It’s a good thing I was randomly floating around a few sites on the internet today, otherwise I might have easily missed the launch of Apple’s oh so appropriately named (haha!) App Store for the iPhone which allows you to download games for the glorious piece of sexy technology. I bought one back in september of 2007, so going to their site and see the “Twice as Fast, Half the Price” slogan for the new one doesn’t exactly make me all tickly inside, but I am very excited to see this new store launched. I’m not sure which direction they approached naming it from, whether its from their name Apple or from the fact that it provides you with Applications, it got at least a chuckle out of me but then I just had to go and describe it as being “app-ropriately named” and then came the pain.
I wouldn’t say that I’ve been waiting for games on the iPhone, as it has quite a lot of functions that even though the initial amazement of owning one has substantially faded I still haven’t been sitting around wishing my phone could do more. The idea has always excited me, but it’s not something that I would call grossly overdue. They claim that it is a service handy for both gaming and business, but I imagine the “business” applications as of today are few and far between compared to the gaming, but I might just be a naive so please enlighten me if this isn’t the case. I have the terrible habit of not updating my iPhone very often, but this might be enough to get me to plug it in and check all of this spiffy new stuff out.
It looks as if there is a very wide selection of games, which contains a few I’ve heard about or seen before including Trism, Super Monkey Ball, and a really sweet looking pinball game. Each game is priced between $5 and $10 so I won’t be getting all of them but definitely one or two in the next few months to keep myself occupied in those off moments when I have nothing to entertain myself with except for my phone. This seems extremely well timed, considering the release of the new 3G iPhone, and this no doubt means even more people will be picking one up as the list of what PDA’s have but iPhones don’t keeps shrinking little by little.
Dave has always professed (quite accurately so, I’ll add) that the iPhone is nothing revolutionary as far as features or content goes, but the novelty and design of it simply create a mysticism which is unavoidable for almost anyone. If I knew exactly how Apple did it, I’d probably be drinking a delicious drink on some cool beach right now. If you’ve downloaded some games on your iPhone, please leave us some comments and let us know which ones are good and which are not so much!
I did a quick flip through the App Store today searching for my friend’s application, and didn’t see anything for RPGs. Maybe something is in the works now- I know at least three people who would buy iPhone tools for helping with D&D.
As far as what I’ve professed… I’m a long time Palm user, to this very day. I’ve been using Palm Pilots since before I’ve had a cell phone (and my third cell phone was my first that combined the two.) Many of the things that people tout as being so awesome on the iPhone I’ve been able to do for years. (When I point this out, I get told “cry more n00b.” 🙁 )
But then flipping through the store today made me sad: yes, my beloved Palm OS smartphones have been able to do this stuff for years, but it never had a big enough name behind it to attract good publishers making quality software.
Must resist urge to say “cry more n00b”…
I’m definitely excited to see what else will come out of this, but I already feel like the prices are a bit steep.
Could be, though there’s plenty of quality free stuff there from what I’ve read. Including the program to turn your iPhone into a lightsaber.
Currently we need to think about the
requirements that the iphone satisfies
your palm thingamajigger
may not be the best input device for the situation
obviously the iphone provides some pretty
radical changes to the way developers can create
entirely new ways for people to interact with
native software and their newer stuff.
objectively speaking (impossible!) it’s
only a matter of time before the other companies
break into the decent interface market.
Well, Palm’s have been doing the touchscreen thing for a while, though I am glad to see that many of the iPhone games are leveraging their unique strength: the accelerometer. Along those lines, it’s interesting to think that maybe the combination of iPhone, Nintendo DS, and Nintendo Wii all are basically working together in technological and game design advancements.
Dave: Take a second look at Josh’s “poem” comment
I downloaded Super Monkey Ball, which seems to be the iPhone’s initial “killer app”. Unfortunately, the designers ruined what should have been a great game with a bad design choice. Whenever you decelerate enough to start moving backwards, the monkey turns to face you, and then the camera automatically begins to swing around behind it, which completely screws up your steering. In my opinion, it would have been much better to have the camera angle change only due to tilting the phone from side to side, and never due to tilting the phone up and down. As it is, I’m probably already done with this game after level three.
The other game I bought was Enigmo, and I like it a lot. It’s a puzzle game where you’re trying to get streams of liquid droplets to land in their corresponding containers by setting up various ramps, bouncy-drums, water-guns, and other fun tools. Great graphics, and a nice little physics engine. Totally worth my $10.
The store has a noticeable shortage of CRPG and adventure titles. “Role Playing” is one of the only two categories in the store that currently contains zero titles, and the five titles in the “Adventure” categories look pretty weak (or not really adventure-y). I think a good dungeon-crawl, Zelda-style RPG, or even a Monkey-Island style point-and-click adventure could rake in some dough here.
The other category that contains zero titles is “Trivia”. “Nerd Trivia” anyone?
Kory: There’s also some really cool poker calculater thing I think I’ll have to download…
I was considering getting Enigmo, so thanks for the recommendation! About the RPG / point and click idea, as well as the trivia idea, how much free time do you have? 😀
Bartoneus: I don’t know about this “poker calculator” thing, but it sounds like something that you and all of your friends should purchase immediately.
Now that the excitement of the initial weekend is over, I’m spending a lot of time thinking about what my next project should be. The adventure / RPG genre looks promising, because it’s so underrepresented on the iPhone at the moment, and it actually seems like a good fit for the mobile environment.
There’s now one game in the RPG section (along with a couple of dice utilities). It’s a port of an old Sega CD game called Vay – looks like a Final Fantasy-style concoction. Five bucks – I’ll probably spring for it.
Double on the light saber app! 🙂
Today a WordPress for iPhone app was announced as well – I’ll bet that will be one highly popular application.
Data points, Barbara
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