Maintain your amateur status

Welcome to the first installment of Flash Game Friday. Each Friday I'll review/recommend a new flash game for you all to enjoy. This week's game: Dolphin Olympics 2.

The original Dolphin Olympics was a game I stumbled across a couple of years ago. I distinctly remember playing it very obsessively for like 2 days then basically forgetting about it completely. Well, last week when I was mentioning to my friend/editor, Shums, that I should write about fun flash games, he immediately recommended DO2. The next thing I knew, two hours had passed and the skin on my middle finger was sore from holding down the up button on the keyboard.

Dolphin Olympics is a deceptively simple game. The basic premise is that you control the dolphin as he jumps out of the water. While in the air, you can rotate him around both of his 2D axes to perform various tricks. By combining tricks, you can string together a masterful Tony Hawk style combo. Furthermore, if you reenter the water at the correct angle and quickly jump again, your combo not only continues, but you get a bit of a height boost to your next jump. The idea is to do as many varied tricks as possible while continually entering and exiting the water as perfectly as possible. The game is also deliciously bite-sized: each round lasts only two minutes.

Seems pretty basic, right? So why is it so addictive? I think it's the desire to pull off a perfect run. You can have perfect jumps for a minute and a half and then belly flop and lose all your momentum. Each time that happened to me I would immediately restart the game… and boy oh boy, did it ever happen. Instead of getting discouraged, I would just try again. And again. And again. In fact, while writing this blog entry I played it 5 or 6 times.

The ultimate goal in the game is to get as far into space as you can. While I've only made it to Mars, Shums says he reached the Restaurant at the End of the Universe, a fantastic Douglas Adams reference that fits perfectly with the dolphins (you HAVE read "A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy,"right? Right?).

Just to save you the trouble, DO2 is superior to the original DO in pretty much every way. Seriously, don't even bother.

Now, go play Dolphin Olympics. I’m serious. Oh, and many kudos to Alan Rawkins for making such an addictive game.

Alright, now I have to get back to… crap. Another belly flop. Hmm… maybe I’ll just go one more time…