If you're feeling like reading some legal tea leaves this afternoon, put the kettle on and try this on for size: We just got news that Peter Hirschberg's Vector Tanks and Vector Tanks Extreme have been pulled from the App Store due to their resemblance to Atari's Battlezone. According to the recent Kickstarter update for the planned-but-currently-unfunded Vector Tanks 3, "Tank games, asteroid shooters, and so on have all been pulled."
There's a number of ways you could read into this, largely depending on which way your dowsing rod is pointing. Atari could be planning on releasing their own version of either a direct port or modern re-imagination of Battlezone, and are sweeping the App Store of "clones" (I'm using that word very loosely, mind you.) to make room. Alternatively, it's entirely possible that Atari has a whole department of lawyers whose sole purpose is to protect their IP by any means necessary, and the Vector Tanks series were just casualties of of a legal war.
I could really go either way on that one, as Atari is all about milking their old IP, but they've also become a company that seems to consist of little more than retro branding and lawyers. Either way, it's just sad to see Vector Tanks and Extreme caught in the crossfire, as I never saw those games as "rip-offs" or "clones" of Battlezone, rather, just very tasteful fan-made homages.
If you haven't already, it's a good idea to backup the .ipa files for both Vector Tanks and Vector Tanks Extreme, as it's unclear if they'll ever be back on the App Store.
It's always great to see companies with so much history (like Taito, in this case) bringing some of it to the App store. According to Famitsu [Translated], Taito will be bringing Rayforce to the App Store, and it'll be hitting at some point this winter. (Or, before March 20th, for those of you playing along at home.)
Rayforce is a vertical shooter which I'd guess not many North Americans have much experience with. It originally hit in the early 90's, with a new name for seemingly every region it was released in, you might remember it as Galactic Attack or Gunlock. Or, you might not remember it at all, since outside of Japanese and European arcades it was only ever available as a Sega Saturn game until PC ports started materializing much later.
Here at year's end, we recently posted our Best iOS Games: 2011 Buyer's Guide to give the millions of new iOS users that were created yesterday a place to get started. Among the 5-star best on the list is the (universal) iOS port of Eric Chahi's superb 1991 cinematic platform adventure Another World [App Store] (a.k.a. Out of this World). In our early review of the iOS version posted back in September, we called Another World an absolute App Store must have. Given our fondness for this title, it's with no little interest that we recently discovered and digested Fabien Sanglard's fascinating blog post "'Another World' Code Review."
Within, Sanglard details the results of two weeks spent reading and reverse engineering the source code to Another World. He starts his post off with a brief introduction.
I was amazed to discover an elegant system based on a virtual machine interpreting bytecode in realtime and generating fullscreen vectorial cinematic in order to produce one of the best game of all time.
All this shipping on a 1.44MB floppy disk and running within 600KB of RAM: Not bad for 1991 ! As usual I cleaned up my notes, it may save a few hours to someone.
In explaining the internal structure of the system, Sanglard draws upon original author Eric Chahi's own descriptions of how his virtual machine is structured, to augment his own analysis.
Sanglard's post delves into the extremely technical, but does offer several illuminating videos that demonstrate what is happening as the game executes. It's a look under the hood that helps explain how the title has been ported to so many different platforms over the years, including iOS, with relative ease.
I would encourage any readers intrigued by this analysis to have a look at Eric Chahi's GDC 2011 presentation Classic Game Postmortem: Another World / Out of this World, hosted at the GDC Vault, as well as our own interview with Chahi, conducted just prior to the iOS version's release. It's also worth nothing that Another World isn't Fabien Sanglard's first in-depth code review; he has also gone spelunking within Quake 2, DOOM (both for DOS and iOS), Wolfiphone, and Quake, all of which are linked from his home page. He's also the author of the iPhone shooter Shmup [App Store, forum thread], released last year.
Let's wind back the clocks a bit so those of you who weren't around for the great iDOS fiasco of 2010. It all started with Apple ever-so-slightly easing up on their approval guidelines which opened the floodgates for quite a few apps (such as the Google Voice apps) that seemed to eternally be trapped in approval limbo. Whether this had anything to do with iDOS or not is debatable, but it seems awfully coincidental otherwise. Anyway, on the morning of October 26th last year, iDOS hit the App Store. It was a shockingly full featured DOS emulator complete with keyboard and mouse support, as well as a basic virtual gamepad, multiple screen modes, and so much more.
The crazy part about iDOS is there seemed to be nearly no limit to what it was capable of. If you scroll down on this story you'll even find someone successfully installing Microsoft Windows, within iDOS, on their iPad. iDOS was quickly pulled, then re-appeared in late January of this year with quite a bit of its functionality stripped. Regardless, people quickly figured out how to load things into iDOS, utilizing utilities like iExplorer and other Mac/Windows programs that allow you to fiddle with the file system of your iOS device. Once again, iDOS was removed from the App Store.
Yesterday, iDOS hit the App Store once again, this time as Aemula Oldies [Free] for the iPad and Aemula Oldies S [Free] for smaller screen devices. There's also the Aemula Gamepad [99¢] which works a lot like the other gamepad apps and pairs with an iPad playing a game. It seems that the functionality has been stripped even further, as all the previous command line access has been traded for a simple menu to load the included games.
The freebies packed in with Aemula Oldies are Mille Bornes, Commander Keen 4: Secret of the Oracle, Duke Nukem, Dangerous Dave in the Haunted Mansion, Scorched Earth, CD-Man, The Catacomb Abyss, Bio Menace, Monster Bash, StarMines II: Planet of Mines, 4D Prince of Persia and CHAMP Kong. They all seem to work decently well, too.
I sort of think third time is the charm for iDOS, err, Aemula Oldies, as I'd imagine that there aren't any holes for slipping other things to emulate in left anymore. Of course, I could be totally wrong on that, so if anyone figures out any tricks, be sure to let us know.
Emulators have had an interesting history on the App Store, to say the least. There are a few emulator apps that have received Apple's blessing, namely Manomio's Commodore 64 [$4.99] and a choice group of similar emulators. More often than not though, they randomly appear, having slipped through the Apple approval system, then are quickly pulled. Right now we've got no clue which side of the fence iMAME [Free] is sitting on, but it's free, so there's absolutely no reason not to download it just to have it.
iMame comes preloaded with nine less than stellar ROMs to play, but the real interesting part is going to be whether or not it's possible to side load other ROM files into the app. I've been tinkering around with various tricks to load other ROMs into the app that have worked in other instances of similar emulators on to the App Store, and so far haven't had anything work. Regardless, I give it about two hours (or potentially much less) before someone figures it out, and a few hours after that for Apple to pull it from the App Store.
Go go go!!! I'll keep this post updated as new things develop.
Last week when we learned the classic laser disc arcade game Mad Dog McCree [$4.99] was coming to the App Store, I was stoked. I had fond memories of gunslinging at that giant arcade cabinet as a kid, and figured reliving the experience on my small touch screen device would give me that great shot of nostalgia that I've been fortunate enough to encounter often on the App Store. Then I actually fired up the iOS version, and learned once again that nostalgia is a fickle beast.
Mad Dog McCree has not aged well, and I'm not so sure it was ever a very good game to begin with. With a certain part of the video game spectrum always striving for the most realistic visuals possible, and the introduction of disc-based storage in gaming which started becoming prevalent in the late 80s and early 90s, mankind embarked on one of its most hideous inventions of all time – full-motion video games. What could be more real than actual real-life video footage?! It was THE FUTURE.
Back in July I had the pleasure of welcoming one of my favorite shooters of all time, Cope-Com's excellent Battle Squadron, into the App Store in the form of a native iOS port of the original Amiga game. Today I'm happy to bring news of a new, lower-priced iPad-only release of the title featuring two-player, split-screen action and Game Center achievements as well as an update to the original, universal release.
The new iPad-only release, entitled Battle Squadron ONE 2-player [App Store], allows two players to face off on the same device, thanks to a new split-screen, portrait play mode that lets you and a friend share in the action (for those equipped with a friend). In this mode, each player is able to choose their own control configuration, and gameplay is as smooth and fast-paced as it is in the one-player mode. What's more, two-player network gameplay is planned for a future update.
A number of other improvements have arrived in this new release, as well. The game features 36 Game Center achievements and a new super-tough "Air Commodore" difficulty level (get it?) with a particularly intense level ending. Cope-Com has listened to player feedback and has tweaked every control mode and rolled-in a new one. The main user complaint was that it was "tedious" to have to move a finger all over the entire screen to control the ship. To address this, a drag control mode with 2x the movement vs. finger rate was added (with the original 1x control still available). Additionally, the joypad and tilt control modes have been adjusted to allow movement in all directions (analog) as opposed to the earlier release's 8-way (digital) movement.
The only way I can start this review is with a little history lesson, both for people who aren't familiar with Sonic CD, as well as those of you who might not have been reading TouchArcade since the summer of 2009. Let's start at the beginning, so everyone can truly appreciate just how wonderful the very existence of this game is.
Sonic CD, or Sonic the Hedgehog CD was originally released in late 1993 for the Sega CD, Sega's CD-ROM accessory for the Genesis console. Sega CD had actually come out earlier that year, and many gamers (myself included) couldn't wait to get their hands on one as the promise of full motion video powered gaming seemed incredible. Unfortunately, both due to the many technical limitations of the system, as well as the games themselves just not being very good, the Sega CD never really took off quite how I imagined Sega wanted it to. (There's actually a bunch of reasons I could also get into, but I digress.)
In early February of this year, we learned that a rogue developer named Daniel Blezek was spending his spare few minutes in-between a full time job and a full time family life toiling away at bringing Bungie's seminal FPS Marathon to Apple's iPad. The port was in progress at the time and looking great, but there was still a bit of uncertainty whether or not a release of Marathon would completely jive with some of the rules of App Store and the open source licensing of the codebase.
Then in June, Bungie sort of shocked everyone by announcing that they had picked up the project and would be officially supporting its release. Just a couple of weeks later, on Bungie Day no less, Marathon 1 [Free] launched for the iPad and we thought it was pretty dang awesome. Perhaps the best part was the choice of business model, as the entirety of Marathon 1 was available for free, with the ability to purchase hi-res assets or a cheat mode as optional IAP. While having the entire first entry in the Marathon trilogy literally at my fingertips was fantastic in its own right, we still couldn't help but wonder if the second and third entries in the series would make it to the App Store too.
Back in late October we posted an update on Elite Systems' coming Elite Collection (iPhone) and Elite Collection HD (iPad)Â apps, which will offer a bundled collection of classic Commodore 8-bit home computer games, as well as an in-app game store for purchasing additional singles and bundled arrangements of games. At that time, Elite indicated that these applications would be delayed due to a trademark complication. We're now happy to report the studio has informed us that the titles will land in the App Store on Friday, December 16th, and at a one-week promotional launch price of $0.99 each. [ UPDATE: Apologies to readers in our overlooking the fact that the stated release date does not apply to the Americas. These titles will see release there in mid-to-late January. ]
Hey guys! Here's a surprise, Chrono Trigger [$9.99] just came out of nowhere. Well, not entirely out of nowhere, since Square Enix had mentioned that it was coming this month… But after the rampant delays that Final Fantasy Tactics saw, my hopes that they'd hit this release window could be best described as "cautiously optimistic."
My first impressions are fairly positive so far with this port, mostly because Square has re-rendered all of the text and game UI to actually be legible, unlike Final Fantasy Tactics! We'll offer a more thorough review in the not too distant future, but in the meantime you can swing by the thread to check out forum user impressions as well.
Fans of the excellent Battlezone-like Vector Tanks and Vector Tanks Extreme titles will be excited to hear that Black Powder Media has taken the baton from original developer Peter Hirschberg and is creating the next installment in the Vector Tanks series, Vector Tanks 3, on iOS. Larger in scope, Vector Tanks 3 will try to introduce competitive local multiplayer to the franchise, as well as "bold new graphics," new vehicles, and configurations. One problem: it needs funding, and the creators are crowd-sourcing that via Kickstarter.
Some of its goals might change based on hitting different levels of funding. The best example of this is in the multiplayer arena. Depending on the cash received, the team might or might not be able to incorporate world wide, Internet multiplayer. Or consider platforms like the PC or XBLA.
If this project succeeds, chances are that we'll see more Vector Tanks in the future. On the game's funding page, it's mentioned that this is just one chapter of up to seven in the series, all following the adventures of Vic Vector.
We're huge fans of the firsttwoVector Tanks games, so we'd love to be able to get our hands on Vector Tanks 3 at some point in the future. Extreme, in particular, was a sharp, focused, and really well-executed iteration that amped up the action in glorious ways. If the trend of bigger and better continues with each new game, Vector Tanks 3 could be really special.
iPhone controller accessories have been generating a good bit of news, here lately. More and more existing iOS titles are gaining physical control options via updates, and just last week we detailed the upcoming Gametel Bluetooth controller that will soon become a game-enhancing iOS controller option, alongside the iCade and iControlPad. The more the merrier, true, but long time readers may recall yet another controller we covered over a year ago that has been off the radar ever since. Does anyone remember the GameBone?
Once again, Stuart Carnie of Manomio (whose C64 for iPhone just got iCade support) reached out and pinged me to share a bit of exciting tech he's had his eye on, and I'm quite eager to fill the rest of you in.
Stuart showed me the following proof-of-concept video done by Jason Chan of Australian firm 22Moo, the main man behind the GameBone controllers, depicting the venerable Competiton Pro joystick -- a standard, 9-pin Atari-style joystick -- tethered to a Bluetooth controller board, controlling Retro Dreamer's Velocispider as well as Bruce Lee running under Stuart's C64 system as well as his retro iOS port of Flashback, via iCade emulation. It's pretty awesome stuff.
I got in touch with Chan and inquired as to what his intentions are regarding this demonstrated technology, and also regarding the GameBone controller we last heard about so long ago.
The App Store is home to a ton of unique ideas, and we've seen all sorts of games come along that started out one way and evolved into something entirely different due to content updates that are often spurred by feedback from gamers in our forums. It's one of the neat aspects about iOS gaming, and something that sets it apart from most other traditional gaming platforms.
However, Bryan Perfetto, creator of the awesome endless high scoring game Kitty Up [99¢] (the second title this morning that has previously been featured on the Kitty Korner segment of our podcast) is taking the app updating facet of the App Store to the extreme. He has just released Rocket Bits [Free], his latest game that's not really much of a game at all… yet.
The idea behind Rocket Bits is that he's soliciting any and all ideas from users and will try to implement them into the game the best he can. Right now, the game isn't much more than an extremely basic cave flyer with very little to do. You can control the dual thrusters of a tiny rocket by touching either side of the screen, and putt around an expansive randomly generated map, bumping into walls and… that's about it.
But just because there isn't much to do in Rocket Bits doesn't mean it's not off to a pretty good start. The thruster controls feel great, the retro-styled pixel art is quite nice, and the chip tunes in the game are fantastic. Since the game isn't much right now, it's being offered for free, and eventually after some updates have fleshed out the experience then Bryan plans to raise it to "the outrageously expensive price of one dollar."
If the concept of Rocket Bits intrigues you, you can send your game ideas via email to bryan@regularkid.com, on Twitter at @RegularKid, through his website www.regularkid.com, or just blurt them out in iTunes reviews for the game. The plan is to update the game weekly, though that will depend on how difficult the ideas are to implement and Apple's review process. If he uses your idea, you'll get your name forever emblazoned in the game's credits section.
It'll be interesting to see how Rocket Bits shapes up over time, and how well the developer will be able to use the ideas given to him. We'll keep our eye on its progress, and there's no reason not to grab the game for free to check it out and send along some ideas of your own.
It's been over a year since the last update, and many in our forums were worried that the app had been abandoned, but I'm happy to report that Manomio has released an update to C64 for iPhone [App Store], the Commodore 64 emulator and game store (at over 50 titles right now) for iOS, that we've been tracking since way back in 2008.
Stuart Carnie of Manomio filled me in on the license tangles he's been dealing with since late last year which stymied work on the app, but indicates all is now resolved and that he's excited to bring this update, as well as return his focus to development and the acquisition of new licenses for C64-loving iOS gamers.
The big news in this latest version of C64 for iPhone, version 2.2, is the addition of support for the iCade and compatible devices (such as the iControlPad and Gametel controller we recently covered), which is huge news given the nature of the typical Commodore 64 game title. In this initial implementation, iCade support means joystick and fire button emulation -- certain games with extended features, such as The Last Ninja, still require tapping the screen for key input and the like. This update also brings full support for iOS 5.
It's worth pointing out that, presently, C64 is not a Universal application, and so using it on an iPad in the iCade means running the iPhone app at 2x video magnification. However, Stuart has big plans for the app and shared a short-list of what's coming, down the road...
A new, Universal app!
This is a rewrite in order to add all the required features
PRO: By not replacing the iPhone version, we can keep existing users with old hardware on the current builds
PRO: For compatible games, we'll continue to add them to C64 for iPhone
Activate your original C64 for iPhone purchases if you have it installed
Cycle-exact emulation -- will require ARMv7 devices
The following demo video taken by one of our readers shows C64 for iPhone running on an iPad, being controlled with an iControlPad (in iCade emulation mode).
We're very glad to see Stuart out of the woods and moving forward with his efforts to bring retro fun to today's gamers. We will keep readers in the loop on the latest from Manomio as the news unfolds.
