LAS VEGAS, CES 2012 – Remember the days before you had an iPhone and played games outside? Using sticks for swords and your hand as a gun? I bet you spent hours outdoors pretending you were some movie superhero trying to rescue Julia Roberts from a a plague of mutant zombie pandas. Then you got into video game consoles and iPhone games and your imagination just went in the toilet. Well, AppGear is here to bring back the nostalgia for your youth and make alien invasions a (virtual) reality.
With a new line of augmented reality games, AppGear is resurrecting simple games for cheap. They have six games currently in development with more titles to come, most of which utilize a cheap accessory that serve as a focal point for an augmented world. We played around with Elite Command AR, a first-person shooter which mounts an iPhone or iPod touch on top of a plastic toy gun to serve as your weapon in an augmented reality world. Scanning the room with the gun will reveal aliens, who you can shoot to score points. It’s simple, but a pretty fun experience. Most games will cost $9.99 (accessory included).
It seems like the necessity of purchasing a $200 iPod touch just to play some cheap kid game is a bit contradictory, but AppGear said most parents who own an iPhone or iPod touch keep a couple of kid game apps on their phone as a means to pacify their children. Another trend shows parents handing down their old iPhones to kids once they’ve upgraded to the newest model. With a large install base for iOS, AppGear has some serious potential to help user in the next wave of great kids games that are entertaining and affordable. Most titles should launch in April of this year.
Here’s a look at Alien Jailbreak – an augmented reality tower defense game.
