Content tagged with [fantasy] on DuncanMackenzie.net

Yet another Xbox Dad article up, this one on games for the K-6 crowd

Duncan Mackenzie — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 20:07:00 GMT

With Father's Day coming up, I've been thinking a lot about my own Dad and how I got into videogames as a kid. My parents, perhaps swayed by George Plimpton's television commercials, went out and bought an Intellivision for the family. It was to be a Christmas gift for all of us, not just for me and my brother. It was hooked up to the only TV in the house, right in the living room where we spent our evenings. Night after night, the four of us played games like Poker, Dungeons and Dragons, Golf, Lock 'n' Chase and more. Since it was hooked up to the TV, this early console seemed so much more of a family activity than the computer games I played in later years.
Now that I have my own family, and my own game console, I try to make videogaming into an activity that the family can do together. Of course, since I have a six-year-old, family gaming isn't all about popping in a copy of Halo® 2. ...

At the end of the article I go through a few recommendations for younger kids, including my favorite games to play with Connor.

Back from holidays to find a ton of new sci-fi content on the DVR...

Duncan Mackenzie — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 06:33:00 GMT

What a great friday, new Stargate (both) and 'Painkiller Jane' ... mmm.... 3 hours of new Sci-Fi goodness

30 more hours of Oblivion coming... wow...

Duncan Mackenzie — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 23:25:00 GMT

I'm far from having used up all the gameplay in the initial release of Oblivion, and I haven't even gotten into the expansions, and now they've annouced an additional expansion with a ton more gameplay that I can jump into on the 360... amazing.

Even More Oblivion on the Shivering Isles
Thursday, January 18 @ 11:10:00 PST
Bethesda Softworks has announced The Elder Scrolls IV: Shivering Isles, an official Oblivion expansion for Windows and the Xbox 360.

I have to say that Oblivion is still the best 360 game I own, and it just keeps getting better.

The Deverry Novels by Katharine Kerr

Duncan Mackenzie — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 07:49:00 GMT

I've recently begun re-reading the Deverry novels; I just went through Daggerspell, Darkspell and I'm onto The Bristling Wood (basically 'Act 1' as the author has described the books as being the various parts of a long play). This is an excellent series, but one that I found quite by accident.

Back when I was a fairly young kid, maybe 12 or 13, a friend of my mother was visting our house and upon realizing that I read the same type of books as him, offered to trade his set of books by David Eddings for my 'Deryni' series by Katherine Kurtz. Now I read my books over and over again, so I didn't understand what he meant... it seems perfectly logical to most folks that since we had both read our books once, this was a permanent trade, but I was quite surprised when I eventually figured that out. Of course, I could have just asked for my books back, but that didn't seem appropriate and I certainly had enjoyed the Belgariad (although the second set of books by Mr. Eddings seemed way too much of a retelling of the first... right down to the same characters... sure they were the descendants of the first set, but really... would they all end up with roughly the same personalites?). Anyway, I've always wanted to pick up the Deryni series again so I tend to look for them in bargain bins at bookstores and the like. Well, when I thought I had discovered a whole new series by the same person I immediately bought the first four books in the Deverry series. Of course, it was not the same person at all, Kerr instead of Kurtz, but I didn't figure that out right away. So, I ended up reading a great series of books completely by accident.

How do you decide what to read? As a kid, I used to pick up the first book in a ton of new series and decided which ones I liked from there, but now (with the notable exception of Robert Jordan's series) I haven't picked up a book by a new-to-me author in ages. I know I could just go and grab some recent books from the library, but are there any good/great blogs/sites focused on the fantasy genre?

Content tagged with [fantasy] on DuncanMackenzie.net

More Xbox Dad articles, Viva Piñata Party Animals and Xbox Live

Yet another Xbox Dad article up, this one on games for the K-6 crowd

Back from holidays to find a ton of new sci-fi content on the DVR...

30 more hours of Oblivion coming... wow...

The Deverry Novels by Katharine Kerr