Another mini-cabinet peripheral for the iPad is coming, and the studio responsible for some of the sickest arcade games in the universe is behind the wheel of the project. Earlier this week, Taito unveiled a short promotional video for the InvaderCade. It’s basically the iCade, except with seven less buttons, a charging dock, and branded Space Invaders arcade machine art. Who knew there was room for two of these peripherals, no less three, eh?
To get a tad bit more specific, the InvaderCade sports a ball-top joystick and a singular button. It’s a bulky 25 x 23 x 25 cm and requires external power, but it boasts a charging dock, speakers, and a headphone jack —- three features the iCade doesn’t have. For those of you keeping score, the Atari arcade peripheral has a total of four buttons, no external power, and, somehow, manages to look way sillier than its competition.
Game Set Watch notes that this isn’t slated for the West just yet, but it hits in Japan in a matter of weeks -- October 11th is the target release date and it’ll cost around $200. I hope it comes with a few games and a backscratcher at that price.
9 to 5 Mac is reporting that GameStop, the US-based video game retailer famed for its glut of “used” goods, is set to begin carrying the iPhone, the iPod Touch, and the iPad in all of its storefronts soon. The company has been testing the tablet and other iDevice waters in at least 20 stores since earlier this summer, while its online arm has been been advertising trade-ins of used iOS devices -- including old scroll-wheel iPods -- for a good clip, so this decision isn't totally out of left field. Company president Tony Bartel has also stated in the past that a nationwide roll-out of the initiative was set to happen in 2011.
9 to 5 was hearing these tidings from various sources coming from the company’s recent function in Las Vegas, Nevada where this announcement was supposedly made. No information regarding timing, trade-in values, or how it’ll handle the sell of used iPhones -- which you know, are phones -- has slipped out, unfortunately. (more...)
Hey, guys, did you know it’s Labor Day weekend? It is. And because it’s a weekend in which some people are finding something to celebrate, Electronic Arts has decided to throw a big sale on the App Store. Imagine that.
This latest price-slashing jamboree isn’t the most spectacular it has ever thrown, but it’s still one of the hardest hitting of the current crop of Labor Day sales we’ve seen thus far, especially when it comes to big name and budget properties.
For a limited time, you can grab a bunch of racing, sports, action, and other assorted titles for $.99. The iPad companions (where applicable) to these, on the other hand, have all been reduced to $1.99. Here’s a list:
If you're looking for a key pick in all of this, I would definitely take a gander at Dead Space or Tetris. The latter is a classic and works surprisingly well with touch, while the former is a ridiculously sharp touch-specific iteration of the horror franchise that actually has something to say.
Even without its new juggernaut publisher, PopCap Games has managed to inject a zillion-dy different platforms with Peggle [$2.99 / HD]. To its credit, each iteration of has its own unique feel and appropriate mechanical tweaks, as the designers at the Seattle-based studio apparently don’t take ports as lightly as most other development houses. The not-so-recent iPhone version, for example, rocked. The newly-released HD version does, too.
In the year 2011, I feel like we’re at a point where we all know what Peggle is and I can just cut to the chase. Peggle HD is a smart and solid offering that takes advantage of the iPad hardware and its advanced screen real estate. The controls aren’t as precise as other versions of the game, and it doesn’t really own the platform, but the game part feels right and just as entertaining as it is on anything else out there. (more...)
Like word games? Great! Graeme Devine’s studio, GRL Games, is launching a new front-facing camera-enabled game this coming September 1 across the iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch. It’s titled Word Chat, and it’ll release with a total four modes, one of which is an online mode that’ll let you chat face-to-face with your pals similarly to how GRL Games’ last title, Full Deck Hold 'Em [$2.99], allowed.
The online mode you’ll see just below is pretty simple. In 100 second timed rounds, you and your bud are tasked with spelling as many words as you can out of an endless set of tiles. As more words are forged, the tiles are removed and the highest score wins.
The other modes are basic solitaire modes designed for challenge as well as learning. In one, you’ll be given 200 titles and an infinite amount of time to come to grips with the game’s mechanic. In another, you’ll get 200 tiles and the aforementioned timer. The last mode is an infinite mode in which you can juice the game for more time after using every fourth letter.
We’re just now getting this into our hands, and will report back to you. If you have faith in Devine like we do, though, this seems like a no-brainer.
If you heard some thumping this morning, relax. It was just me kneeing my desk over this bit of news: Amanita Design’s iOS port of its beautiful point-and-click adventure game, Machinarium, will only run on the iPad 2. The studio explained the move on its blog, stating that it “needs quite a lot of memory and fast CPU, so it works well only on [the] iPad 2.” That sounds reasonable enough, I suppose.
Amanita then apologized to original iPad owners after stating that there are “no compromises” in the iPad 2 version of the game. Capable Android tablets and the RIM Playbook are still slated to receive their own versions of the title.
In some lighter news, Machinarium has been submitted to Apple certification and “should be” available for download this coming September 8. Have fun, iPad 2 users. Tell us how it goes. Wait, don't -- I'll cry. I'm sensitive about this.
A new trailer for Fish Labs’ graphically gifted new-fangled version of Galaxy On Fire 2 [$9.99] has surfaced on the Inter-webs. As we’ve reported previously, this new sheen is presumably the result of Fish Labs’ Tegra 2 versions of the game, except ratcheted up for the Mac and the all-powerful iPad 2. It looks amazing.
Sadly, Galaxy On Fire 2 Full HD -- that's its real, full name -- is still set to be a stand-alone product. In an old message board post, Fish Labs told our community that this decision allows for a different pricing model and keeps consumers from being confused with the new screenshots and videos. Also, a new game means the studio won’t have to mess with any conflicting version bugs, especially in the game save arena.
We've been following the activity of gaming legend Graeme Devine's GRL Games since he left Apple and decided to start his own studio. A chat at GDC later revealed that the motivation for his departure from the company had a whole new layer of awesome to it: He just wanted to make games with his daughter. Since then they've released Full Deck Solitaire [Free] as well as Full Deck Poker Solitaire [$1.99 / Free].
Tomorrow, the Full Deck family of card games will get its third entry: Full Deck Hold'Em. We've had our hands on an early copy of the game, and aside from being an all-around awesome iPad-powered poker experience, the iPad 2 video chat functionality is just awesome. You can see a glimpse of how it works in the following video:
Back at Mobile World Congress, held in early February in Barcelona this year, Fish Labs was showing off some incredible looking version of Galaxy on Fire 2 [$9.99] running on Nvidia's Android-based Tegra 2 devices. Here's the demo video of the graphical tech they were showing off, which admittedly was much more impressive when you saw it running on an actual device:
It’s a good day whenever we can write about id Software twice. In addition to letting loose a cool little update to DOOM Classic, the developer’s mobile branch also dropped a great update to its much more recent first-person shooter, RAGE HD[$1.99]. Version 1.21 has been “optimized” for the iPad 2 (we lack specifics on what that entails) and allows for HDMI TV output. Even better, the update packs in a melee mechanic that triggers whenever you push your handheld forward, a new analog stick control option, and addresses some obscure Game Center crash bugs.
If you don't have RAGE but wouldn't mind grabbing it and its update for the price $0, publisher Bethesda has just the solution for you: an online petition (of sorts). When the franchise's Facebook page hits 100,000 "Likes," all variants of the game will go free for an entire week. You can shoot over there right now to sign up and hope that the rest of the Internet responds.
What's next, I wonder. Will we eventually see any of those other RAGE spin-offs that John Carmack teased before? I hope so. QuakeCon is happening pretty soon, so who knows what goodies will get?
Augmented-reality games are weird. They hardly work and even when they actually do operate as intended, the game experience is usually lacking and centralizes entirely too much around the whole augmenting gimmick. I’m also not too sure if there’s even a market out there for these kinds of games. But, I probably shouldn’t be so dismissive, especially when there’s a new, apparently solid-looking SDK out in there in the wild.
According to TechCrunch, Qualcomm has released its ARG SDK, which was originally intended for Android devices with Snapdragon chips, for iOS-compatible devices. This initial release has support for, specifically, the iPhone 4, iPad 2, and even the fourth-generation iPod Touch.
If you’re in the dark on augmented reality, it’s a pretty simple concept. You point your device’s camera at something real and then the game turns that into something interactive. A lot of card games, for example, like to incentivize their physical, branded cards by allowing you to scan them into their respective games and then use digital versions of them. Other games just incorporate real-world settings on top of existing mechanics, like this Star Wars game here:
Having an SDK at hand that actually works with a target platform organically should really empower those studios out there who have good augmented reality ideas, but don’t want to spend the research and development costs of getting the core technology that makes the "augmenting" work. This is a good thing for all of us because, hey, who knows? Maybe we will get that game that completely changes my jaded perspective on augmented reality games in general. (I hope so.)
The most recent update to Two Worlds II Castle Defense [HD / HD Lite] for the iPad is as curious as the fact that the game is even receiving updates, considering that it’s a weak tie-in title for a niche, PC-focused RPG series. But anyway, the overhead strategy game has just received head-tracking by the way of the iPad 2’s front-facing camera. According to a press release, the title now recognizes the position of your 'eyes' and changes the perspective of the in-game camera accordingly.
The example that’s being throw around for its application are, simply, corners. Apparently, you’ll now be able to see around them -- if you’re playing the game with an iPad 2 and move around your head as the tracking demands. The iPhone version [$4.99 / Lite] hasn't received this update.
“Right now we are adapting the system for more platforms like PC or Mac and will also present some challenging 3D surprises within the next couple of months,” TopWare Interactive’s CEO, Dirk Hassinger, said in a statement.
This update is, of course, free, but this technology support has even been added to the Lite version of the title. So, if you want to give it a spin and haven’t taken the plunge, you can for the price of $0, which seems fair. I’d also like to add that we’re now one or two steps closer to Judgement Day.
While they weren’t technically the first to do it, Firemint’s Real Racing 2 HD [$9.99] was the first game to officially support full screen 1080p TV-Out on the iPad 2. After the iPad 2 dropped, it was discovered that a few other games also supported this already, but more of by chance and not necessarily as a specified feature. Now Real Racing 2 HD is making sure its the first game to announce support for one of the new features revealed for iOS 5 at Monday’s keynote.
When iOS 5 is released sometime this Fall, Real Racing 2 HD will support fully wireless TV-Out via the iPad 2 and AirPlay Mirroring with an Apple TV. Essentially, it will perform the same function as the TV-Out feature did using an HDMI cable plugged directly into your TV but completely wirelessly, though it won’t be displayed in full 1080p. It will still run in full screen, but the maximum resolution AirPlay Mirroring can output is 720p. However, that is a very small price to pay to be able to play Real Racing 2 HD on a TV using the iPad 2 as a controller and having it be completely wireless.
In short: I want this for every game ever. The Real Racing franchise has typically been at the forefront of adopting new and interesting features in iOS, and I really hope others follow suit. In fact, AirPlay Mirroring combined with gaming is incredibly similar to what Nintendo is touting as a huge feature of their new Wii U console that was unveiled at E3 yesterday. This gives even more credence to the talk that Apple is now a firm player in the console gaming market with AirPlay Mirroring as they increasingly try to invade the living room space.
I personally love it, and although there are many things the home consoles offer that iOS doesn’t, I absolutely feel there is room for my iPad 2 as a viable option when deciding what to play on my TV at home. We’ll keep a close eye on how this feature is utilized in other games too as we near the release of iOS 5 later this year.
The iCade is here. It started as an April Fools joke and became a reality. We got ours this evening and wanted to share a few unboxing photos. Its Bluetooth controls work right out of the box with all 100 games in Atari's Greatest Hits [App Store] and so far it's been a blast to play with.
We'll post our full review of the system tomorrow. Stay tuned.
There’s a way to simulate 3D visuals on devices with front-facing cameras. Researchers Jeremie Francone and Lawrence Nigay have proved that with i3D [Free], a brand new app that is available on the App Store right now for the generous price of $0.
Is it a game? No. It’s a proof of concept that uses a device’s front camera to track a user’s head in order to trick their eyes into seeing 3D through ‘a small window.’ But while it has no use as a game, the overall tech shows promise as a middleware tool that could, maybe, grant more adventurous developers the ability to make their own 3D scenes.
The thought that Apple devices, or even other handhelds with front-facing cameras, could someday be able to spit out 3D -- illusion or not -- is an interesting one. Nintendo’s next generation portable, the Nintendo 3DS, is centered on its use of glasses-less 3D. If that hook were to become not so unique, what would be the point of picking up the device?
Another mini-cabinet peripheral for the iPad is coming, and the studio responsible for some of the sickest arcade games in the universe is behind the wheel of the project. Earlier this week, Taito unveiled a short promotional video for the InvaderCade. It’s basically the iCade, except with seven less buttons, a charging dock, and branded Space Invaders arcade machine art. Who knew there was room for two of these peripherals, no less three, eh?
Hey, guys, did you know it’s Labor Day weekend? It is. And because it’s a weekend in which some people are finding something to celebrate, Electronic Arts has decided to throw a big sale on the App Store. Imagine that.
