CommanderVideo has given you a paddle, and you’ll have to keep up with the beat in order to succeed in BIT.TRIP BEAT on the Mac App Store. It’s like pong and maybe like brick breaker, where you bounce back various “beats” that are streamed across your display in conjunction with the level’s vibe. These aren’t your traditional ping pong bits either – they’re high intensity, moving bullets that bounce and force players to return a variety of patterns without missing. The more beats you return consecutively, the more rewarding the game gets with higher intensity tunes and occasionally trippier visuals. But like Guitar Hero, if you miss a beat, you’ll face the bleak reality of failure. Color fades into monochrome, and the screen beat is reduced to mere 8-bit blips. If you’re not getting those additional bonus points by chaining those high-pitched returns, it’s game over for CommanderVideo.
Posts tagged with "games"
BIT.TRIP BEAT For Mac Is Trip-Tastic
Nintendo Still Doesn’t Get The (New) Mobile Market→
Nintendo Still Doesn’t Get The Mobile Market
Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata, speaking about “quality video games” and mobile platforms like iOS and Android:
In a feisty attack on the fastest-growing sectors of the video-game industry, Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata said that smartphone games and social-media games focus on quantity instead of quality.
“They are not like gaming consoles, there’s no motivation [for] high-value video games,” Iwata said at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco.
I’d say this is one of the biggest problems a company like Nintendo is facing right now: trying to compete in the mobile gaming space with a device that’s just meant for gaming, while consumers are demanding something that goes beyond cartridges and games sold at $40 a piece. And so they try to build “social functionalities” into their consoles, hoping that an avatar creation feature or in-console communication would provide a solution to a market that’s deeply changed in the past four years.
Should Nintendo change at its roots and start doing all that consumers want? No. But the way I see it, they should pull their head out of the sand and understand that the rules have changed and it’s time to stop complaining, and start building to stay in the game. Those Angry Birds won’t go away by themselves.
Firemint Announces Real Racing 2 HD with Enhanced Graphics for iPad 2
Just in time for some truly magical iPad 2 hands-on videos featuring games being played on the new device, developer Firemint has announced that the brand new version of award-winning game Real Racing HD will take advantage of the more powerful graphic capabilities offered by the iPad 2.
Firemint says they were not aware of the detailed specs of the iPad 2, but they had a fairly accurate idea that turned out to be good for what they’ve been building. That means gyroscopic controls, faster graphics, lighter form factor easier on gamers’ hands when holding the device.
Real Racing 2 HD has been significantly enhanced beyond what could work on existing devices, and our efforts have definitely given us a head start on iPad 2.
All these attributes combined with our enhancements to Real Racing 2 HD will create the most precise and intuitive car racing experience on any device. The 1080p HDMI output also opens up some great possibilities.
We can’t wait to see more developers jumping on board with great-looking games built specifically for the iPad 2. March 11 can’t come soon enough.
Unreal Engine 3 To Power Four Gameloft Games In 2011 And 2012
Gameloft has today announced that they have partnered with Epic Games to bring four games to mobile devices using Unreal Engine 3. The game engine will power two games this year and two aimed for release in 2012.
Unreal Engine 3, which was released late last year, was the game engine that powered the tech demo of Epic Citadel as well as Epic Games very succesful Infinity Blade. The Unreal Development Kit is free for developers to download and try, but if used they must pay a $99 licensing fee and a 25% royalty fee after the first $50,000 in sales.
Hackers Find A Way to Stream PlayStation 3 Games to iOS Devices
Here’s something you’d probably like to try right away, but likely can’t because it’s really too geeky to understand: a group of hackers and developers known as “pandaelf” managed to stream PlayStation 3 games to the iPhone and iPad on a local network using a series of USB devices attached to the PS3, and an “interpreter” to send iOS gestures back to the console. Somehow, it’s working.
Here’s what they did: they connected a USB mouse and keyboard to the PS3 as input controls, and another “third party capture device” that streams video to a PC running a build of “everyAir”, a remote desktop controller. everyAir really handles everything, from iOS to PC communication to live video streaming from the TV and PS3 to the iPhone and iPad. It’s one hell of a setup but as you can see from the demo video below, it seems to be working.
Video and Q&A below. Somebody please find a way to play Game Cube games on the iPad now, and I’m sold. [via iThinkDifferent] Read more
Joystickers’ Classic Will Put Buttons On Your iOS Device
If you’re a hardcore iOS gamer and you’ve always felt like your iPhone and iPad could use some hardware button love in certain games (*cough*shooters and platforms*cough*), you should take a look at this new Kickstarter project by a Chicago-based startup called Joytstickers, which aims at improving the quality of your gaming by putting physical buttons on the shiny glass surface of your iOS device of choice.
Question is: how? The Classic, a product that’s been in development for 9 months, is a set of buttons that can stick to an iPhone’s screen thanks to a special “micro-suction cup material imported from Japan” that’s invisible to the naked eye but allows the material to stay put on the screen without damaging it or leaving any sign of attachment. As you can see in the promo video, they really just stick. The reason why Joystickers is doing this is to overcome the lack of tactile feedback when playing iOS games. Personally, I can say this sounds extremely good for games like Pizza Boy or shooters that require a “fixed” control position on a glass screen that, admittedly, doesn’t usually make gamers so excited. The only major problem for now is that there’s no solution for directional (D-Pad) controls, meaning that you’ll either have to stick 4 buttons on screen and forget about diagonal input or just use a Classic for non-directional virtual buttons.
The startup is also promoting a brush and a stylus for iOS, but we think The Classic is the most interesting product available on Joystickers’ Kickstarter page. You can back the project here by pledging $1 or more, and it will be funded if $25,000 is pledged by March 24th. [via MobileCrunch] Read more
Gameloft’s VP Talks Premium Games, Maturing iOS Gaming Market And EA’s Sale Tactics
Last week over at Mobile World Congress Gameloft’s vice president Gonzague de Vallois spoke to PocketGamer and had some interesting remarks regarding iOS gaming. One of the things he spoke about was iOS gamers gaining an increasingly high expectation for games on the platform, particularly in regards to graphics and utilizing the full potential of the device.
He says that taste’s of iOS gamers are maturing and are moving on from supporting the small developers who make small, casual games to the games that are more fully featured and more fully use the potential of the device. To me at least, this seems like a bit of an odd comment given the continuing success of games such as Angry Birds and the caliber of indie games that are continuing to come to the App Store such as Rockin’ Rockets.
Minecraft To Officially Come To iOS This Year
If you’re as addicted to Minecraft as I am, then you’ll be excited to learn that the hit block building title will be arriving to iOS later this year. Gamasutra reports that Markus Persson has revealed to the site that the game won’t be an exact port, but rather will be granted features that “make sense” for touch screen devices.
Minecraft is currently in the beta stages, with a full release planned sometime this year. So far over 1.3 million copies of the game have been purchased, with nearly five million registered accounts on the official site.
Minecraft has been a massive success in indie gaming, and there’s been a lot of interest from the community in an iOS version since the game’s inception. Aron Neiminen, a new recruit to the Mojang team working on Minecraft, will be developing the iOS version that’s to be released at an unannounced date.
[Gamasutra via IndieGames]
iOS Devices Become Kinect Controllers In Dodgeball Game
In the past, we saw several interesting Kinect hacks making their way to iPads and Macs thanks to the efforts of a vivid developer community willing to get more out of Microsoft’s motion-controlling peripheral than simple Xbox pairing and gaming. In fact, we were able to get our hands (and eyes) on a free Kinect 3D viewer available in the Mac App Store and an iPad playing together with OS X in a cool futuristic experiment. But hackers, as usual, don’t stop at curious experiments that are worth nothing but a quick test.
A group of hackers last week managed to build a custom Kinect setup that allows iOS devices (iPhone and iPad) to fire balls in a dodgeball game playable by a gamer in front of Kinect. The UI design isn’t as beautiful and attractive as Microsoft’s version of the same thing built on top of Windows Phone 7, but as you can see from the video below it definitely seems to be working.
The video is available for your viewing pleasure after the break. Who’s going to build a Kinect Angry Birds with iOS devices as controllers now? [via Engadget] Read more