A developer behind the iPhone port of the FPS classic DOOM recently spoke out regarding the port project as well as iPhone development in general.

Developer Psychochromatic explains: “Looking at the hardware specs, I knew iPhone would be able to play a simple game like Doom no problem as it was open-source and already ran on the click-wheel iPod running Linux. I knew Stepwhite, who I work with on Mac projects, and as he’d just bought himself an iPhone and was working with the unofficial tool-chain I jokingly told him he had one week to port Doom to iPhone, and all it had to do was run; he didn’t have to implement controls. One week later, he proudly linked me to his Doom port homepage.”

The first build of Doom saw 15,000 downloads on the project site alone, even without a way to control the game. Once controller input had been included that version received over 25,000 downloads.

Behind the ease of development lies the iPhone’s inherent support for a full scale OS. “The iPhone runs OS X. It’s a full UNIX system in your pocket, with brilliant Objective-C frameworks that make coding beautiful and powerful applications a dawdle,” explains Psychochromatic.

Psychocromatic is not the first developer to expound the virtues of the iPhone’s rich, versatile, open development environment.  While writing iPhone apps was once a challenge, Apple’s release of the free iPhone SDK has made such projects “trivial.”

Apple’s iTunes App Store launches in June and the list of games that will be available at launch grows daily.  Stay tuned to keep up to date on just what download to expect on launch day.

Polarbit has released an early version of their Raging Thunder racing game for Jailbroken iPhones.

Raging Thunder is a gut-churning, tire burning racer developed for a broad range of mobile platforms and handheld devices. Race against time, CPU controlled opponents or up to three other speed addicts in this fast paced and exhilarating coin-op style racing game.

A Youtube video of the gameplay was posted to Modmyifone. The game is available via Installer.app (BigBoss repository) for those of you with Jailbroken iPhones.

Ok, it’s not Mercury…but it just might be the next best thing.  And it’s definitely more of a “classic” than Archer MacLean’s modern take on it.  It’s Labyrinth for the jailbroken iPhone and iPod touch.  And it’s awesome — my personal favorite iPhone game, right now.

Everyone has seen the classic, physical manifestation of this game, where the player controls the slope of a wooden labyrinth by way of two knobs, the goal being to get a steel ball from start to finish without falling into one of the many holes along the way.  Good fun and frustrating as hell.  We’re happy to say that the iPhone is quite similarly fun and frustrating thanks to the extremely accurate ball physics the author has implemented.  As can be seen from the video, the on-screen ball behaves exactly as one would expect from its real-world counterpart.

The game’s realism is furthered by the care the author has put into the graphics.  As of v1.0.3, sub-pixel rendering is utilized to increase the graphic realism and animation smoothness.  That’s effectively rendering the game at a resolution of 480×960 pixels!

Labyrinth is a free trial download and can be registered for $7 which funds further development and enables downloadable levels.  Don’t miss this amazing title.

While we expect to see some great iPhone games once the SDK is launched, there are still some developers working on unofficial Jailbroken games.  A particularly impressive example of this is a port of Kenta Cho’s Noiz2sa.

The game is a vertical shooter. The objectives are simple: Avoid the bullets, kill the enemies.  The game was ported by Lazrhog and an early version is available to Jailbroken iPhones via the iPodTouchFans repository.

The developer is also working on an OpenGL ES version with multi-touch support which is shown as a preview here:

The most recent version does not appear to be publicly available. While we certainly hope we might eventually see this become available through the iTunes App Store, there don’t appear to be any plans at this time.

Dope Wars, one of the more popular turn-based strategy games out there (with parents: less popular) has landed on the jailbroken iPhone and iPod touch in the form of iDope.

As Mobile Magazine reports,

A native application available through Installer, iDope is “an amazing accurate port of the popular Dope Wars game.” You get all the features that you’ve grown accustomed to, including the ability to “pay off loan shark loans, location hopping, a wide variety of ‘product’ to choose from, randomized police chases,” and much more. There’s even a “hospital” option for treating your injuries.

iDope brings all of the playability of the desktop versions to mobile gamers, including online leaderboards, thanks to its rich connectivity.

Adventure gamers of old will surely recall that some of the best adventures available were SCUMM titles.  No, not a slanderous term, SCUMM (or Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion) is a LucasArts scripting engine that was used for the creation of interactive graphical adventure games. And very good adventures, as it turned out.

Modern computers can play these games thanks to the ScummVM interpreter, and happily ScummVM has been ported to the jailbroken iPhone / iPod touch.  As Gizmodo points out, the arrival of ScummVM to Apple’s new mobile platform is really a marraige made in heaven.

After a long wait, here is the application that makes the iPhone absolutely perfect: ScummVM, the emulation engine that allows you to play LucasArts and Sierra graphic adventures, is now fully working on the iPhone. After trying it I can tell you that if there’s a platform designed to play these kind of games,it’s the iPhone. In fact, these are the only games that truly feel at home on the iPhone, thanks to its great touchscreen support, even better than Apple’s native software.

The list of fully supported games is long and of quality:

• Day of the Tentacle
• The Dig
• Flight of the Amazon Queen
• Full Throttle
• Gobliiins
• Gobliins 2
• Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis
• Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
• King’s Quest 3
• Loom
• Maniac Mansion
• Monkey Island 1: The Secret of Monkey Island
• Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge
• Sam & Max Hit the Road
• Simon the Sorcerer
• Simon the Sorcerer 2
• Zak McKracken
• Alien Mindbenders

And the control scheme is as close to a perfect touchscreen adaptation as one could hope for.

ScummVM fully supports multi-touch to simulate the behavior of the mouse using gestures. With a single tap you left click, but for a right click you hold one finger and tap with another. To toggle click and drag, which is necessary in some games like Monkey Island 3, you “hold one finger on screen, swipe another up from bottom to top.” Then you can drag something, lift your finger to drop it and it will automatically switch back to normal.

The games play wonderfully and bring to the iPhone and iPod touch some of the best adventure gaming moments the desktop PC has ever known.  Don’t miss the chance to experience these rich titles for yourselves.  (And on the go, if you like!)