As you may recall, I held a contest a while back to see who could refer the most traffic to Beyond the Rhetoric. The eventual winner, Mike Huang, was awarded with a bunch of cool iPod stuff and a free sponsored review. He has now decided to cash in that review for Pinky Arcade, a website that is literally busting at the seams with free online games.
Play Casual Games Online
Casual computer games are getting increasingly popular, because they are both easy to play and surprisingly enjoyable. There aren’t too many people on the web who haven’t indulged in a session of Bejeweled or Internet Reversi. While some other websites sell these simple games for between $5 and $20, the games available through Pinky Arcade come at the price of zero dollars and zero cents. They are 100% free.
Better still, you don’t have to download or install anything on your computer. In this way, whether you’re on your own laptop or you’re at an Internet cafe, you can get in a quick session of free action games. Poking around the games library at Pinky Arcade, you’ll discover a pretty good assortment of titles, ranging from casino games to puzzle games, first-person shooters to sports-related titles. There are literally hundreds (if not thousands) of games to play, including an interesting take on air hockey.
Mario Combat Kicks Some Koopa Butt
I’m not sure if they’ll run into any copyright issues for using Nintendo’s plumber mascot, but easily one of the cooler games available on Pinky Arcade is called Mario Combat. Listed under classic casual games, this takes you on a side-scrolling adventure with Mario, pummeling koopa troopas with his mighty fists. It’s remarkably simple, but it’s also very fun (while it lasts).
Earning Prizes and Getting Backlink Traffic
Playing the games is already pretty enjoyable, but Pinky Arcade goes a little further by offering prizes to random and top players every day. You have to register, of course, but there is very little information concerning what (and how) you can win.
There is also a page called Exchange Ranks where you exchange traffic with Pinky Arcade. You post a link, either in the form of text or a banner, on your website and Pinky Arcade will link you back. They promise a 1-to-1 traffic exchange ratio, but there’s no explanation as to how they are going to achieve this. It’s an interesting gesture (and probably one that Google does not appreciate very much), but the lack of information is definitely disappointing.
A Happy Distraction (But A Little Cluttered)
Whether you’re on the hunt for some free nostalgic gaming or some other free Flash games online, Pinky Arcade looks to be a good source of mild entertainment and distraction. The website is probably too cluttered and “busy” for its own good, but that’s the nature of offering free games online. That bandwidth can’t be cheap and they’re definitely in it for profit. It would be nice if the site was cleaned up a bit, but with the hundreds (thousands?) of games offered, I forgive them.
Hi Michael,
I was just checking any linkbacks to Pinky Arcade and noticed that you have written up a review for us 🙂 I greatly appreciate that and I’m glad that after all that work, Mike was able to win your contest.
I will be answering some of those questions/concerns here, so others may understand things more.
1. All games are on Pinky Arcade have their own separate developers and the games are playable on hundreds of websites. It can be an “infringement”, but I’m sure the companies wouldn’t want to lose free publicity.
2. The concerns of winning the prizes are all answered in the FAQ section here, http://www.pinkyarcade.com/faq . Of course no FAQ is perfect, so we still receive questions here and there.
3. Exchanging traffic is different from exchanging links, so it is not against Google’s policies. It’s quite different from other websites on the Internet (such as a blog), so it is difficult to understand at first. The exchange is mainly for arcade website owners, so explaining this in the FAQ section would be irrelevant.
4. Pinky Arcade is in fact really cluttered right now with a lot of text and not enough “images”, but if you have noticed, things are already being done to the website. If you visit some of the bigger arcade websites, you would notice that the clutter is EVERYWHERE and much much worse than what Pinky Arcade displays.
Hopefully that answers everything and thank you again Michael!
Joan Mark
Owner of Pinky Arcade
I’ve been there before and they do have some interesting games. The idea of winning prizes is nice too, however, I find that I generally end up at addicting games instead.
Addicting games has a bigger selection than Pinky Arcade. The Mario game is pretty sweet but Addicting games still is my favorite.
What’s the URL Vik?
I used to spend hours at Pinky Arcade during my university days to take my mind off studying. I actually forgot all about the site until just now.
This is a great site. I can’t wait to use my lunch hour to relax.
I used to be obsessed with Yahoo Games, particularly the billiards. Then I found you could download another tool to automatically make you win every game. My opponents would get so angry! lol
Cheater!! That’s not very nice…I bet your ranking was nice though. Now what’s the fun in that, I think I would get bored with it. Oh, and what if both people were trying to use that “tool” and were playing against each other?
Well, now we know Chris. Any advantage is an advantage. 🙂
I got bored after a while always winning. My ranking was good though. I think that tool doesn’t exist anymore. 🙁