMan will be able to outrun the spiders while they are green. BuckMan has 3 lives.

Aside from the improved graphics and sound effects, there’s a whole new dimension for players — they can compete in various on-site tournaments to win cash prizes. GameColony’s Java games can be played on any Wndows, Macintosh or Linux computers with any browser.

In addition to BuckMan, GameColony real-time skill games include Gin Rummy, Backgammon, Cribbage, Dominoes, Canasta, Pool, Solitaire, FreeCell, Rush 21, Poker-Rush, Pharaoh’s Treasure, Mahjong, Darts, Chess, and more. Players enter online competitions by contributing entry fees. The winner collects a cash prize based on the percentage of the resulting tournament prize-pot.

Try BuckMan today!

WorldWinner, one of the leaders in online game competitions, has announced a partnership with leading games developer MumboJumbo to develop online competitions in MumboJumbo’s popular puzzle game Luxor for cash and prizes. Luxor was one of the most downloaded games of 2005, compelling players to play repeatedly to achieve new levels and high scores. Since Luxor was introduced last year, the game has been downloaded tens of millions of times. Through this agreement, WorldWinner will give Luxor fans, as well as online gamers looking for a new challenge, a platform to prove their skills by competing against other players for cash and prizes.

Luxor is an action-puzzle game that takes players on an exciting adventure across the lands of ancient Egypt. Players must shoot magical spheres and destroy the approaching colored spheres by making matches of three before they reach the pyramids at the path’s end. Power-up talismans, such as explosive fireballs, thundering lightning bolts and magical multi-color spheres, are up for grabs to aid players in their quest.

“With a tremendous install base, and that easy-to-learn, but difficult to master quality that online gamers crave, Luxor is well positioned to become an instant favorite at WorldWinner,” said Stephen Killeen, president and CEO of WorldWinner. “Players who think no one can top their score in Luxor will now have an opportunity to prove it by competing at WorldWinner for cash and prizes.”

“Given the wild popularity of Luxor, which remains one of the most downloaded casual games week after week, we’re excited to work with WorldWinner to broaden the game’s appeal to an even larger audience,” said Ron Dimant, managing director, MumboJumbo. “Offering cash competitions in Luxor is guaranteed to elevate the level of fun to a whole new level.”

Luxor cash competitions in will be available at WorldWinner in the second quarter of 2006.