TouchArcade.ru

Martin Kool describes himself as "'just some guy' with a family at home with 3 kids to take care of (and one coming up) and a day job" who also happens to have an insatiable love for old school Sierra adventure games. That day job he mentions involves doing "kick ass things with the web," as he put it, so it's not much of a surprise that when looking for tools to bring these old games to modern platforms he settled on completely cross-platform HTML, CSS, and Javascript. Currently, nine of these classic adventure games including the Kings Quest series, a Leisure Suit Larry game, and others are playable on his web site Sarien.net.

This all would be cool enough by itself, but Martin is hard at work on the final touches of adapting his web game engine that all these games run in to be (as he put it) "a real kick-ass iPad experience". When finished, these games will have their own special URL's users will be able to navigate to, then save as icons via the add to home screen functionality that already exists on the device without any jailbreaking, emulation, or anything else. These games will be entirely touch friendly, and require no typing. Check out the video he put together:

When Kool approached us about this, I definitely thought this was something that needed to be on TouchArcade, but had to ask the inevitable question of whether or not he was ready for the attention he will get. (Specifically, from Activision's legal department.) To him, this is a labor of love. He's running these games at his own cost, without ads. So far he's had over 2 million players stop by his site. He said he'd stop immediately if Activision sends him a cease and desist– but more than anything he just hopes that Activision either grants him a noncommercial license or somehow involves him in republishing these games in HD like he has.

Sarien.net is an outstanding tribute to these old school adventure games, and if all goes as planned, the site will have iPad friendly versions of the included titles within a month. It's no secret we love retro gaming around here, and we'll post more information on this project as soon as we get it.

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I must mention this in every post that has anything to do with single device iPad multiplayer, but two (or more) player games on the iPad are almost always universally awesome. Everything from elaborately crafted ports of board games like Small World [$6.99] to the simplest of games like Omium [99¢] are a ton of fun when played with another person. If for whatever reason you've disregarded my previous encouragement to try out two player gaming on the iPad, you really need to download any or all of VersusPad's free games. They're all fairly simple, but serve as an excellent example of just how well two player gaming works on the device.

Also, to make things a little more interesting, all of these games were developed in PhoneGap, a cross-platform development framework that allows developers to build their games in HTML and Javascript while still being able to take advantage of the core features of the device as a native app. If you're great with Javascript/CSS, but bad with C++, PhoneGap is a free open source way for you to get started building games and apps on the iPhone. Anyway, on to the games-

Ogs, Free [Gameplay Video] In this game, players dispatch creatures called "Ogs" to defend their own island and attack the opponent's island. A bar at the bottom of the screen slowly fills up, allowing you to deploy more advanced Ogs. The game is over when either player's island is destroyed.

The Roswell Game, Free [Gameplay Video] Up to four players at once buzz around the iPad collecting crystals using virtual joysticks situated in each corner of the screen. The game is over when one player collects 75 crystals.

City Bucks, Free [Gameplay Video] My favorite of the three, players place businesses on to an initially empty city grid to lure customers in to buy things. Earning money unlocks more expensive (and attractive) buildings. Monster attacks and disasters like meteor strikes spice gameplay up, and add an element of risk to saving up for one super-expensive business. I'd love to see this game concept fleshed out a little more, as it seems like it is on the verge of something really cool.

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Owners of the original iPhone will remember the dark days before the App Store or even the original jailbreaks and third party software when games and apps consisted of nothing more than clever web pages, usually loaded to the brim with javascript. The games were basic, and the "apps" consisted of little more than simple database-powered applets and tip calculators, but they did the trick.

Akihabara is a HTML5 toolbox filled with all kinds of neat goodies that creative developers can use to make browser games. On the Akihabara web site there are five demo games ranging from a simple Tetris-like game to a basic Zelda clone. The cool part is, these games work on every modern non-Internet Explorer browser, including the browsers of the iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, and apparently even other touchscreen phones like the Palm Pre.

Depending on what platform you're playing on, all of the proper controls appear on screen or you use the keyboard and arrow keys. On the iPhone, virtual controls pop up at the bottom of the screen and while they're not as responsive as a native game, it's still pretty amazing to think you're essentially playing a web page– Without even a smidge of Flash.

All of the games on the Akihabara site are free, and really worth a spin both because they're really impressive pieces of web development but also so you can appreciate what things were like before the App Store came around.

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