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Way back in 1984, English teacher-turned-game developer Mike Singleton released a vast and innovative adventure gamed for the ZX Spectrum home computer called The Lords of Midnight. The game was extremely well received and garnered high praise for its gameplay, the expansive world in which it is set, and its use of a clever graphical technique known as “landscaping” to render the scene with pre-scaled sprites. The Lords of Midnight turned out to be Singleton’s most well respected title and is considered by many to be one of the best video games ever created.

Versions of The Lords of Midnight were soon released on a few other (mainly European) platforms of the day, and in 1991 DOS PC versions of the game and its sequel, Doomdark’s Revenge, were released, originally developed as reverse engineered fan conversions by Christopher Wild. (Singleton gave his stamp of approval to Wild’s conversions — see Wild’s 2004 Retro Gamer two-piece article / interview with Singleton.) Not long after, Wild began thinking about doing Windows versions of the games and thus began his work on The Midnight Engine, a system that would allow the Midnight games to run under modern operating systems and, thanks to data abstraction, would also allow new games to be created under the same framework.

At this point, the astute reader has probably figured out that I am not just waxing nostalgic for the simple fun of it. No, I am happy to say that there is reason for my taking a few moments to bring the uninitiated up to speed, here, and that reason is a project that has been underway for over year now to bring The Lords of Midnight to iOS.

In January of 2011, original author Mike Singleton reached out to Christopher Wild, suggesting a collaboration to get his 27 year old classic in the hands of a new audience. Since that time, at a varying pace, the project has been underway.

Wild has been posting progress updates to his blog throughout the year, and indicates that it is definitely the intention of both he and Singleton to do this conversion just right.

Let me firstly assure you that we are not developing a freeform, realtime, 3d game. We are not developing [the less well-received sequel to Doomdark's Revenge] the Citadel. We are not going to f*** it up!

Lords of Midnight is about the landscaping. It’s about those 2d panoramic views. It’s about moving some characters and pressing night and the end of the turn and waiting for the dawn to break to find out what happened.

So, the landscaping stays. Yes it will get an update. Graphically we will try a few things to help us justify bringing a 27 year old game back to the future. If you’ve followed the history of [The Midnight Engine] with the Lords of Midnight and more importantly Doomdark’s Revenge, you’ll have an idea of some of the things that means.

We’re going to make a few changes to the AI. Nothing drastic. This is not about turning Lords of Midnight into the style of RPG/Adventure games that are currently available. The AI in lords of midnight works – it’s a little simplistic, but it’s perfect for the style of game. However, there are a few little things that no longer sit comfortably, and to be fair, probably didn’t when Mike originally coded them. So there will be a couple of tweaks and additions.

The affect of these additions is that the game will not play like it used to. In spirit it will be the same, but don’t expect to be able to fire up the emulators and watch the old spectrum game play exactly like the new one. There will likely be some surprises, but I think everyone will enjoy.

Wild also indicates that certain AI changes will be made to facilitate multi-user gameplay and that it will remain turn-based like the original — not real-time. The picture that he paints of the conversion goals should appeal to those iOS gamers who loved the title in decades past.

The iOS conversion of The Lords of Midnight is being developed under the Marmalade SDK (née Airplay SDK), will run natively on both the iPhone and the iPad, and should make its way to various other platforms, as well. Doomdark’s Revenge will also be brought over, some time after The Lords of Midnight arrives.

The team has just posted a demonstration video, albeit preliminary and somewhat rough, of the game running on iPad hardware.

That a whole new generation of gamers will have easy access to such a rich classic is wonderful news, and rest assured we will keep readers apprised as progress on The Lords of Midnight for iOS marches on.

( Embedded screenshots are from the ZX Spectrum original and graphics in the demo video are placeholder — not final versions. )

[ via Gaming on the Go, thanks @gnomeslair ]

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One of my favorite recent iOS releases – and really one of my favorite games period – was The Hacker [99¢] from Angry Bugs, which we reviewed earlier this month. It let you play the role of an 80s style superstar hacker by way of a strong selection of cleverly designed and challenging mini-games, and it followed a fairly interesting plot along the way. If The Hacker was merely a collection of mini-games it would have been just another run of the mill puzzler. You know, good… but not memorable. Instead, what made it really stand out was its stellar presentation and attention to detail that did a fantastic job at pulling you into the experience.

A couple of days ago, Angry Bugs announced in our forums that an update is submitted to Apple that will add Universal support to The Hacker as well as some new content and fixes. In fact, their commitment to immersion is so great that they even stay in character when posting in the forums. Here’s a quote from them about the impending update:

Glider Operating System is now Universal; prepare your large screens for total immersion.
Expanded the network connection options, adding huge content to the original release of the OS.
Reduced Glider Corp writer’s salary for his horrible grammar, now he is trying his best to keep his job.

Above you can see a screen of what The Hacker will look like on the iPad with the larger screen real estate. That last bit in the quote is a reference to the spelling mistakes and poor grammar that occasionally popped up in the story dialogue, so it sounds like that’s going to be cleaned up as well (even though part of me thought it added to the charm, in a way). As for what the huge new content is, I guess we’ll have to wait and see. I’m already looking forward to playing through the entire game again on my iPad, and with the update already waiting for review, it shouldn’t be too long before we’re all doing just that.

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It’s not often I can be completely sucked into a world on the tiny screen of my iPhone. Don’t get me wrong, it happens, but in the back of my mind I always know that there are dozens of other games waiting for me at the press of the Home button, all ready to feed my ADD-riddled gaming habits at a moment’s notice. It’s like I can never fully forget all the cool stuff my iPhone is capable of long enough to get lost in a game for any great length of time.

That certainly isn’t the case with The Hacker [99¢], though, a story-driven faux hacking game from developer Angry Bugs. When I fire it up, my iPhone is transformed into a Glider OS-equipped computer that becomes my gateway into an international tour de hacking which leads me to uncover a devious plot involving my former employer. It’s far from the first game to let you take on the glorified role of a top level hacker, but it executes the idea incredibly well and offers a fantastic level of immersion with a fairly compelling story.

The Hacker starts with you trying to log into the Glider Operating System on your computer, an OS you helped develop as an employee of Glider Corp. You’re notified on the screen that several things failed to install properly, but you finally boot to the desktop. When you try to connect to the ‘net, you’re denied, and then contacted via email by someone who claims to be a former coworker. He is one of a handful of developers, including yourself, who worked on Glider OS and were unceremoniously fired shortly before it was set to launch.

He informs you that he’s discovered a trojan in the Glider OS and suspects that Glider Corp is up to something shady, and since you have experience with the software he recruits you to join him and several other ex-employees in hacking into Glider Corp’s system and getting to the bottom of things. From there you’ll go on to experience several twists and turns as you dig in and discover just what Glider Corp is up to.

The coolest thing about The Hacker is that it hardly ever breaks character in terms of presentation. It tries to simulate a computer you might find from the late 80s with a green monochrome screen and very basic graphics, and it does it very well. There’s rarely a time when navigating through the game that you don’t feel like you’re actually operating a computer (minus the fact that everything is touch enabled, of course). This level of detail is very cool for people who remember when computers looked like that, but a younger generation might not appreciate such a low-fidelity presentation.

The Glider Corp system is spread across 8 servers around the globe, and the way you “hack” in into each one is by completing various types of mini-games. These are mostly just logic puzzles disguised as computer-y things.

For example, one type has you moving little nanomachine bugs onto trigger pads placed on a circuit board in order to “open the ports” into a server. The catch is that all the bugs move at the same time, and you’ll need to use objects on the board to get each one into the proper position to have them all be on their respective pads at the same time. A couple of the hacking games use similar mechanics to the classic Pipe Dream, like creating a path out of sections that will lead power to a set of dead nodes. Outside of the server mini-games, another bit of hacking lies in “decrypting” emails by completing a slightly altered version of a lights out game.

The mini-games aren’t necessarily anything groundbreaking, but they are really fun and can be quite challenging. It makes you feel like you’re doing real work by putting your brain to use and then being rewarded with an unlocked server and a new part of the story. I won’t spoil too much, but there is definitely more beyond the 8th server including some very cool secrets and surprises.

If you finish the initial 8 servers and still want more you can choose from 3 new areas to buy as in-app purchases for 99¢ each. These 3 areas each have 5 new servers to hack into, and completing each area will lead to some periphery story bits and additional secrets. There’s also Game Center achievements and leaderboards for every area as well as an overall leaderboard.

Doing pretty much any kind of hacking will earn you experience, which acts as an in-game currency. You can pay a bit of XP to pass a mini-game if it’s giving you trouble, or buy an assortment of sweet backgrounds for your virtual desktop that feature ASCII artwork. These definitely bring a nostalgic tear to my eye. But the coolest thing you can spend XP on is unlocking arcade games from the G.A.M.E. portal on your desktop. These playable games include takes on familiar genres like snake, brick breakers, shmups, cave flyers, and dodging games. There’s even a hidden platformer game in there too (but you’ll need to find it yourself).

There aren’t too many things that I didn’t like about The Hacker, but there were a couple of issues that stuck out. There are a ton of spelling mistakes throughout the game, which on the one hand feels a bit sloppy but on the other sort of fits perfectly with a game based around communicating with people over the internet. Our grammar has certainly suffered since the rise of the internet age.

The other problem I encountered was an inconsistent difficulty. The mini-games appropriately get more complex as the game progresses, but at several points no matter where I was in the campaign I ran into puzzles that stumped me for a frustrating amount of time. Then, after finally figuring out the solution, the very next puzzle or two I would beat in a matter of seconds. It could be that’s just how my own particular brain handled certain challenges, but to me the difficulty curve felt kind of choppy.

While at its core The Hacker isn’t much more than a collection of mini-games, the fantastic presentation and little details really pull you in. The story might be a bit cliché, but the way it’s gradually revealed to you as you access each new server compels you to keep hacking away to learn what happens next. Plus, the mini-games and accompanying arcade games are really pretty fun on their own, and can be played over again as many times as you want just for kicks or to earn some extra XP.

Above all else though, The Hacker does a great job at making you feel like a bad ass international hacker, which is what it should really all be about anyway.

TouchArcade Rating:

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Mobile analytics firm Flurry today reports on the continuing shift in portable gaming from dedicated devices to smartphones and other multipurpose devices. According to results compiled by Flurry from NPD market research and Flurry’s own mobile app data, Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android mobile operating systems will account for 58% of portable gaming revenue in the United States for 2011, an almost exact flip-flop from 2010 when dedicated device leaders Nintendo and Sony held 57% of the market.

The most striking trend is that iOS and Android games have tripled their market share from roughly 20% in 2009 to nearly 60% in just two years. Simultaneously, Nintendo, the once dominant player, has been crushed down to owning about one-third of market in 2011, from having controlled more than two-thirds in 2009. Combined, iOS and Android game revenue delivered $500 million, $800 million and $1.9 billion over 2009, 2010 and 2011, respectively.

Flurry’s data for 2011 is based on estimates for the final two months of the year, but suggests that the rapid growth in gaming on smartphone platforms is showing no signs of slowing. The market dynamics of free or low-cost games sometimes supplemented by in-app purchases and played on multi-function devices versus dedicated gaming devices with relatively high-cost game titles are clearly playing out in favor of iOS and Android. The result has been a surging gaming market increasingly attracting casual gamers willing to spend a few dollars to play on their phones, while established players have seen not only their shares but also their revenue declining each year.

Nintendo has been resisting increasing pressure to bring its games to the iPhone and other platforms, sticking by its long-standing tradition of making its games exclusive to its own hardware. Flurry suggests that the rapidly-shifting landscape of portable gaming may soon bring Nintendo face-to-face with a “Nokia-like” decision whether to jump over to smartphone platforms or watch its business erode away.

[Originally Posted on MacRumors]

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Word Fighter is a cool upcoming — wait for it — word fighting game from the wonderful dudes over at Feel Every Yummy. We went hands-on with an alpha build earlier this year at GDC, and now you can see the game in its more finished glory. Feel Every Yummy has just released a new look teaser showing off its next-level Street Fighter-Meets-Scrabble action and also a few of its new-look characters. Depressingly, none of them are TIME-award winning Brad Nicholson, but what can you do, eh?

In case you missed our earlier coverage, basically the game goes like this: you spell a word from jumbled letters on a 5×5 grid over the course of three timed and turn-based rounds. Letters have point values, so the more points, the more possibility that you’ll live through the man-on-man conflict.

If you’re going to be around at PAX Prime, you’ll be able to go hands-on with the game, too before its eventual Fall 2011 release on the iPad, iPhone, and the Android operating system. If you won’t be in attendance, well, you’ll just have to wait like the rest of us.

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Today, Apple CEO Steve Jobs kicked off the week of the 2011 World Wide Developer Conference here in San Francisco with his keynote presentation that outlined three major technologies the company will soon be rolling out: Mac OS X Lion, iOS 5, and the iCloud service.

Mac OS X Lion

Jobs and company began running through several of the 250 new features that will arrive with the forthcoming major update to Mac OS X, Lion (version 10.7). Among the many advances it will bring are deeper support for multitouch gestures, facilities to allow easy creation and management of fullscreen applications, and the LaunchPad system that makes for easier browsing and launching of apps — all of which bring Mac OS X's look and feel closer that of iOS.

Mac OS X Lion will be available sometime in July, exclusively through the Mac App Store as a 4GB download at a price of $29.99.

iOS 5

Jobs then moved on to iOS 5, beginning with a look at where we are. Since the original iPhone's 2007 debut, over 200 million iOS devices have been sold, in all, 25 million of which are iPads. There are presently 425,000 apps in the App Store, 90,000 of which were designed specifically for the iPad. And, since its debut less than three years ago, 14 billion apps have been downloaded from the App Store, generating a total developer payout of over $2.5 billion.

Apple intends to grow those already impressive numbers with the release of iOS 5, a major update to operating system driving the company's mobile devices. This new release will bring over 1,500 new APIs for developers to work with and over 200 new features.

Senior VP of iOS Software Scott Forstall took the stage to detail ten of the more notable features that iOS 5 will bring.

1. Notification Center is a new component of iOS that acts as a central notification hub that can be swiped into view, presenting a list of recent notifications and the ability to jump to the application associated with each. Additionally, notifications will no longer pop disruptively onto the screen, but will appear at the top of the screen, taking the user to the originating app with a tap or fading out entirely if ignored. The iOS lock screen will also display a list of the most recent notifications, with a swipe across each taking you to the originating application.

2. Newsstand gathers the many disparate digital magazines and newspapers available on the App Store into one place and allows easy browsing and purchasing. Chosen items will be downloaded into the News Rack, which features an iBooks-like interface that shows the current front page as the item's icon. Background downloads will allow subscribed items to updated themselves for easy pick-up reading.

3. Twitter support has been integrated into iOS, providing single sign-on (no need to re-enter password every time an app wants to access your Twitter account) and a pop-up Tweet Sheet for applications that support the new components. Those with immediate support include Camera, Photos, Safari, Maps, and Contact, the last of which can pull twitter user photos and import them into iOS contacts to put simplify the task of putting a name with a face.

4. Mobile Safari is the most popular mobile web browser in use today; nearly 2/3 of all mobile browsing is done with it. New to Mobile Safari is Reader, which provides a clean, unified rendering of multi-page stories, generated from RSS information. Reading List is an Instapaper-like system that allows webpages to be saved to a list for later reading. And, finally, tabbed browsing support will allow for easier management of multiple sites at the same time.

5. Reminders is a type of active to-do list system that can setup a "geofence" and trigger reminders based on your geographic location.

6. Camera is getting an update that will bring optional grid lines for better framing, on-device editing like cropping and rotating plus red-eye reduction. The volume up button can also be set to trigger the shutter. Additionally, a camera icon will appear on the lock screen allowing photos to be taken quickly without unlocking the device.

7. Mail under iOS will be enhanced to allow draggable addresses, indentation control, message flagging, full-message search, left / right swipe to / from inbox to message, an integrated dictionary, and support for the newly expanded iOS keyboard that can be slid upwards to split out into two thumboards.

8. "PC Free" changes have been made to iOS to allow it, for the first time, to be fully used without the need to sync to any PC or Mac. Upon first power-on, iOS devices will display a Welcome screen, as opposed to a sync notice. Software updates will now take place over the air via WiFi, and incremental "delta updates" will allow more efficient system updates.

9. Game Center has received several enhancements in this next version of iOS. Forstall indicates that there are over 100,000 game and entertainment titles in the App Store and, in an effort to further iOS as a game platform, Game Center has been expanded include user photos, achievement points, access to friends of friends, friend recommendations, game recommendations from Apple, and game downloads direct to Game Center. A framework for handling the behind-the-scenes back-and-forth needed by turn-based games has been provided as well, to eliminate the need for developers of such titles to handle everything on their own.

It was noted that in just nine months, there are 50 million Game Center users, while Xbox Live currently has about 30 million users after nine years of up-time, as a comparison.

10. iMessage lets iPad users get in on iPhone-style Message app texting. It's 3G and WiFi based, supports rich media, and works on the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. The system includes optional delivery and read receipts with messages pushed to all of your devices.

It was also mentioned that iOS 5 will support wireless mirroring of an iPad 2 screen to an Apple TV display, WiFi-based syncing with iTunes, and will bring all of the resources of Mac OS X's Core Image subsystem to iOS developers.

iCloud

The third piece of today's keynote puzzle is iCloud, Apple's long-rumored online data storage / retrieval system that's designed to make life much simpler for users of all Apple devices.

"Some people think a cloud is just a hard disk in the sky," Steve told the crowd. "We think it's way more than that." iCloud stores content (think contacts, calendar, photos, music), with wireless push to all devices. But the kicker is, it's completely integrated with apps. Everything happens automatically, invisibly. "It just works."

iCloud replaces MobileMe and its core apps — Contact, Mail, Calendar — with completely rewritten version made to store data remotely and sync it with all Apple devices, Mac OS X or iOS-based. But those are just three of the nine total apps that make up the iCloud system. The App Store app has been updated to show your full purchase history from any device, with a download from cloud button that allows such apps to be redownloaded on different devices without any additional charge. Moving forward, any app purchased on any device gets pushed out to all other iOS devices. The iBooks app now works in the same fashion, as well.

A Backup application wirelessly backs up all data on an iOS device to the cloud via WiFi — user data, camera roll photos, videos, books, apps, and music. If you purchase a new iPhone to replace an old, all data from the old device will sync down to the new unit.

Documents in the Cloud is Apple's solution to the complex and unnecessary nature of the filesystem on modern systems. As Jobs indicated, it "completes the iOS document storage story." This component of the iCould system allows applications to manage their own documents, syncing them to the cloud and down to all other devices. Support for Documents in the Cloud is already present in the latest versions of Pages, Numbers and Keynote. iCloud developer APIs are forthcoming that will allow storage of full documents as well as simple key value data. Documents in the Cloud supports all iOS devices, Macs, and PCs, too.

Photo Stream brings photos to the cloud. Take a photo on any iOS device or import a photo into iTunes on a Mac and it is automatically moved to the cloud and synced with all other Apple devices, and the Pictures folder on Windows PCs. This allows viewing of your Photo Stream on any iOS device — including the Apple TV — or Mac or PC. Photo Stream photos are all stored permanently on Macs and PCs, with the most recent 1,000 stored on iOS devices. Photos will be stored in the cloud for 30 days, long enough for them to make their way to all of your connected devices.

iTunes in the Cloud brings easy syncing of your music across all devices. Any previously purchased music can be downloaded without additional cost on any Mac, PC, or iOS device. Any future music purchase automatically gets pushed out to all connected devices. For music not purchased through iTunes, but ripped from CD or gathered elsewhere, the iTunes Match service will scan your library and allow you to download tracks that are found, at 256 Kbit AAC quality. Any tracks that were not matched can be uploaded to the cloud for access from any device. The cost for maintaining iTunes Match titles in your iCloud library is $24.99 per year.

MobileMe, which was a $99 per year, subscription service is now dead. iCloud replaces it as a free service that provides all of the aforementioned along with a me.com email address and 5GB of document storage, not counting photos, videos, music, apps, or books.

Developers can download a beta of iOS 5 with iCloud support today, and the system will roll out publicly in the fall.

Apple has placed a video of this morning's complete keynote event online.

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This morning Apple announced plans for the WWDC keynote which will take place this coming Monday June 6th. As usual, details are vague and the inevitable "one more thing" is veiled in secrecy, but here's what they've said so far:

Apple CEO Steve Jobs and a team of Apple executives will kick off the company's annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) with a keynote address on Monday, June 6 at 10:00 a.m. At the keynote, Apple will unveil its next generation software – Lion, the eighth major release of Mac OS X; iOS 5, the next version of Apples advanced mobile operating system which powers the iPad, iPhone and iPod touch; and iCloud, Apple's upcoming cloud services offering.

I'm anxious to see what iOS 5 and iCloud bring to iOS gaming. We likely won't know any details until the keynote itself, but I'm hoping for either an updated (or greatly refined) version of Game Center. Also, it would be super-sweet if iCloud functionality included some kind of cloud-based save game syncing across iOS devices.

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It’s been a bustling time for acquisition news in the past half a year or so with the popularity and success of mobile gaming rocketing through the roof and mobile gaming companies making moves to put themselves in the best position to ride the wave of continued growth. The big news last fall was developer Ngmoco being purchased by Japanese-based DeNA to the tune of $400 million. Around that same time Chillingo was purchased by EA, later in the year Zynga acquired NewToy, and back in January Firemint acquired fellow Australian developer Infinite Interactive.

All of this activity left everybody wondering what the next big acquisition would be on the mobile scene, and today we learn that the extremely popular mobile social network OpenFeint has been purchased by Japanese company GREE.

OpenFeint has grown by leaps and bounds since first being founded in August of 2008. While it rapidly became the dominant social platform for iOS gaming, it expanded its reach by extending to the Android platform and currently maintains a userbase of more than 75 million players across both mobile operating systems. OpenFeint is used in more than 5000 games and has over 19,000 registered developers, and is the largest mobile social network in the US.

Japanese-based GREE is the leading social platform for mobile in Japan with a userbase of 25,000 players, and is the fastest growing technology company in that country. The two company’s combined user base of 100 million positions them as the largest mobile gaming social network in the world.

Despite the purchase, it appears that OpenFeint will continue to operate much as it always has. The entire OpenFeint team and Founder/CEO Jason Citron (pictured right) will retain their roles with the company, and their plans to open additional offices internationally and double their current staff in 2011 will continue.

This purchase gives GREE a quick entry into the US market with an already established company, and OpenFeint will benefit from GREE’s additional expertise at developing and expanding social gaming platforms. GREE has purchased OpenFeint’s outstanding stock for $104 million, but will contribute additional capital beyond this towards improving and growing the existing OpenFeint service.

There are currently no plans to merge the OpenFeint service with GREE’s to create one uniform service, rather they will tailor each of their products to specific regions. We expect to hear much more about the future plans of OpenFeint post-acquisition and we’ll bring you any new developments as they happen.

Congrats Jason!

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This has been a crazy week at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain. I saw a ton of different kinds of mobile phones, tablets, and other devices running all sorts of non-iOS apps and operating systems. Overall, it was really interesting checking out what the competition has to offer. Unfortunately, it was rather difficult to truly gauge the relative gaming performance of these new phones and tablets, as curiously enough, most were just loaded with a smattering of ports of last year's Gameloft games (or older, in the case of Shrek Kart) and Angry Birds. When asked, despite superior hardware, most developers still seemed reluctant to invest too much time or energy in to building games for these new devices, really making me wonder how much longer this "wait and see" approach will persist.

Anyway, the reason I was even in attendance at Mobile World Congress in the first place was to participate as a judge in the International Mobile Gaming Awards. The whole process was incredibly elaborate, with everyone involved taking the whole thing very seriously. It was great deliberating games with an international pool of judges, and seeing what people from particular regions tended to prefer. I hope to play a bigger role in the event next year as well, and hopefully can get some more developers to submit their games for judging than we saw this year.

Oddly enough, even though all mobile platforms were allowed entry, iOS games swept the awards:

Best Casual Game: Plants vs. Zombies, $2.99 – [Review / Forum Thread]
Best Real World Game: AR Invaders, 99¢ – [Forum Thread]
Best Sports Game: Snowboard Hero, Free – [Forum Thread]
Excellence in Design: Infinity Blade, $5.99 – [Review / Forum Thread]
Excellence in Game Play: Beyond Ynth, $1.99 – [Review / Forum Thread]
Most innovative Game: Papa Sangre, $6.99 – [Review / Forum Thread]
People's Choice Award: Perfect Cell, $4.99 – [Review / Forum Thread]
Operator's Choice Award: Snowboard Hero, Free – [Forum Thread]
Grand Prix / Game of the Year: Beyond Ynth, $1.99 – [Review / Forum Thread]

I'll try to raise more awareness to the IMGA when entries for 2012 are starting to be accepted as after I posted about the nominees being announced, I got confused instant messages from quite a few developers who weren't even aware they could enter. Regardless, some great games won, and hopefully we can get some even better games submitted next year.

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Before I get started with this, please take everything in this post with a grain of salt. The accuracy of the Apple rumors community historically has varied widely between spot on, and, well, about as good as the ancient art of Tyromancy. That being said, because of how secretive Apple as a company is, following these rumors sure is a lot of fun– Regardless of whether or not they turn out to be true.

First off, since we learned about the Retina Display of the iPhone 4, the Internet has been rumbling with the potential of a similar "Retina" display in the successor to the iPad. According to Mac Rumors, this might not be as far fetched as originally thought. Apparently, version 1.1 of Apple's iBooks [Free] "accidentally" included some graphical resources that are twice the size of the ones currently in use on the iPad.

Now, depending on how you read these virtual tea leaves, this could mean one of two things: Someone at Apple knows that rumor hounds will dig through absolutely everything they can for any kind of hint, or the screen resolution of the iPad 2 will be double that of the current iPad. This would put the screen resolution at 2048×1536, sporting 260 DPI. It's not quite the pixel density of the iPhone 4's Retina Display, but you typically hold the iPad much farther away from your eyes. This means that even at a lower DPI this screen could potentially provide a similar "Retina" effect. (I suppose there's a third alternative that this means neither of these things, but how much fun is that?)

Things get even more interesting though when you consider that Global Direct Parts, the guys who had the "iPhone 5" parts video (which actually turned out to be the CDMA Verizon iPhone), also have their hands on a screen that fits the previously mentioned description. The price of this part? $218.19, compared to the original $144.99 the original iPad screen cost at launch from the same site.

But what does the higher price of the components have to do with anything? Well, as appleguy123 points out on the Mac Rumors forums, according to Apple's 2010 Annual Report:

The Company expects its gross margin percentage to decrease in future periods compared to levels achieved during 2010 and anticipates gross margin levels of about 36% in the first quarter of 2011. This expected decline is largely due to a higher mix of new and innovative products that have higher cost structures and deliver greater value to customers, and expected and potential future component cost and other cost increases.

Whether this refers specifically to the increased cost of the components in the iPad 2, or something else entirely is anyone's guess, but it is a curious coincidence. If the screen does turn out to be 2048×1536, there's an entirely new issue to be addressed: The sheer number of pixels the iPad GPU is going to have to push. For the sake of comparison, the resolution of a 30" LCD is only barely higher, at 2560×1600. Gaming at that resolution is a formidable task for even dedicated gaming PC's, much less a mobile device. That's higher resolution than what we consider "HD" these days as well, which only weighs in at a paltry 1920×1080 in comparison.

Mac Rumors has an answer to this too, courtesy of Apple Insider. If these rumors turn out to be true, both the iPad 2 and iPhone 5 will use a dual-core SGX543 GPU from Imagination Technologies. What makes this rumor hold more water than your typical bean spillage by an "industry insider" is the fact that the iOS 4.3 beta already includes drivers for this GPU. Odd coincidence, eh? What's even cooler is that not only do these GPUs boast some incredible performance figures, they also support anywhere between two and sixteen cores handled entirely by hardware, without a single change to any software required to scale performance.

Again, I'm not entirely sure how true these rumors are, but there is something strange afoot. It would make the most sense to double the iPad screen resolution, as it would allow graceful upscaling via pixel doubling much like running a non-Retina Display app on the Retina Display of the iPhone 4. If Global Direct Parts' pricing can be trusted, the component cost of the screen doesn't seem that far out of line. On top of all that, it's really hard to deny the coincidence between the GPU rumors and Apple actually including the drivers for that very GPU inside of their own operating system.

We'll have to wait and see what Apple reveals as the inevitable iPad 2, but if the Apple rumors scene is to be believed, it has potential to be an insane gaming machine.

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