Although Linux is not nearly the Game trove that Windows is, it is not without its share of time takers. It’s been a while since I mentioned a game on Ghacks, so I thought maybe I should bring up the topic again. This time around I will visit two games. One of these games is one of my all time favorite second sucker – Frozen Bubble. The other, gnubik, is sure to frustrate you for hours. Let’s take a look at these two gems.

Installation

I’ll get this out of the way quickly. Both of these games should be found in your distributions standard repositories. So just open up your Add/Remove Software tool and search for both “frozen bubble” and “gnubik” (no quotes) and install both. There will most likely be dependencies to install, but those will go off without a hitch.

And now, let’s waste some time.

Frozen Bubble

Figure 1

As I mentioned earlier, Frozen Bubble is one of my favorite ways to kill time. It’s a simple arcade game with an obvious taste for Linux. Frozen Bubble features:

• One or two player game.
• Network game play.
• 3D graphics.
• Catchy soundtrack.
• 100 levels for single player game.
• Level editor.

Figure 2

The game is played like this. You have a “gun” that you angle either to the left or to the right with your arrow keys. This gun (see Figure 2) . The “gun” shoots different colored marbles. The goal is to shoot the marble to a similarly colored marble above you to knock them down. The rows of marbles slowly lower so there is a time limit.

You can bounce the marble off the sides to get creative with your play. And, naturally, as you get higher up in levels the marble placement gets more difficult and the marbles drop faster and faster.

The level editor is also quite easy to use. Open it up, select the color marble you want to add, and click where you want the marble to go. You can also select the speed at which the marbles drop.

Gnubik

Figure 3

Gnubik, of course, hearkens back to the ’80s and the Rubiks Cube craze. Gnubik offers up a very simple way to attempt to solve that elusive puzzle. When you open Gnubik up (see Figure 3) you will have an unsolved cube waiting to be solved.

To move a section of the cube you place your cursor on the edge of the side you want to move. Say you want to move (as shown in the picture) the side facing you clockwise. To do this you would place your cursor on the outside of the upper left horizontal line of the side. When you see the cursor change to an up arrow (in this case) you could click your left mouse button. You can also rotate your entire cube by clicking and dragging the black background. As you drag the background around the cube will rotate on all three axis.

Eventually you get the hang of how to move your cubes’ sides around. And hopefully, much more quickly than I, you will solve your cube.

Final thoughts

How much time do you waste with little applications like Frozen Bubble and Gnubik? Or have you found a better application to waste your time on? If so, share with us.

Now, I found a site that has heaps of classic arcade games for your playing pleasure. Games include all time classics like Pacman, Bomberman, Donkey Kong, 1942, Yie Ar Kung Fu and lots more. The games require java to play so make sure you have java installed, if not head over to sun.java.com and download the latest JRE.

Enjoy these fine games, head over to 1980-games.com

Update: The website is still up and operational, and not a lot has changed since our first review. The front page of the service lists several of the most popular games right away on screen. You can launch them directly with a single click, and all should work just fine provided that you have the Java Runtime Environment installed on your computer as a plugin.

Game windows are kinda small at the beginning, but you can click on the big Screen link below which improves game window size considerable.

Controls are usually displayed on the right of the game window. You need to insert coins into many games first before you can start playing them. This is done with a tap on the 5 key on the keyboard. You start most games with a tap on 1. Controls use the cursor keys for movement, and ctrl, alt and space for actions. Not all keys may be usable though depending on the game.

Games are furthermore sorted into categories on the left, e.g. Sport or Shooter, and larger groups at the top. Here you can access logic games, remakes or Nintendo games for instance.