FNG: The #1 Thing To Do in Utah on a Friday Night

So I was checking out some Google Analytics for the blog to see what kind of keywords were driving people to our site.

It appears there are still a lot of people playing Age of Empires I and II and looking to find the command-line parameters (no doubt to skip the intro cinematics when they launch the game.)

In just a few short days, there were 29 phrases that brought gamers to our site from the search engines. My favorite:

what to do on a friday night in utah (Our site was #1 and #2 of about 512,000)


I guess that means we're the #1 thing to do on a Friday night in Utah! I'll have to agree. :)

Phrases that brought the most people here in the last few days included the words 2008 turkey bowl in whatever order and added some words in some cases. I guess there are a lot of "Turkey Bowls" out there. We happened to be #3 of about 695,000 for the exact phrase "2008 turkey bowl"; not too shabby!

We're doing pretty well with some TrackMania, PURE, and Motocross Madness 2 search phrases too.

Anyway, I had to share... that "what do to on a friday night in utah" had me in stitches for several minutes. FNG rocks; the most popular Friday night activity in Utah... heh

PURE - $19.99 on Amazon Today! X-Fi Go only $39.99 Today!

Buy PURE at Amazon for just $19.99 today. It may be a permanent price-drop, but we'll have to see; since it is Black Friday after all...

X-Fi Go also dropped $10 for today only on Creative's website. It's a USB version of their kiler soundcard for use in laptops and desktops... It also has 1GB Flash on it so you can bring small gaming profiles with you in whatever machine you're using it in.

Enjoy!

Site Updates II

The official FNG site now provides the news from the blog on the home page.

At most, it will be an hour behind the blog... as I have it set to cache once per hour.

Turkey Bowl 2008 - Second Edition

Turkey Bowl 2008 - Second Edition
Friday 28 November 2008; 11:00pm
(Feel free to meet earlier for practice if you like)

If you don't already have them, you'll need the following 2 track packs from the FNG website:
Turkey Bowl 2008 Track Pack
lanparty.exe track pack

We took the 4 most fun nationals tracks from this year's Turkey Bowl LAN Party and coupled them with the most popular FNG favorites for what will be an incredible second showdown for 2008. Be there, or be roosted.

Nationals:
Cross Step
Crossed Streets
DDR
Dead Man's Pass
Funky Flyer SE
Mackheu Basin
Mosquito Hill
Pepsi Max
Snowfields

Stunts:
Halfgrand Playground

Tag:
Tag Arena 3

Please leave a comment if you can make it!

Site Updates

I figured since most of the FNG regulars have been dominated by TrackMania for nearly 2.5 years, it was incredibly overdue to get more information on the site about it... including listing it in the "FNG Games" section of our site.

So I updated the page with a more current list of what we're seriously playing... (top 3 are the real serious... the bottom 3 are hit and miss.) I also listed some of our older previously played games, that we're still likely to fire up when someone gets the hankerin' for it.

I also added old links to pages I'll still maintain on the old site until I can get it revamped; as well as added a load of TrackMania links for your enjoyment.

If you haven't checked out Easy TMF (works on Nations and United) yet... you owe it to yourself to do so. It will allow you to go to sites like TM Carpark and click TMUP links to download your favorite skins/models and have the files have them automatically placed in the right place(s) for you. It's a beautiful thing; the TrackMania community is grand.

Enjoy! I need more TrackMania in my life... after this weekend's Turkey Bowl 2008 Second Edition, we'll have to start returning to the crack... I mean... TRACKMania.

Turkey Bowl 2008 Results

Here are the results from the Turkey Bowl 2008 LAN Party. Thanks to all that came and made it a huge success; a fun time was had by all.

• That One Guy (Jeff Litster) - 218 pts
• Thundr (Jarin Blackham) - 186 pts
• Toxic Waste (David Holland) - 174 pts
• Dirty Dan (Dan Wetzel) - 172 pts
• Jet.User (Brennan Litster) - 118 pts
• d60dfath3r (Nick Gold) - 98 pts
• Beuchety (Tyler Beuchert) - 92 pts
• Atholon (Walt Weidner) - 86 pts

Turkey Bowl 2008 Details
The breakdown of the results, including best lap times can be found at the FNG site.

For the FNGers that played... please comment on this entry and tell what your favorite tracks were and favorite moments of the night!

Freestyle - Part of What Makes TrackMania So Special

Curse Nadeo for adding news feed into the main menu of TrackMania! Half the time I get in there, I see some cool video that takes me away from playing the game. :)

I discovered this one tonight, thanks to said news feed:


FreestyleCup 2007 Season 1 from Thedestroyer on Vimeo.

There are so many aspects of this game that I love... and one of them is freestyle. I wish I could control my cars like that... those guys have mad skillz!

Thanks for the video Thedestroyer! Keep up the good work.

Official Turkey Bowl 2008 Track Pack

Download the Official Turkey Bowl 2008 Track Pack

Included in the pack:
Nationals:

• Cross Step
• Crossed Streets
• Cutting Corners
• Danger Forest
• Danger Island 2
• Danger Style
• Daredevils Playground
• DDR
• dd-Radical Ridge
• Dead Man's Pass

Stunts:

• Halfgrand Playground

This year's Turkey Bowl introduces 10 brand-new-to-FNG National tracks; 4-5 of which will become new FNG favorites, to be sure.

The Turkey Bowl will be played at a special FNG LAN Party this Friday at That One Place; with a potential rematch on the traditional Thanksgiving Weekend during FNG online. Be sure to join us one way or another! Even if you can't be there for the Turkey Bowl, download the pack; because the tracks are a blast to ride.

The LAN Party Turkey Bowl starts PROMPTLY at 8:30pm this Friday 07 November 2008!!!

2008 Turkey Bowl Line-Up

Nationals (3 laps each)

• Cross Step
• Crossed Streets
• Cutting Corners
• Danger Forest
• Danger Island 2
• Daredevils Playground
• DDR
• dd-Radical Ridge
• Dead Man's Pass

Stunts (10-minute rounds)

• Halfgrand Playground
• Bear Mountain

Tag (10-minute round)

• Arena Tag (TBD)