One of the silver linings of the impending 32-Bit Appocalypse has been seeing what sort of App Store golden oldies have risen from the depths of neglect to get some sort of shiny new update to make it 64-bit compliant. I’d have to say my most unexpected update so far has been the one for Rogue Touch that launched at the beginning of the month, but my eyes certainly widened when I discovered that PikPok’s touch-centric dunking game Slam Dunk King (Free) had received its first update in nearly 5 years saving it from the Appocalypse. Originally launched in 2011, Slam Dunk King felt like a riff on the ultra popular Fruit Ninja as there were basketballs that launched into the screen and your job was to snag it with your finger and dunk it into the hoop, while also flicking away any bombs that came your way. What set it apart was the trick system which had you grabbing the ball and then doing all sorts of fancy things with it before finally dunking it in an effort to rack up cool combos and a high score.
The formula worked well and created a frantic arcade experience that felt perfect for a touchscreen, and we loved Slam Dunk King in our original review from 2011. After about a year of some nice content updates, Slam Dunk King faded away and until today hadn’t received any form of update since December of 2012 when it had to be updated in order to rip out the decommissioned OpenFeint service and add in iCloud support. Besides 64-bit compatibility, this update also adds full high resolution game assets and icon as well as support for Apple’s Metal. This basically means that the game is in much better shape now to not only live on as it is but possibly even be updated again with new content should PikPok deem that viable. Even in its current state Slam Dunk King still feels as fun as ever even many years after its original release, and I’m thankful PikPok was able to tap the good folks at Krome Studios to take this golden oldie and prepare it to live on into the future. For free, everyone should give Slam Dunk King a try and you can find many player impressions in our forums going back almost six years.
