The Best Games You Never Played - Page 2

Halim started the site in 2000 with only one simple game. Although he views the site as his own “personal playground' where he can experiment with different graphics and effects, Halim also wants to provide an alternative to the extremely violent games that are flooding the gaming market.

“I don’t believe you need violence to make a game fun. You can find violent games all around you. I don’t need to make more," he said.

The Orisinal site features an online store, where fanatics can buy clocks, mugs, t-shirts and other apparel, all with the site’s animal characters emblazoned upon them. The store brings in enough money to nearly cover the cost of the server, Halim said.

In order to test whether a college student could really enjoy games so straightforward and uncomplicated, iMPrint asked three veteran gamers to try out the site for the first time and give their impressions. Smith came away impressed.
“The games I played both looked sharp. ‘Runaway Train’ and ‘Flight of the Season’ were pretty good-looking," Smith said. “The graphics were pretty simple too, so the load time wasn’t bad at all. I don’t have to download a lot or learn a lot of rules either, so it’s a lot of fun."

Tim Cunningham, a student at Mercyhurst College, was not as big a fan of the site.

“It’s good, it’s not my favorite," he said.

He admitted he preferred the popular gaming site candystand.com to Orisinal.

Siena College sophomore Chris Klaeysen, like Cunningham, was not as impressed with the site as Smith was.

“It went on for too long, and the little squirrel guy freaked me out, especially the way his feet kicked in the air," said Klaeysen, actually referring to the raccoon character in the mini-game “What Comes Around." “If I was bored, I may come back to it. It was good for like 20 seconds."