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Only 48 hours after Scrabulous was taken off of Facebook for US and Canadian users, it is back with a different name. The creators Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla took the application down due to threats of a law suit from Hasboro, the owner to the rights of Scrabble.

The creators changed the look of the game a bit and brought it back under the name Wordscraper. The look is much different than the original Scrabble board, but the game play is still very similar. Players are given letters and need to spell words on a board with those letters. They score points for different letters and spaces on the board can increase the value of the points scored.

The biggest change is the board is customizable now and users can create any kind of game they want and the games that were already started before the shut down were not carried over. The games customization is probably to blame for the games not being carried over.

There are all kinds of opinions on whether Hasbro should have pursued a lawsuit. Personally, they are a business that needs to protect their interests, but I think they should have let the game be. I think part of the lawsuit could have been to get rid of competition, but we will never know. Hopefully Wordscraper stays around and does not get taken down as well.

Thanks Mashable

PlayFirst is working on a new game containing Flo, there beloved Diner Dash hero. The game is called Cooking Dash and is a time management game with a cooking theme. The main chef, Cookie, leaves Flo’s Diner for a role on a cooking reality show. The departure of their main chef leaves Flo and her grandmother looking for new chefs to take Cookie’s place.

Cooking Dash offers two game play modes, story mode and endless mode. Story mode has over 50 different levels of game play with Flo eventually making an appearance on the cooking reality show, which creates a memorable show. Players travel to five different restaurants to try and master the art of cooking.

It is exciting to see Flo appear in another game as more than a fleeting character. The game play in Cooking Dash sounds exciting and new. The time management style game is not a new style game, but the cooking game play seems like a new game play style.

Cooking Dash is set to be released in August 2008.

Electronic Arts’ (EA) Boom Blox didn’t have the explosive sales that the company is use to from the core gaming sector, but it has done quite well over the past few months it has been on sale. Initially, Boom Blox only sold 60,000 units during the month of May, which is a lot different from core gaming sales. The core games, usually, make most of their money on the first few days of sales. Currently, Boom Blox stands at 450,000 units sold.

Casual games sell a bit different than games for core gamers. The casual games sell over a period of time, as the sales of Boom Blox shows. Kathy Vrabeck, the head of the casual games unit at EA is familiar with the way casual games sell and admitted EA had a bit of a hard time marketing Boom Blox. In the end they figured it out, but they did not market the game the same way they have marketed their other games.

“When you get a great casual game, you don’t always know it right away. I think the nature of the casual gamer is we’re not going to see the big splash, week one sales,”

Thanks GameDaily

WorldWinner.com and King.com are two of the bigger competitive casual games sites. Competitive casual game sites take casual games, such as PopCap’s bejeweled or Playfirst’s DinerDash and allow players to play competitively for cash. Players on the competitive sites deposit money and in exchange get points to play with. Players accumulate points based on placing in a competitive game. Once you are on a winning streak, you can withdraw your money from the site as well, putting it safely back into your pocket.

Skill gaming, as the competitive sites are referred to, can be intimidating to get started, but have no fear. There is a great site at CashGamers that contains tutorials and tips on the casual games hosted on Worldwinner and King.com.  A few of the tutorials explain how to get started on WorldWinner.com and King.com. Cashgamers.net provides forums for skill gamers to ask questions about skill gaming or brag about how well you are doing. There is no better place on the Internet to find tutorials and information on games at WorldWinner.com or King.com than on cashgamers.net.

If you are into skill gaming or would like to get into skill gaming using King.com or WorldWinner.com, head over to CashGamers and check out the community. The community is a great group of people and really enjoy skill gaming.

For all of the fans Nintendo Wii fans out there that have been waiting for a beer game to come to the Nintendo Wii, the wait is over, sort of. The Nintendo Wii now has their very own beer pong game, but it is not called beer pong and all references to alcohol have been stripped from Pong Toss. Even the name was changed from Beer Pong to it’s current name of Pong Toss. The changes to the name and to the alcohol references came because the game was said to promote underage drinking.

Pong Toss allows players to compete against their friends or the computer in a different type of party game. Players take turns tossing a ping pong ball into cups. The cups are set up in a pyramid shape at the end of a regulation size table. Players attempt to sink their balls into the cups and if they land the ball a person from the team that owns the cups drinks the liquid in the cup. Usually the liquid in the cup is beer, but in this version all references to alcohol have been taken out.

Seem silly that this game has an E rating where it is clear the game is an alcohol related game. Basically, you can take out the reference to alcohol and change the name and all of a sudden a game that deals with beer and alcohol is ok to play by everyone. Just seems silly. The game should have been left as a T rating and been able to have the original name and content.

Pong Toss is currently available through WiiWare for  800 Wii Points($8).

Thanks 1up and Shack News