Game Sites

Game Sites

KING OF THE HILL PAINTBALL (v2. shockwave.com/bin/v2/entry.jsp) ''Prepare to be Gribblized!'' It's the war cry of King of the Hill's paranoiac Dale Gribble -- and a sure sign you're about to take a paintball in the kisser. Lock, load, and let loose on Hank and his TV buddies in this first-person Shockwave shooter, which sports relatively responsive controls and amusing tag lines (''War is fun!'' giggles Bill). Just be warned: To these Texans, you're Santa Anna. B

IBETCHA.COM (www.ibetcha.com) Blown all your real money on scratchers and keno? Show up at 22-year-old CEO Omer Shvili's site and get 20,000 Betcha Bucks, which you're free to blow on wagers far more interesting than matching fruit: e.g., the due date of Tony Blair's baby, or the viewership of the Clinton-DiCaprio Earth Day summit. If those bets don't roll your dice, submit your own and watch your fellow chancers ante up. A few dated entries and some shaky Java programming mar the fun, but who's quibbling when there are prizes to be won, from Sony PlayStations to a Porsche Boxster? No actual moola, though; why, that would be gambling! B+

CROCHETY SOX BASEBALL LEAGUE (www.csbl.net) Baseball season is upon us, but that's of little consequence to Ross White's Carrboro, N.C.-based fantasy league: Though only a year old, it just entered its fourth season. Credit tireless players (such as pitcher and Hootie frontman Darius Rucker) who exist only on White's baseball simulator, a number cruncher that gauges team success based on the collective performances of fictitious swatters. Here, ''owners'' seem more concerned with composing humorous ''press releases'' than winning, as in the proposal to permit stellar players ''the drinking of beer after 10 p.m. and free admission to dubious establishments.'' B+

BLAZING LASERS (easyweb.easynet.co.uk/felixthecat) The green DOS-type intro screen screams nostalgia for a time when playing shoot-'em -up games meant scrolling panoramas with your tiny ship at one edge of the screen and a ruthless ''boss'' at the other. The site lovingly commemorates 2-D masterpieces like R-type, Axelay, Einhander, and Radiant Silvergun with screen shots, audio, and scholarly essays (''Here we see a four-stage Bydo conversion...''). For the old-schooler, it's a fragging blast. B+

PALM TOWN (www.palmtown.com) People with PalmPilots are busy people. People with no time for games. Guess that's why this site's devoted to ''just the fun stuff'' -- low- or no-cost downloads of Pac-Man and Asteroids, not to mention sophisticated fare like SimCity and even a first-person shooter called RayGin. Also present are treats for the mature Palm-er, namely Gaydar Deluxe and Bartender -- the latter, intriguingly, is classified under ''Action.'' A-

-- Scott Brown

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[BOX]

TOP GAME SOFTWARE

ON A FAST 'TREK'

The truth is in here: Wired sci- fi heads, perhaps spurred by the video release of The Phantom Menace, swept up new spring titles like Star Wars: Force Commander (No. 4) and Star Trek: Armada (No. 5). Elsewhere, extreme life-is-a-battlefield games like Command & Conquer (No. 10) and Soldier of Fortune (No. 3) put pent-up gamers on the defensive. Sounds like it's time to take that mental-health day.

TOP 10 CD-ROM GAMES LAST WEEK 1 THE SIMS Electronic Arts, PC 2 2 WHO WANTS TO BE A MILLIONAIRE Disney, PC 1 3 SOLDIER OF FORTUNE Activision, PC -- 4 STAR WARS: FORCE COMMANDER LucasArts, PC 3 5 STAR TREK: ARMADA Activision, PC 4 6 MP ROLLERCOASTER TYCOON Hasbro Interactive, PC 6 7 MICROSOFT AGE OF EMPIRES II: THE AGE OF KINGS Microsoft, PC 8 8 THIEF II: THE METAL AGE Eidos, PC 10 9 UNREAL TOURNAMENT GT Interactive, PC -- 10 COMMAND & CONQUER: TIBERIAN SUN Firestorm, PC 9

SOURCE: PC DATA FOR THE WEEK ENDING APRIL 1, 2000