Zephyrus of the Anemoi

Several iPhone developers have chosen to have sales this weekend, in the spirit of Black Friday, and Thanksgiving. Some of these sales are pretty nice.

For example, Electronic Arts has slashed prices on a number of their products to 60% or even 50% of their original price. One such game is Wolfenstein RPG, which I picked up immediately, as I’ve been waiting for it to go on sale. While Wolfenstein is famous for being a first-person shooter, it translates really well into an RPG. It doesn’t feel turn-based at all until you enter combat, at which point the enemies just don’t shoot at you until you’ve either moved, fired a weapon, or done some other action. There are puzzles and experience points and all the things that make RPGs great, as well as some great moments of humor (for example, there are chickens everywhere that you can kill in a variety of ways to turn into chicken dinners for health).

In fact, all of id Software’s titles are on sale this weekend, so if you’ve been interested in DOOM Resurrection (an on-rails shooter that’s been very well received) or Wolfenstein Classic (the classic PC game from the early 90s, perfectly recreated for play on the iPhone and iPod Touch), now is the perfect time to pick them up.

In fact, most EA iPhone titles are available (around 30 of them) at the discounted price, so if there are any you’ve been eyeing, but were waiting for a discount, now is the time to check them out.

The other title that I was really excited to find out is on sale this weekend, is Hero of Sparta by Gameloft. When iPhone OS 2.0 first came out, the company Digital Legends Entertainment released Kroll, a beautiful-3D brawler that had some of the most amazing graphics seen on a portable device, but fairly low on gameplay techniques and replay value. Hero of Sparta took it a step further by marrying those beautiful graphics that the iPhone was capable of to a more solid control scheme with more action and a lot more gameplay value. If you are a fan of hack-and-slash action games, then Hero of Sparta is a good choice for you.

Keep your eyes peeled for better deals out there, because if there was ever a good time to find great deals on iPhone software, this weekend is likely to be it.

I read an article recently that told the story behind StoneLoops! of Jurassica and its removal from the iTunes App Store. In the article, it was mentioned that the factor that initiated the removal of Stone Loops was MumboJumbo sending Apple a letter requesting it be removed.

When I discovered this, I was rather upset, as I have long been a fan of this particular genre in general, and StoneLoops! was as great a game as I had ever played. While I have played Luxor 2 on the Xbox 360, I was very impressed with StoneLoops!’s touchscreen implementation. I would have been interested in trying out Luxor on the iPhone, but sadly that day will never come.

Due to the decision by MumboJumbo to use bullying tactics instead of actually trying to improve your product, I will henceforth no longer support MumboJumbo in any way. This means I will stop purchasing games published by you, and I will begin actively speaking against purchasing your products to friends and family. In the future, I hope that you decide to do the right thing rather than simply using your name recognition to remove your competition from the markets in which you compete.

As for your allegations that the developers of StoneLoops! were somehow copying your work, I point out to you that you did not create this genre and have not attempted to use this same bullying tactic against your other competitors (including Stone!Loops!’s other iterations on various platforms).

I hope that this message reaches you as an example of just one of many disgruntled fans of StoneLoops! that could have been fans of Luxor and other MumboJumbo games, but will now instead choose to seek out alternatives rather than supporting a company that uses “the protection of intellectual property” as an excuse to avoid improving upon existing work to compete.

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I have not included any links to MumboJumbo’s website or its games on the iTunes Store due to my decision to boycott them and encouragement of you to do the same. You can, however, contact MumboJumbo by email here. My heart goes out to the developers of StoneLoops! of Jurassica. If you would like to show your support for them, or for indie development in general, you can purchase StoneLoops! for platforms other than the iPhone from their website. For more information about why I am posting this open letter, please visit the AppAdvice article that brought the issue to my attention, and the developer’s blog.

Infinite Continues recently posted a set of images of video game characters reduced to a handful of shapes and colors. They are rather remarkable and would make excellent iPhone wallpapers, so I will probably be converting several for my iPhone soon.

Infinite Continues is a blog that started similarly to my Classic Gaming Sporadically series, though with (admittedly) more journalistic integrity and less humor. I definitely suggest checking it out, however, as the author makes interesting points about a number of games that I know I missed (due to financial obligations or platform exclusivity) and perhaps you have, as well.

The iPhone has been for some time the perfect device for a number of different applications, though not all of them seem as readily obvious up front. However, once the first board games began appearing on the device, it became quite clear that asynchronous multiplayer turn-based games would be a perfect fit. UniWar, Monopoly, Lux. All have been fairly successful implementations of turn-based gaming on the iPhone.

However, the iPhone truly excels when multiple versions of the same product exist and can compete for your hard-earned money. This recently became the case when NewToy Inc. challenged the reigning heavyweight in the board games on iPhone arena, EA. The board game at stake? Scrabble.

Here’s a breakdown of the two versions:

Scrabble – The heavyweight champ — EA brought this game to Facebook as an app and then put it on the iPhone and tied the two together. This was kind of a big deal, as that meant that the number of potential opponents grew much larger thanks to the larger userbase of Facebook. Another nice feature of this version of the game is that the app can actually show you what your highest-scoring move is at any time. The down-side? You might be tempted to let the game play itself, and may account for the reason that the only game I was able to find currently available said “no smartphones allowed”. All-in-all, this is a rather impressive application visually and its feature-set has piqued my interest for sometime. If you love Scrabble, and you want to play with friends that don’t have iPhones, then this is the app for you.

Words With Friends – The challenger — When I saw this app announced today, I did a double-take. First of all, it came from the team that brought you the highly-acclaimed Chess With Friends. Secondly, it was gorgeous in its simplicity. With the same basic interface as Chess With Friends, and very basic interface for the game itself, it managed to completely recreate the game of Scrabble without actually looking like a Scrabble board (an important piece of the puzzle, as EA has the rights to the Scrabble artwork and would very likely defend them vigorously). Notifies you when it is your turn via e-mail, just like Chess With Friends (a feature that I can find no notice of for EA’s Scrabble, though surely it’s an oversight and is on its way).

Ideally, I’d like to see push notification for both apps, but in its current state, I’ll accept what they give me. So long as I can play Scrabble without having to pick up all those tiles I knock on the floor when I “accidentally” throw the board across the room in frustration, I’ll be happy.

Today has been an almost non-stop day of awesome on the Interwebs. So before I begin my bombardment of all things iPhone, I thought I’d give the rest of you some entertaining and/or informative links (some of which may still pertain to the iPhone).

With that out of the way, let’s get started, shall we?

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Google has been hard at work on the development of some awesome new technologies in preparation for the ratification of the final HTML 5 standard. In the interest of viewing 3D graphics directly inside of a web browser, a proposed open standard for doing so is currently being developed. Called O3D, it allows you to view gorgeous 3D graphics from inside your web browser, without ever having to fire up another application. While it currently requires you to install a plug-in, I believe the ultimate goal is to have it become a part of HTML 5 before ratification so that all HTML 5 compatible web browsers will be able to pull it off out of the box. Check out the demo site here.

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Speaking of HTML 5 and the reason that I discovered O3D, Google has also posted a demo page of what YouTube will look like once HTML 5 is complete and Flash will no longer be required to quickly & easily embed video. If your browser supports the HTML 5 draft (Safari 4, Firefox 3.5, Google Chrome), then check this out. While the site looks much the same, you’ll notice that right-clicking on the video no longer brings up the Flash Player contextual menu, indicating that that video is playing entirely through the browser’s built-in capabilities (no plug-in required). This will greatly reduce the memory footprint of your browser and should speed up your computer considerably when visiting sites that were formerly very Flash heavy and can move to HTML 5 methods, instead.

Also, if you were interested in seeing what O3D could do, but don’t feel like installing the plug-in, the YouTube demo I’m talking about is a walkthrough of the O3D demo page.

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This particular clip is more entertaining due to the fact that Steve Wozniak is in a low-budget, body shop commercial. Since he’s hilarious, I recommend taking a gander.

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Also, Rule 34 has no exceptions. Moving on.

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Now, I love me some giant robots. I always have, and I always will. I even liked that movie Robot Jox, and it was frakkin’ terrible. No, really. Just awful. But, it had giant robots. So I loved every minute of it. The exception to that rule is when giant robots are combined with Michael Bay. Cause then you get “Michael Bay Blows Up Egypt in Slow Motion” (commonly known as Transformers 2), which is utter crap and painful to watch. That being said, one of my favorite uses of giant robots is to put gamers in control of them so they can destroy anything and everything they see. MechAssault on the Xbox was one of my favorite games. Chromehounds was pretty cool, as well, though a lot less frenetic. However, all current-gen mech games have a grand-daddy. And that game is MechWarrior. Well good news to all of you that have played it, and to those of you that just plain love giant robots. MechWarrior is getting a reboot.

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And lastly, in this long line of crazy, ridiculous, nerdery: iPhone 3.0 has a feature that has been kept quiet until today. That feature is HTTP Live Streaming. Now some of you are going to say, “What?” Others will say, “Who cares?” Still more of you will say, “My iPhone already does streaming.” To all of you I say, “Shut up and let me finish!”

HTTP Live Streaming is a technology that should finally allow for a standards-based streaming method for video content (this goes back to HTML 5 and Google’s YouTube demo of said feature). Essentially, what it means is that video content can be downloaded in 10 second chunks and then played back, meanwhile grabbing the next chunk or two or three before the current chunk is finished being viewed. On top of that, instead of sending the video using technology that is consistently blocked by most firewalls, or requires a plug-in and therefore eats up system resources, HTTP Live Streaming will be sent to your computer using the same packets that web sites are downloaded to your browser with and will (hopefully) be a part of the HTML 5 standard when ratified. The best part is that if you switch from EDGE, to 3G, and then to Wi-Fi while watching a video, rather than having to re-buffer the clip because you changed network types, your iPhone will be able to automatically grab the chunk that befits the quality that will give you the best image without stuttering for your current connection. And since the sections are only 10 seconds a piece, you don’t have to wait long for the quality to improve if you suddenly find yourself in range of a Wi-Fi network while watching your favorite web series.

The best part? If this tech takes off, there’s a chance that a television network could use it to stream their channels directly to your Apple TV, allowing you to subscribe to only the channels (or shows) that you want without having to pay for an expensive cable TV or Dish subscription to get 10 channels you want and 100 you don’t.

To read more about this, go here.

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That’s all for now, folks. If I have time today, I hope to hit you up with some reviews and recommendations of the iPhone apps I’ve been spending the most time with as of late (or at least that I think are awesome and feel you should, too). See ya starside!

This Next week, I’m going to be bringing you a number of reviews of iPhone apps I’ve been using lately. But before I do that, I wanted to point out a few apps I’ve been on the fence about but think would make really great additions to my collection.

Oregon Trail – This is essentially the same game we played as kids (assuming that most of my readers are past their childhoods) on Apple IIGS and IIE computers in grade school. However, the graphics have received a complete overhaul (even compared to the more robust Mac version from 10-15 years ago). The nicest part of this game is the addition of a number of new mini-games instead of just hunting and rafting the river at the end of the game. While I haven’t purchased this one yet, it’s at the top of my list as I know my son will enjoy it and am looking forward to wasting my day away placing my “friends” into my family and laughing as they die of dysentery.

Myst – With graphics that appear to be from the DVD-rerelease of Myst in the Anniversary Collection and a new touch-screen interface that makes playing this game extremely easy, this has been heralded as the best version of Myst yet. While I was rather partial to RealMyst from the early ’00s, I can’t argue that this game is flooding my brain with memories of trying to solve a number of puzzles that were just difficult enough (and too difficult in terms of that blasted audible puzzle, though I still blame that on not being able to play with proper headphones in a quiet home) to keep me engaged for hours. I hope that this game is successful enough that the sequels will see a rerelease, as well.

Pocket Tanks Deluxe – I have not yet played this game, but I own the Mac version and wasted a great many hours on it back in college. My son loves the Mac version, as well. This is actually the most robust artillery game I have ever played. With a variety of weapons randomly generated for you and your enemy to choose from, the variety of every battle is guaranteed. As you play the game, you will need to adjust your aiming (as well as your thinking) based on which weapon you’re using. I highly recommend this game to anyone that loves artillery games, has played this original Mac version, or who just plain wants to waste several hours of their life blasting away at their friends and family (two-player pass-and-play is included).

Chronicles of Inotia: Legend of Feanor – Since the release of the iPhone, I have been waiting for an iPhone version of Diablo. I have been teased with games like iDracula (which is more like Geometry Wars meets Van Helsing) and have been very nearly satisfied with Underworlds (for which a more robust review will be coming). But Chronicles promises a very uncomplicated and direct type of Diablo clone. Simply tapping to move and to attack, with a minimalist HUD to enhance usability of the touchscreen and an anime/J-RPG art style, I’ve long been looking at this game as a way to pass the time. Perhaps once finished with Underworlds, I will look to this to fill the gap left behind.

The Quest – I have long been a fan of The Bard’s Tale series of games. For those that have never played a Western-style RPG but rather only played J-RPGs like Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest, Western RPGs focus more on the view of the world through the eyes of the player. While Oblivion and Morrowind are often cited today, when I was younger the king of kings was The Bard’s Tale series. Gameplay for this game can be difficult to explain if you’ve never played RPGs from this era/category. So I recommend checking out the lite version.

Orions: Legend of Wizards – This particular game I’ve been looking at for a long time. The primary draw is the concept of a card-based strategy game that I can take with me everywhere. The pick-up-and-play nature of the game is also a big draw, as receiving a phone call or having to do actual work does not result in starting over or losing progress. While the game is not as robust as say Magic: The Gathering, it certainly does appear to satiate the desire to play something extra-nerdy where manipulation of stats to your advantage will be a key skill.

Last Cannon – What at first appears to be a simple missile command-style game quickly evolves into so much more. With a dark story (that of you manning the final cannon on your planet in an attempt to fend off the invading alien hordes), a puzzle mechanic based around destroying groups of enemies of the same color, and simple controls, this game has quickly garnered excellent reviews. For only 99¢, I still don’t know why I haven’t purchased it yet. It will be on my iPhone soon.

If you’ve ever played Nectaris (a.k.a. Military Madness) before and you liked it, then you’re in for a treat. UniWar for the iPhone is a brilliant little game that elegantly captures the style and feel of the above-mentioned game, but with beautiful graphics, and excellent touch-screen controls. The premise is simple. Using your base and a handful of units, conquer all of the enemies bases and destroy all of their units before they do the same to you. First you move, then they move, then you, etc., etc.

Sounds simple right? It is. Until, of course the enemies start coming faster than you can destroy them and because you made a mistake here and a miscalculation there, suddenly they’ve got the high ground and are devestating your troops.

Of course, that’s what makes the game fun. There are so many different tactics you can use and if you’re already familiar with Nectaris, then you already know all of them. The touch-screen controls make the game quick and easy to play: tap unit to select, tap to move, tap again to confirm or, if you like, tap enemy to open fire. While a contextual menu pops up any time you tap on an enemy and updates once you’ve moved it, you rarely have to use it, instead tapping on the appropriate hex on the battlefield will accomplish exactly what you want, and it’s very intuitive. Another nice feature is the ability to speed through an opponent’s turn (when playing the computer) yet still see what’s going on as it happens.

As a brilliant bonus, the devs have made available four different gameplay types: online multiplayer, you vs. iPhone, Hot Seat multiplayer, and Campaign mode. The best part about the online multiplayer is that you can also play against bots and against opponents that have the game on a different phone (i.e. Palm OS or Microsoft Windows Mobile).

Perhaps the most important reason you should be buying this game right now is because it is currently available for only $0.99. It’s just an introductory price. Once the sale is over, it’ll cost $8, so you better buy now if you’re interested. And if you are, be sure to leave a comment on the post, or use the form on the About Me/Contact page so that we can play against each other.

Got a chance for a Guy’s Gaming Day this weekend, because my wife is awesome and loves me. Starting shortly after noon, my cousin Andrew, friend Jeff, and I all sat down to play Shadows Over Camelot.

If you haven’t had the pleasure of playing this game before, I highly recommend it. There have been a number of great board games that pit players not against each other, but against the game itself: Warhammer Quest, Lord of the Rings, and The Omega Virus. However, what makes Shadows Over Camelot unique is the potential that one of the players may be a traitor, secretly trying to undermine the various quests that the knights set out to achieve. Worse, once accused, the traitor loses some abilities and gains others, making the timing of his accusation a delicate proposition. Worse, since there may be no traitor at all, mere mistrust of one another can make some quests more difficult to defeat.

The game was exciting. Andrew turned out to be a traitor and Jeff and I barely won the game from him. It was an incredible first-time play. Jeff told me that the gameplay ideas in Shadows Over Camelot had been taken to the next level in the Battlestar Galactica board game. I’m looking forward to picking it up soon.

The second game that we played was Pandemic, a game about a global outbreak of four different diseases and the research team fighting to stop them. The game is brilliant in its design, due to the fact that the Epidemic card can cause all cities that have already been infected get placed back on the top of the deck to become infected again. This can lead to outbreaks that spread diseases quickly. Worse, the 9th outbreak ends the game, as does the depletion of the deck. This keeps the game a desperate race to keep the diseases under control long enough to find the cures. It gets hectic as the number of outbreaks climb and the cards in the deck dwindle.

My brother-in-law, David, joined us for this game. We played two rounds. The first one was a Beginner-level game (which places four Epidemic cards in the deck) and we were slaughtered. Absolutely devestated. All four Epidemic cards came up in the first half of the deck. Gonoherpesyphillaids wiped out all of Asia and North America in minutes. It was an excellent learning experience and made the second round much easier.

In the second round, we got extremely lucky. We raised the difficulty by adding a fifth Epidemic card, but they were so well spaced that we were able to prevent outbreaks. With only two cards left in the deck, Jeff cured the final disease and we all breathed a collective sigh of relief.

Later that evening, we played several rounds of Munchkin: Impossible (one of the 7 billion variations of the card game Munchkin, this one with a spy theme) sans Jeff. We were up until 3 am playing and had a blast.

Jeff and Andrew have been known to play lots of board games, so I knew they’d have a good time. But David is generally uneasy to try the various games we like to play. The fact that he enjoyed them as much as he did made me feel optimistic that he might play with us again in the future.

If you have any interest in checking out these games for yourself, I’ve linked to them on Amazon above (where available), but you can find much more info at BoardGameGeek, as well.

Inspired by a recent list on episode 73 of Retroforce GO!, I decided to make a quick list of games that I’m waiting for on Virtual Console. Some are games that most everyone has heard of, but some are relatively unknown to a great many people, and that is a shame. So, without further ado, I present you with my Virtual Console wish list.

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Bionic Commando – This one is a no-brainer. You play as a soldier trying to take down Master-D and the Badds (Hitler and the Nazis in the Japanese release). Your character cannot jump, but instead has a bionic arm that lets him swing, climb, even smack around bad guys. Plus, the levels don’t have a specific order to be completed in. While some levels contain items that must be found before progressing, the order isn’t set in stone.

After its recent re-imagining into Bionic Commando: Rearmed, the Wii is the only system that can’t play Bionic Commando. While it’d be nice for Nintendo to get their “storage solution” into our hands in time for Capcom to feel that releasing Rearmed as a WiiWare title is a worthy proposal. However, in the meantime, the least that Capcom could do is release the original title on the Virtual Console. Easily one of the most amazing video games ever released for the original NES.

Blaster Master – No NES game had a more detailed world than this side-scrolling-birds-eye action-platformer. Similar in style to the Metroid series as areas of the game must be backtracked to access hidden items, new areas, and additional levels. What makes this game so much fun is you drive around a tank that can receive a variety of upgrades as the game progresses. But, in order to defeat the bosses that litter the world, you must exit your tank and use your very vulnerable driver to venture deeper into the underbelly of the world to face them. Plus, the story is about rescuing your frog from the clutches of the mutants that live under your hometown. How awesome is that?

Chip ‘N Dale: Rescue Rangers – Capcom made a number of great games using Disney’s licenses and this is one of the most popular. Two-player cooperative, smooth gameplay mechanics, and incredible level design (making the world around the characters huge was done here first and never better on the NES). Unfortunately, it seems that Disney doesn’t know how to capitalize on the greatness that is the Virtual Console, as none of their titles have hit the service, yet.

Clash at Demonhead – This is my personal favorite from this list. I assume that I got this game as a gift from my parents for some holiday or another. It’s possible that they even just picked it up at random one day because they love me. Anyway, the important thing is that the game is incredible. You play as Bang, a special operative on a mission to stop some terrorists from detonating a doomsday device that will destroy the world. Like Bionic Commando, the game has a fair amount of non-linearity to it. You start at the bottom of the mountain and have to make choices about which paths to take to reach the top. Not every path is required to complete the game, but many contain important items or objectives. This is likely to show up in a future edition of Classic Gaming Sporadically, so I’ll give more info to you then.

Double Dragon II – While the Interwebs is filled with people fawning all over the original Double Dragon, I was always disappointed in the lack of two-player coop in the NES release. Double Dragon II, on the other hand, did not make such an oversight and was one of the most entertaining gameplay experiences of my childhood. My brother and I spent countless hours working together to reach the final boss and get our collective asses kicked again and again. But it was always fun, even when it felt like work.

Duck Tales – Yet another Capcom game, and another Disney title at that. In this one, Scrooge McDuck’s fortune has been stolen and with the help of his nephews and friends, he’s on a quest to get it back. With some of the most unique gameplay elements of any licensed game, as well as incredible music and level design, this game should be at the top of many gamers’ wish lists. Perhaps one day, Capcom and Disney can get together with Nintendo and make those wishes come true.

The Goonies II – The Goonies was incredible and Konami was quick to cash in with a game loosely based on the movie. The game was pretty great, but the sequel was one of the most amazing platformers of all time. You play as Mikey on a quest to rescue the rest of his friends. They’ve been captured by the Fratelli family, freshly escaped from prison. Armed with a yo-yo and your wits, you set out to find them. The game world is one of the most complex I’ve ever seen, with doors everywhere: some which take you into to rooms full of items, secrets, and hidden pathways; others that lead directly to alternate areas of the game. It’s easy to get lost, but that’s part of the appeal. The world feels huge for an NES game, and indeed for many games made today. With a music soundtrack inspired by The Goonies theme from the movie and spot-on gameplay mechanics, I can’t wait to see this hit the Virtual Console.

Web

World Superhero Registry – Ever dreamed of putting on a costume and fighting crime? Actually put on a costume and go out to fight crime? Then this website is for you. While a large number of individuals on the site are actually poseurs, the purpose of the site is for vigilantes to see that they’re not alone and work together. I’m not even joking. Whether the creators intended for the site to be a legitimate crime-fighting social network or just a tongue-in-cheek way of poking fun, they certainly designed the website to take itself seriously.

Video

Dr. Horrible on DVD – Joss Whedon pimps it for me pretty well here, but if you’ve already seen it, you should just go ahead and buy it. The commentary is its own separate musical that must be heard to be believed.

9 – Trailer for the animated feature, produced by Tim Burton and Timur Bekmambetov, director of Night Watch (iTunes), Day Watch (iTunes), and Wanted (iTunes). Currently, the one movie I’m seriously excited about come autumn.

Games

Passage – Some of you that know me have heard me talk about this game before. It’s a simple, minimalistic, 5-minute, expressionist life-journey in game form. It recently became available for the iPhone for $0.99 and is an excellent buy if you like to help support true visionaries in the gaming genre.

Burn the Rope – Another minimalist game, this one is a simple Flash game that takes less than a minute to enjoy (but give it 5 minutes of your time and it’s even better). The art work and style of the game are very neo-retro and well worth brief distraction from productivity the game provides.

Warfare Incorporated – I’ve talked about this one on the blog before, so skip it if you read it already. While not as minimalist as the two games above, this game is incredible for the very simple reason that it is essentially Command & Conquer for the iPhone. It’s $5, but it’s totally worth it, especially as it has over 200 downloadable maps available for it beyond the built-in campaign. The devs are also hard at work adding in multiplayer support for future revisions, so check it out.