NgMoco, one of my new favorite developers on the iPhone, has put all of it’s apps on sale to celebrate the release of it’s newest game Rolando. This means one of my all time favorite iPhone games, Topple, has gone from 99 cents, to FREE.
(Above: “Topple” for the iPhone. I love the personalities of the blocks, a really nice touch.)
For those of you who haven’t seen Topple before, imagine Tetris with physics. Much like Tetris, the blocks come down in different shapes from the top of the screen. In this game, your goal is to build a stack of blocks as high as you can get it without the blocks toppling over. Also, you have to make sure to keep yourself steady, as swaying the phone from side to side can disturb the blocks as well. It requires a lot of skill and concentration. And it’s a hell of a lot of fun!
If there’s one App you download today. Give Topple a try, it’s pretty awesome. Especially for free!
We’ll after the release of the app store, I posted an article requesting an accelerometer-controlled iPhone port of the incredibly silly ball rolling game Katamari Damacy. For those unfortunate enough to not have played the original, let me give you a quick rundown of this incredibly bizarre game.
Katamari Damacy places you into the character of “The Prince of All Cosmos”, a tiny little green dude. Your dad, the Hunter S. Thompson-esque “King of All Cosmos”, has gone on a bit of a bender, and managed to screw up the whole universe by destroying all the stars. So being a lazy king, he sends you off to do his dirty work and put all the stars back together.
Now how would you go about putting a star together? By going down to earth and rolling up all the junk you can find. You are given a ball called a Katamari, that anything sticks to. And you’re tasked with rolling around this ball all across earth, picking up all sorts of items, starting small with tacks and rubber bands, and moving up to plants, animals, cars, islands, etc. As your katamari gets bigger and bigger, it can pick up bigger items. It’s a simple concept, but beautifully executed. There’s nothing like playing it, and seeing a cow that you really want to roll into your katamari, so you task yourself with making it big enough to roll up said cow.
It all sounds absurd, and of course it is. It has a sense of humor somewhere between odd japanese game shows and monty python. The music is also similarly absurd and you’re likely to be whistling it to yourself for weeks after playing.
So when I read this morning that Katamari for the iPhone had been released. I was a bit more excited about it than even I was expecting to be. The price is a bit steep at $7.99 but certainly not out of the average person’s price range, and the frame rate is a little stuttery, but all in all it’s a fantastic port, and stays very true to the Katamari look and feel.
If you want some absurd fun that will keep you occupied for hours on end, I can’t think of a better game to buy.
You can be sure that when Steve Jobs sets his laser vision upon your market that there’s reason to worry. Steve and his team at Apple have taken on the Mp3 player market and won, and they’re now making serious inroads into the cellphone market. Apple in it’s current state is nothing less than a juggernaut and it looks like they’ve set their sites on yet another marketplace. Gaming.
While yesterday’s “Let’s Rock” keynote seemed to be forcused more iPods and music than anything else, but there was an unusually large focus on gaming with the iPod touch. In fact the new iPod touch ad, available on Apple’s site, seems like almost like a threat to the major companies like Nintendo and Sony who manufacture portable gaming systems.
It’s certainly an ad that says ” Not only is this an iPod, but this thing plays games that look better than on your system. We’re coming for you. Watch out.”
If this is the beginning of a marketing push by Apple, it’s certainly a new strategy for a company that has never been much interested in gaming. At least not since the release of the Pippin back in the 90s, which I’m sure scared them off of console gaming forever. Thats not to say that the mobile space doesn’t have room to grow though, considering the mobile gaming market is dominated mostly by one company, Nintendo, with Sony in a DISTANT second, and a slew of mobile developers making seriously crappy cellphone games. In fact as of now, mobile gaming seems very much like an area that Apple could exert its substantial influence to gain some marketshare.
The iPhone and iPod touch may in fact BE the perfect mobile gaming platform. No cartridges or UMDs to lose, it has a really neat touch interface that people have only started to exploit, and it’s capable of some fairly high end visuals. On top of that, the device is a full fledged media player, and portable internet device. It already accomplishes more than the competition without even being FOCUSED on gaming.
There is something missing to this mix though, and you can bet someone out there is working on it. A killer app. This portable gaming platform doesn’t yet have it’s Super Mario Bros., Sonic the Hedgehog, Final Fantasy or Metal Gear Solid.
It needs a game that will drive units, something that will make the traditional game media stand up and take notice. Unfortunately none of the games they demoed yesterday are that game, but considering that the App Store has only been open for a couple of months, you can be it’s in the works somewhere.
This isn’t to say that Apple would be able to take over the portable gaming industry all at once, Nintendo and co. have a lot more experience in the gaming arena, and you can be sure there are new products on the way. All I have to say though, is that you’re new DS better be really damned cool Nintendo, or you might be in some trouble.
That’s right, if you havent jumped into the next gen video game arena yet, or you’ve just gotten bored with your Wii or Playstation 3, Microsoft is planning something that should make you very happy.
According to an article on BusinessWeek, Microsoft is planning to dramatically slash prices across the entire line of XBox 360 consoles starting on September 5th. This move is a great way to get into the households of people looking for casual gaming and media center devices. In the coming months, Microsoft is planning a complete refresh of it’s Xbox 360 interface, making it more simple and attractive to use. They will also be adding the ability to stream full length movies and tv shows to Netflix subscribers without the need for another device like Roku’s Netflix box.
The price for the low end Xbox 360 arcade version will be falling to $199, a full $50 cheaper than the competing Nintendo Wii. The 60 gigabyte version will fall to $299 from $349, and the high-end Elite edition will fall to $399 from $449.
Considering that the Xbox 360 is also home to a Microsoft-run store of video content including quite a few movies and television shows in HD quality, and is also able to upscale standard def DVDs to HD, the Xbox 360 now becomes a very attractive media center regardless of it’s powerful gaming abilities.
That’s not to say that Microsoft will be neglecting the gaming abilities of the device. In addition to the large back catalogue of games already available for the Xbox 360, Microsoft will be releasing a brand new casual gaming channel called Primetime that will focus on allow people who normally wouldn’t play games, to play simple games against each other online. One of the first games available “1 vs. 100″ will be an online multiplayer trivia game designed by the producers “Deal or No Deal”.
Personally, I think that this is fantastic! I’ve yet to pick up a next generation console other than the Wii, and have been looking forward to picking up an Xbox 360 now that the price is going down. The announcement of Netflix streaming pushed it over the top, and now I’ll be in line on the 5th to pick one up. Now I just have to stop by gamestop and pick up a used copy of Portal and Halo and I’ll be good to go.
Well sort of. This is a renderer built for Quake 3, that runs in what is called an “immersive environment”, basically a large cube of screens. I think it’s pretty sweet that the game can track your hand motions and put a game weapon in your real hands though. I can’t wait till this shows up at Dave & Busters!
This is the description of the setup from the youtube video:
A renderer for Quake 3 Arena maps in immersive environments, based on the Aftershock rendering engine and the CaveQuake wrapper.
Shown here in the UC Davis KeckCAVES facility ( http://www.keckcaves.org ).
The video was shot with a tripod-mounted video camera from outside the CAVE.
I was playing the original Katamari Damacy today on my aging ps2. I hadn’t touched the game in months, but I felt like just having a bit of mindless fun. While playing it, something struck me!
This game would be PERFECT for the iPhone!
For those who haven’t played it, Katamari Damacy is an extremely odd and occasionally hilarious game where you play the role of a tiny prince from space, tasked with rolling a large and extremely sticky ball that attaches itself to anything it rolls over. Your father, the King of all Cosmos, who is kind of a strange Hunter S. Thompson type, eggs you into rolling larger and larger balls of junk to replace all of the stars in the sky, which he accidentally broke.
Yes, it’s as bizarre as it sounds, and it’s an absolute blast. There is a real satisfaction to be had from rolling a larger and larger ball of stuff, first collecting small objects like pushpins, and tacks, and pencil erasers, then as the gravity of your ball gets bigger, collecting parking cones, people, whales, buildings, etc.
The accelerometer based controls of Super Monkey Ball on the iPhone would be a perfect fit for the game, and someone needs to get in touch with the developer and get them working on this as soon as humanly possible. I for one would buy it on release day.
Here’s a video of the game in action!:
Don’t tell me that Katamari wouldn’t be anything other than a load of fun on the iPhone 3g and iPod Touch! ROYAL RAINBOW!
