Archive for the ‘Android’ tag
Tired of Rolling Virtual Balls With Your iPhone? GearBox Invites You to Roll a Real Ball.
posted today about 11 new startup companies to be funded by , a group that has provided seed money and mentorship for various startup companies for the last four years. Most of these companies seem to lead towards different web services, but is a "smart toy company" who have created a robotic ball which can be controlled via a smartphone using a simple API.
How this all works is summarized in a :
So basically how HTC/Android/Apple make smart phones, we make smart toys. Our first smart toy is a robotic ball that you can move by tilting your phone in the direction you want the ball to roll. We are then leveraging the connectivity and computing power of the phone to create a fully interactive experience for the user. Our first app for the ball is Sumo. I throw my ball on a table, you throws yours on the table and then we can try and sumo each others ball off the table. However, while our physical balls are moving there is also an onscreen component with online stats, profiles, damage, powerups and other aspects of gameplay that aren’t possible with a regular remote control toy. For instance, when the balls collide they can sustain “damage” and roll slower or I could get a powerup to reverse your controls for a few seconds.
Other examples cited were a golf game where you swipe to "hit" the ball, curling where you roll the ball then "brush" on the screen, or even just control the ball to harass your cat. Currently all of the app development is being done on Android, but according to the guys at GearBox, iPhone development is totally possible and they're just using Android for prototyping. The Smart Ball is still in prototype phases itself, and it's hard to say when it will be available for sale. Either way, it seems that the Parrot AR.Drone isn't going to be the only toy in town to be controlled via a smartphone.
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‘ZX Nostalgia’ Brings Just That to the App Store
Many who grew up on "home computers" in the '80s, and retro gaming fans in general, have been enjoying Manomio's Commodore 64 emulator on the iPhone. A new app that appeared in the App Store this morning should have particular appeal to our European readers who match that description. ZX Nostalgia [App Store], from Manuel Cabello, is a Sinclair ZX Spectrum emulator that comes bundled with 14 games that, according to the developer, run at full ZX Spectrum speed on all models of the iPhone and iPod touch.
ZX Nostalgia sports a minimal, multitouch interface that provides interaction with the bundled games via screen taps (for in-game menu selection), virtual joystick, and a fire / action button. Games are selected for execution in the emulator by way of a simple menu and can be played in both portrait and landscape mode, depending on the device's orientation.
The following games are included:
- Ad Astra
- Android Two
- Barmy Burgers
- Bugaboo the Flea
- Chuckie Egg
- Deathchase
- Fantastic Voyage
- Fred
- Horace Goes Skiing
- Manic Miner
- Rescate del Tesoro
- Starstrike 3D
- Trashman
- Wheelie
It's a rather solid list of games, with a few true classics in the mix. Unfortunately, it's unclear what the developer's plans are concerning the potential addition of more games down the road. A screenshot of the game's App Store page shows an "ADD" button on the game list screen that is not present in the release version, and there's scant contact info for the developer on the web, so that's a big question mark right now.
ZX Nostalgia does a rather nice job of running the included games, with a very functional control system to boot. Readers who have already grabbed the title . If you've ever been faced with the dreaded "R Tape loading error," then this one's probably for you.
(ZX Nostalgia is not the first Spectrum emulator to appear in the App Store. was released last year, but offered abysmal performance and was pulled after it that it was a WebKit-based rip of another's emulator.)
The is an 8-bit home computer that was released by Sinclair Research in the UK in 1982. It is based on the Z-80 processor running at 3.5MHz and features a 256×192 pixel display in 16 colors (with notable restrictions). The Spectrum was available with either 16K or 48K of RAM and was followed up by several models offering more memory, enhanced audio, and such. The American gamer who was around to see home computers in the '80s probably best remembers Sinclair Research from the , an extremely inexpensive, black & white 4K computer sold in America, itself a take on the European . A later attempt was made to actually bring a modified version of the ZX Spectrum to the US in the form of the , but it failed badly for a number of reasons and is remembered by few.
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‘FarmVille’ could be coming to the AppStore
The extremely popular Facebook game, FarmVille, may be making its way to the AppStore. FarmVille is a farming simulation game, where users plant, grow, and harvest virtual crops along with raising livestock, similar to the freemium ngmoco game We Rule [iPhone / iPad] that was released last month. FarmVille is developed by the company , who is no stranger to the AppStore, with over 40 applications including Mafia Wars and Live Poker.
News of this broke when that DNStination Inc. registered the domain names farmvilleipad.com, and farmvilleiphone.com. DNStination is the same company that holds the domain name to the official farmville.com website by Zynga.
When a spokesperson for Zynga about it, they were told, “Zynga plans to expand to various mobile platforms." However, they were not able to get any more information. With the combination of the new domain names, Zynga's willingness to move to mobile devices, and their history of being in the AppStore, it seems likely that FarmVille may be coming.
It will be interesting to see if the mobile devices that 'Zynga plans to expand to' will include all the features that the full version has available online.
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GDC 2010: Namco Announces ‘Pool Pro Online 3′ with Online Cross-Platform Head to Head
Namco held a press event last night where they announced the iPhone version of Pool Pro Online 3. This represents the 3rd in the franchise which originally began on mobile phones but is now extending to smartphones and even the desktop.
While the game may be of interest to those who enjoy pool, it also represents a few first of potentially a series of games using their which allows cross-platform online play. Jonathan Kromrey, general manager of apple games for Namco Networks, writes "This is only the beginning of where we are going as a company. Over the next several months, we will roll out a series of other features and games that are powered by UniteSDK, including tournaments for Pool Pro Online 3."
Pool Pro Online 3 will eventually be also available for PC, Mac, Android, Java, BREW, RIM and Windows Mobile, and will allow instant online play across all the platforms. UniteSDK also includes the usual friend lists, leaderboards and such that we've already seen in OpenFeint and Plus+. Namco is also opening up UniteSDK to 3rd party developers as well.
As for Pool Pro Online 3, it allows both single player and online play in 8-ball, 9-ball and Snooker. Players can also make in-game wagers against their opponents and use winnings to upgrade table felts, cue sticks and new pool halls. The 3d game allows you to rotate your view and pinch/zoom to line up your shot.
The iPhone version of the game will be released on Thursday for $4.99.
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‘Homerun Battle 3D’ – Now With Cross-Platform Multiplayer
Lately it seems that we've been collecting an increasing number of comments in the discussions of some of the more popular games we've covered from Android users hoping to see more iPhone games in the Android Marketplace. Homerun Battle 3D [$4.99 / Free], a game we reviewed back when it was called Baseball Slugger, was released early last month for Android devices, and features cross-platform multiplayer– Allowing existing iPhone players to face off against Android-equipped online rivals.
Com2Us sent us the following video of a match between an iPhone and a Motorola Droid:
As more and more iPhone games eventually make their way to the Android Marketplace, I hope developers decide to follow Com2Us's lead and implement cross-platform multiplayer. The more people playing online the better, regardless of what game it is.
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iPhone Gaming: Looking Back on 2009 and Forward to 2010
With the year coming to a close, I feel confident in saying with as much authority as I can muster that 2009 has been an amazing year. Soon we will be posting the results of weeks of deliberation on what we feel were the best games, a holiday buyer's guide for people who opened an iPod touch or iPhone this Christmas, and other year-end stories highlighting the various games we feel are the "must-haves" of 2009– But it hardly seems right to summarize the year in a few simple lists of game titles, brief synopses and links to reviews when so many remarkable games were created and events transpired that were still highly noteworthy or influential but fall outside of the rigid boundaries of "best of" listings.
When the App Store first launched on July 10th, 2008, very few people, myself included, realized the full potential of a reasonably open platform with a $99 entry fee that allowed developers building games in their bedrooms to be on equal footing with industry giants. The success of the pioneers of the App Store created a gold rush of talent, with new eager developers hoping to see even a fraction of the success of the stories that motivated their migration to the platform. 2009 was filled with even more inspirational tales of developers quitting their day jobs and building full-fledged businesses off of the App Store.
2009 also marked the year that the indie developer dreams of Imangi Studios, Bolt Creative, InMotion Software, Tiger Style Games, and many others were fully realized with titles created out of basements and on kitchen tables without a single cent of outside financing that were able to compete with the likes of EA, Activision, Sega, Namco, and other giants of the gaming industry. Everything they created was their own, a feat nearly impossible on any other platform.
Before 2009, no iPhone gamers cared about or likely even knew the name Tim Langdell, a man who has now become infamous amongst the community for relentlessly disputing ancient trademarks and consistently keeping Mobigame's EDGE off the App Store. We were impressed by the game when we first posted about it on January 4th, before anyone even had a clue of the legal battles to come. Since its was taken down, EDGE has briefly appeared for download several times throughout the year, but even as 2009 is coming to a close the fate of this game still is unclear.
Five days following the release of EDGE, Pocket God [99¢] made its debut on the App Store. At the time, not even Bolt Creative realized the cult following that the game would soon have. We didn't even post about it until months later, as in its earliest form Pocket God barely resembled what you would call a game– But the Pocket God phenomenon was growing too large to even attempt to ignore. Since then the game has seen 29 episodes, each representing a substantial content update and according to the , Pocket God has over 1.6 million worldwide fans– A number easily confirmed by the blitz of forum members swarming each and every Pocket God thread posted on our forums along with countless other Pocket God fan-made spinoff sites.
February was an even bigger month than January for iPhone games, with Rogue Touch's [99¢] release and its continued dominance throughout the year with the developer consistently implementing community feedback, solidifying its position as the best implementation of Rogue on the platform. iDracula [99¢ / Free] was also released, and was the first dual-stick shooter to rise to the #1 position on the overall paid app sales chart– Its success no doubt inspiring countless other developers to throw their hats in to the dual-stick shooter ring.
In a sea of tower defense games, February also saw geoDefense [$1.99 / Free], a game that challenged fans of the genre with its brutal difficulty level which was designed from the ground up to never create a situation where the player is able to sit back and watch as waves of creeps are slaughtered by their defenses. Since then, geoDefense Swarm [$1.99] appeared on the App Store, after much anticipation from the fan base of the original game, which had grown so hardcore that they even challenged developer David Whatley to post the source code controlling one of the game's towers to verify its functionality.
On March 5th, Flight Control [99¢] hit the App Store with a bang, in essence creating the line drawing chaos management genre which was spawned an army of games with similar gameplay elements or control mechanics. Games like Harbor Master [99¢ / Free] were among the first in expanding on the Flight Control formula, but none of the spinoffs even saw a fraction of the success of Flight Control, a game which has held a firm position near the top of the paid apps listing since its release with a fan following of celebrities such as .
Doodle Jump [99¢] was also released in March, a simple tilting game which has since seen several updates and to this day still hasn't left the second screen of my iPhone 3G, along with being among the very first batch of essential apps and games that were synced to my iPhone 3GS shortly after unboxing it on the day of its release. Doodle Jump has become the gold standard that most simple games are compared to on TouchArcade, and it seems impossible for us to record a podcast without mentioning it at least once.
One of the most memorable games for me of April (aside from Ow My Balls! [99¢]) was Hysteria Project [$1.99], a game that combined live action footage with simple gameplay elements reminiscent of Sega CD or LaserDisc full motion video games. Ultimately the game fell flat due to a short playtime and nearly non-existent replay value, but I still have to admire the amount of talent, planning, and production that went in to creating the many video clips and impressive horror/thriller atmosphere. Hysteria Project seems to be abandoned now with updates released only addressing existing bugs and iTunes reviews flooded by users requesting additional content. Regardless, if you're a fan of games like Dragon's Lair [$4.99], you will likely appreciate the direction Bulkypix attempted to go with Hysteria Project.
May brought Manomio's port of Flashback [$1.99 / 99¢], a game which curiously enough was only an interpreter of the original game files based on the REminiscence engine by Gregory Montoir. On the first launch of the game it downloaded 3MB of the original DOS data files in order to play the game. No one knew it at the time, but this mechanism foreshadowed the dramatic release and re-release saga of their Commodore 64 Emulator [$2.99], an app which sparked countless debates over the merits of Apple's approval process as its fate on the App Store slowly unfolded.
Sega's Sonic The Hedgehog [$5.99] was also released around this time, and it didn't take long for clever members of the community to pick the game apart and discover that it was little more than Sega's own emulator– And with a minimal amount of tweaking could be made to play any Genesis ROM file. Emulation on the iPhone was punctuated in late December with the release of Nescaline, a NES emulator based on NES v3 available on Cydia. Only available for a few short hours, retro fans willing to cough up $6.99 during this time are now among a small group of gamers capable of running any NES game on their device without jailbreaking.
While we were at WWDC, the talk of the town seemed to be InMotion Software's I Dig It [App Store], an amazing game that came completely out of left field and seemed to captivate anyone who got passed an iPhone with it installed during the event. After each night of the conference when our own Blake Patterson insisted on taking us to his favorite bar in San Francisco, , I'd run my battery completely out searching for diggins while drinking gin and tonics. I Dig It eventually hit #1 on the iTunes sales charts, and in the wake of its success, InMotion Software released I Dig It Expeditions [99¢ / Free]– A sequel and vast improvement on the original.
After a tease at the WWDC Launch Party that was co-hosted by TouchArcade and MacHeist, Doom Resurrection [$1.99] was available for download. Launched at the premium price of $9.99, Doom Resurrection utilized the same assets as Doom 3, and while there were many 3D games available on the App Store prior to its release, Doom Resurrection was likely the first title that truly opened the eyes of iPhone gamers allowing them to see the true graphical potential of the platform.
SGN's F.A.S.T. [Free] also went live on the App Store in late June, and was among the first games for the iPhone to offer seamless realtime action oriented multiplayer. Following its release at $9.99, F.A.S.T. has slowly had its price reduced and is now free and funded by in-game downloadable content– A feature available to developers following the release of the iPhone 3.0 OS on June 17th.
The iPhone 3GS hit the street on June 19th, packing a faster processor, more storage, a compass, and most important to gamers: OpenGL ES 2.0 capabilities. It would still be some time before this new functionality would realized by developers, and 2009 is coming to a close without the compass being used for anything more than gimmicky augmented reality tech demo games and with developers only barely scratching the surface of OpenGL ES 2.0– With a select few games even taking advantage of the additional shaders and other graphical effects available on the 3GS and later released 3rd generation iPod touch.
The entire month of July was overshadowed by the release of Enviro-Bear 2010 [99¢] an experience which polarized gamers in to two camps: Those who thought Enviro-Bear 2010 was the worst game that they ever played and couldn't understand why we would post about it, and those who agreed with me that it was the Citizen Kane of iPhone games. Featuring the most realistic simulation of a bear driving a car available on the platform, Enviro-Bear 2010 is still talked about on our forums and referenced in a few other games, most notably the recent Minigore [$1.99] update.
Also first available in July, Newtoy's Words With Friends [$1.99 / Free] joined Chess With Friends [$2.99 / Free] in providing the iPhone equivalent of correspondence gaming to the games of Chess and not-quite-Scrabble. CEO Paul Bettner later revealed some in mid-September: the Newtoy games had 50,000 active players daily. While Pinch Media reported the average iPhone app user spent less than 5 minutes on an app per day, Chess With Friends and Words With Friends players spent an average time of 1.5 hours playing each day.
The most notable game to come out of August was by far Tiger Style's Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor [$2.99]. Released without a single preview, Spider instantly captivated our entire community. The allure of such a mysterious yet high quality game was irresistible as Bryce Manor itself held a mystery which the player could either follow their human curiosity choose to explore the story of the game, or simply enjoy the game as a spider catching bugs and completely ignore it. This was just many of the remarkably ingenious design decisions found in Spider, and the game's entire design process perfectly embodied the indie development spirit of the platform.
Beating EA to the punch by an entire month, Gameloft's NFL 2010 [$2.99 / Free] was the first fully licensed football game available on the iPhone which was soon followed by Madden NFL 10 [$5.99], a game we got an early preview of at the Penny-Arcade Expo in Seattle. Which is the better football game was hotly debated among sports fans on our forums, with both games competing in feature wars involving multiplayer, complete NFL rosters, stat tracking, and other things only hardcore sports fans cared about. Regardless, gaming franchise staples like Madden only further legitimized the iPhone as a gaming platform.
At the end of September, Hi, How Are you [99¢ / Free] hit the App Store, a game based on the life, art, and music of Daniel Johnston. When I first played the game, I had no clue who Daniel Johnston was, or why this game was so amazingly strange. All I knew was that it had a really cool cell shaded art style, and in researching the game I became aware of everything that was Daniel Johnston. , this completely transformed the game for me. Much like the work of Daniel Johnson, Hi, How Are You is completely off the wall, and likely one of the most under-appreciated games on the App Store. In the few emails I sent back and forth with the developer, it seemed this realization was not at all uncommon and the game's single fault is that it may just simply be too strange.
In October, Canabalt [$2.99] was released, the iPhone port of a flash game playable online for free. Our community was wholly divided amongst players who were absolutely in love with Canabalt, and others who still leave comments on front page stories and post threads in our forums upset both with the positive reception it received and its $2.99 price point. Regardless of which side of the fence you sit on, it is a remarkable feat to be among among the few iPhone games that are not only noticed, but also talked about for months following their release. Canabalt was later updated with a few new obstacles and online leaderboards– Clearly quantifying exactly how bad I am at the game compared to the rest of the world.
Following Canabalt came another game with similar pixelated retro graphics: Hook Champ [$2.99 / Free]. Taking a similar swinging mechanic made popular by other games and introducing RPG elements in an equipment shop where virtually everything about your character can be upgraded, Hook Champ was an instant classic. Featuring among the best and most seamless integration of online leaderboards I've seen, Hook Champ provides a silly amount of replay value as each run through a level is timed, uploaded and compared to everyone else's performance.
October also saw what seemed to be one of the most substantial announcements from Apple since the unveiling of 3GS hardware: Changes to the downloadable content system on the App Store allowing free apps to have in-app purchasing. Previously, DLC was only available to developers who sold their apps, with the intention that free apps would always be free. Aside from substantially changing the dynamic of the top 100 lists, we also speculated that lite versions could be a thing of the past as developers migrated to free demo apps which were unlocked to the full version via an in-game microtransaction. Very few games ever actually implemented this purchase model, largely in part because appearing on the top 100 free list requires exponentially more downloads than what is required to chart on the top 100 paid listings.
What this new DLC change did usher in was games like ngmoco's Eliminate [Free], a free to play game with optional in-game purchases to buy energy, a sort of virtual currency used inside of the game. Touch Pets Dogs [Free] also utilizes a similar model, as do several of the Miraphonic Epic Wars games.
In November, Activision surprised us all with the release of Call of Duty: World at War: Zombies [$9.99], the cooperative online multiplayer enabled port of the zombie-slaying game mode from Call of Duty: World at War for home consoles– Leaving iPhone gamers wondering what could possibly come next out of the industry giant.
Wheeler's Treasure [$1.99] also hit the App Store, following a thread with beta testers absolutely raving about the game. Featuring flick controls, and a really strange game premise where you're chasing a wheel down a hill, Wheeler's Treasure is yet another example of an extremely high quality game that really could only exist on the iPhone. The developer has already implemented a few new power-ups in game based on (and named after) forum members who provided feedback, and Wheeler's Treasure joins Hook Champ as another game that has fabulously seamless online scoring, marked by headstones that appear in game based on the distance other players travelled before their wheel was destroyed.
November and December were met with a blitz of games from Gameloft, who at the start of the year went from releasing a few mediocre games to the nearly becoming undisputed king of iPhone game production. Aside from the remarkably complete port of the PlayStation/PC classic Driver [$6.99], Gameloft delivered several other games including N.O.V.A. – Near Orbit Vanguard Alliance [$6.99], a Sci-Fi first person shooter with four player online multiplayer and among the best graphics of any iPhone game released this year.
December also saw several fantastic classic games, starting off with Sword of Fargoal [$4.99], which is by far the most approachable roguelike and one of the best examples of a perfectly remade retro game. The previously released Space Ace [$4.99] was also joined by two other LaserDisc arcade classics: Cobra Command [$2.99] and Dragon's Lair [$4.99].
With 122,660 available apps on the App Store as of today, even this seemingly comprehensive listing of major events and releases barely even begins to scratch the surface. One could spend weeks analyzing the App Store notating the trends in sales, releases, genres, and borrowed/modified gameplay mechanics. The fact that this is even possible is amazing by itself, and when you consider that the App Store is only a year and a half old, it's hard to imagine what the year-end wrap-up of 2010 will include.
Notable things on the horizon include the Unreal Engine 3 coming to the iPhone, potentially unlocking countless ports of existing projects developed for the Unreal Engine as well as the unimaginable unannounced games from the industry leaders of the App Store. Looking at what Gameloft, ngmoco, Illusion Labs, and others have produced this year alone, it's impossible to even guess what they will have accomplished next year.
Apple seems to be updating the iPhone and iPod touch hardware on a yearly basis, and rumors are already rolling in on potential inclusions for next year's model. With the Nvidia Tegra-based Zune HD and numerous Android devices either released or due to be released soon, the iPhone's advantage currently lies in the power of its software rather than its hardware– A fantastic position to be in, especially as more apps are submitted to the iTunes App Store on a daily basis than the total number of apps available in the entire Android Marketplace. Not to mention you barely need two hands to count the number of games available for the Zune HD.
, the legendary Apple tablet may also run a shared OS to the iPhone, and run the same games and apps available on the platform. If this turns out to be true, the gaming implications could be massive as a large problem with iPhone games is often how much of the screen is obscured by controls. It's still much too early to even begin to speculate what the future of the Apple tablet will hold, and you can drive yourself crazy attempting to piece together the opinions of industry insiders and analysts.
In regards to TouchArcade, we've grown substantially over 2009. At the beginning of the year Blake and Arnold were holding down the fort, I've since joined the team full time, and we've even acquired some new writers recently who are producing some fantastic reviews. At the various conventions and meetings we've attended throughout the year we've made some great friends, heard some amazing stories, and scored a lot of great previews. We've grown to just under 9 million page views a month, and since we started recording our podcast we've maintained a position in the top ten video game podcasts on iTunes. We even have some great things to come for TouchArcade, both in improving existing features of the site as well as a few top secret projects and partnerships in the works which will be revealed soon.
Our readers and excellent community are directly responsible for our success, and we'd like to thank you for your continued support. From everyone at TouchArcade, have a safe and happy holidays.
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