App Store - page 105

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Up until 1996, id software’s Doom engine was pretty much the de facto technology driving the best and most advanced PC computer games on the market, including Doom, Doom 2, Heretic, Hexen and Strife. Then id software released their next game engine, Quake, which boasted true 3D environments, and any game that still ran on Doom’s 2.5D engine was barely worth a laugh.

That was very unfortunate for HacX when it was released in 1997. The last commercial game using the Doom engine, HacX boasted some incredible enemy, weapons and level design, but was ultimately as ignored at retail (where it was passed over for flashier games running on truly 3D engines) as it has been forgotten by all but the most die-hard retro gamers.

I was delighted to hear, then, that HacX has gotten a new lease on life, as it has been ported as a free app for the iPhone and iPad. It’s still using the Doom engine, just this time it’s using the updated iPhone engine released by id software’s own lead programmer, John Carmack.

Here’s hoping that HacX can finally get some of the recognition it deserves this time around.

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Capcom’s Dead Rising series for the PC and the Xbox 360 is an acquired taste, despite the fact that it’s central conceit is the chocolate meets peanut butter of zombie games: killing the slavering, flesh-hungry dead in an American shopping mall. Now it’s coming to the iPhone later this year in Dead Rising Mobile, but can Capcom make the series work on a handheld device?

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOnUmO7oLgA

ZX Spectrum: Elite Collection is a new ZX Spectrum gamer for the iPhone that’s made its way in to the App Store today. The application features 6 full games, each with game-specific controls, and it’s only $0.99!

The six games included in the first release are:

• Turbo Esprit #3 on top 100 best games, voted for by visitors to World of Spectrum
• Saboteur #10 on top 100 best games
• Chuckie Egg the classic, developed by Nigel Alderton
• Harrier Attack inspired by the conflict in the South Atlantic
• Frank Bruno’s Boxing the UK #1 Best-Seller
• Buggy Boy the arcade original driving game

Each game is 100% original, and is accompanied by authentic Spectrum sounds. There are extensive playing instructions for each game built-in, and you can play in both portrait and landscape modes.

Elite Systems, the developer of ZX Spectrum: Elite Collection, has explained in the description of its app that volume one is still a little rough around the edges, and that any issues you may experienced will be ironed out in future updates. Some of its plans for future updates include a further six games with volume 2, which will be released within a month, and then an in-app shop to purchase more games with volume 3. And Elite’s plans don’t stop there:

Commercial agreements have already been reached with two more publishers (including one of the 80s biggest) taking to more than 200 the number of games available for inclusion in the forthcoming updates or volumes of ZX Spectrum: Elite Collection. (This will keep us busy through to Vol. #6 and beyond). Also, we’re in discussion with the owners of 100s more, including some of the most well known, with the aim of bringing them to you too.

Check out the video at the top of this post to see ZX Spectrum: Elite Collection in action.

This week’s top iOS games features EA Sports’ latest addition to the Fifa series in Fifa 11, which delivers console quality gaming to your iPhone. Offering an outstanding visual experience on the Retina display, and improved controls that make for fluid gameplay, Fifa 11 gives other soccer games in the App Store some great competition for 2011.

BIT.TRIP BEAT HD is an arcade game from Namco that fuses Pong with interactive beats in a colorful, pixelated environment. Listen to the different beat progressions and try to survive the onslaught of spectacular retro visuals as you bounce back beats from where they came. BIT.TRIP BEAT also features an intense multiplayer mode that allows you team up with your friends.

The incredibly addictive 0.03 Seconds Pro tests your reaction time using various different puzzles over 24 challenging stages, and then rates your score out of 5 stars. The puzzles seem simple, but you’ll be tearing your hair out as you try to beat the reaction time for each level and grab a 5-star score.

We also have an awesome augmented reality game that’s probably the best yet for iOS, and a chance to win one of the games featured in this week’s post.

Sega have been working hard throughout 2010 to bring Sonic 4 to the iPhone, which they confirmed back in May would be coming to the iOS. Today they have announced an official release date of October 7th!

Sega have ported two of their Sonic the Hedgehog games to iOS to date, and these have received mixed reviews. Some people love them for bringing their favorite childhood hedgehog to their palms, while others are disappointed with them for providing slow, jumpy gameplay, and a poor control system.

I’m very much looking forward to Sonic 4, and I’m hoping these issues will be ironed out in Sega’s latest port. Touch Arcade have been lucky enough to get their hands on a nearly complete build of the game at E3 in June, and they were blown away by it.

Interestingly, the release date of Sonic 4 for iOS means that the game will be available in the App Store before it arrives on any console; it won’t arrive on the Wii until October 11th, the PlayStation 3 until October 12th, and the Xbox a day later on the 13th.

We’re giving away a very sophisticated bundle of apps this week. We’ll start out in the study, browsing through and listening to the Classics. Then we might dabble in a little alchemy with the flaming Professor Helsing! We’ll pick 5 random winners to win 4 great apps and if you want a chance to get your hands on some these iPhone apps this week, then follow the instructions carefully below:

1. Like us on Facebook AND Like Appular (you have to do this to complete step 2)
2. Tag us both in your status : “Cult of Mac and Appular are throwing one classy iPhone App Giveaway!”
3. Your status tag will be your entry into the giveaway, only ONE entry is allowed per person, and the giveaway will last until 11:59pm tonight. We’ll contact the winners on Tuesday or Wednesday about how to get the codes!
4. Optional step – Tell us what you think about these apps if you own them already in the comments section.

Special Thanks to Appular for helping us put together these app code giveaways! If you’ve got a mobile app that you’d like marketed effectively, contact the good folks at Appular!

Here’s a look at the apps we’re giving away:

This week’s must-have iOS games include the awesome new Real Soccer from Gameloft, which features gorgeous high-definition graphics optimized for the retina display. We also have their long-awaited Gangstar sequel, Miami Vindication, and some seriously addictive gameplay in ngmoco’s We City.

Check out a few of our favorite games from the past week after the break!

This week’s must-have iOS apps include Napster’s new music streaming application that provides access to over 10 million of songs on your iOS device, Google Voice calling with GV Mobile+, and a media player that supports pretty much every codec out there!

Check out a few of our favorite apps from the past week after the break!

More and more, the publication of Apple’s App Store Review Guidelines is starting to seem like it might be a promise of the end of arbitrary app rejection. Following the surprise about course by Apple when it comes to allowing Google Voice apps on the App Store, it now appears that they’ve also rescinded their long-standing ban on App Store ringtone makers.

Pretty much since the App Store’s inception, applications that allowed users to make ringtones from the songs on their iPhone have been verboten. Exactly “why” has always been up for debate: although Apple did sell ringtones through iTunes, they clearly didn’t mind users rolling their own, as evidenced by GarageBand’s Export Ringtone feature. Whatever the reason, though, it was plenty hard to sneak a ringtone maker by Apple up until recently. Since the publication of Apple’s App Store Review Guidelines, though, no less than five ringtone makers have gone live on iTunes… seemingly ending the arbitrary blacklisting.

If you’ve ever wondered what killed off AT&T’s unlimited bandwidth plans, look no further than the App Store.

The study was performed by Finnish analytics company Zokem, which analyzed the mobile web usage of over 10,000 smartphone users across 6.5 million sessions in sixteen countries over the past year.

What Zokem found was that while a smartphone’s mobile browser — Safari, in the case of the iPhone — is still the biggest bandwidth hog on most smartphones, apps are now taking up 50% of mobile data volume. Predictably, the most popular apps across all smartphones are Facebook and Twitter.

Keep in mind that this study was not aimed at any particular platform, so iPhone users were lumped in with Android, Palm and Windows Mobile customers as well. Given how well-developed the iPhone’s App Store is compared to its competitors equivalent marketplaces, though, I wouldn’t be surprised if iOS device users use up an even larger percentage of mobile data through apps. At the end of the day, though, the disparity between app and browser usage is only going to get more profound as more media — and perhaps iTunes itself — enters the cloud.

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Whether Infinite Lives’ forthcoming Contra-inspired shooter Moral Decay gets pushed live on the App Store has a lot to do with how Apple’s reviewers decided to view the game’s central protagonist…. a bearded man in sandals and Messianic robes who can fly on a rainbow, shouts “Oh my father!” when he’s shot and spends most of the game using an AK-47 to transmutate a constabulary of sinners as multivariate as sumo wrestlers, extraterrestrials and Satan into big, spattering chunks of gelatinous gore.

Here’s the question: will Apple’s reviewers subscribe to Infinite Lives‘ pretense that their protagonist is, in fact, an unassuming dude by the name of Christ T? Or will they decide that Chris bears an uncanny resemblance to Jesus Christ of Nazareth and should therefore be censored based upon the sheer principle of the thing?

My guess is the latter, in which case I hope Infinite Lives quickly gets a Cydia release: as long as you like your gaming violent, full of chiptunes and almost panoffensive in its 8-bit religious sensibilities, this looks like a hella fun game.

[via Pocket Gamer]

Currently, Apple makes it extraordinarily easy to squat on a great app name, even if you don’t have a great app to go with it. Just pay them the standard $99 developer’s fee and reserve your perfect app name for as long as you want it, with about as much ease as registering that mot juste domain through GoDaddy.

Obviously, it’s not an ideal system, in that it practically encourages squatters to sit on great names that other app developers with real software to show for their ideas can use. Luckily, it seems like Apple is now ready to crack down on App Store squatters with a new set of rules aimed at discouraging the practice.

Here’s what the new policy looks like: you can still stake a claim to an App Name, but you need to produce a binary to show for it within 90 days. Otherwise, Apple will send you a nastygram, and give you another month to get cracking on your app: if those thirty days pass without any software to show, your claim will be deleted.

It’s a better system than the one currently in place, sure, but it’s still pretty easy to get around: any old fart, flashlight or soundboard app can be submitted as the binary, with no actual pressure on the developer to actually publish it to iTunes. Still, at least that makes remedial iOS programming chops a prerequisite for App Store squatting, which is surely a higher barrier to entry than $99.

This weeks must-have iOS apps include Nike’s latest to help you track your run stats, professional HTML emails on your iPhone with MarkdownMail, quick and easy invoice creation for your business, and AppShopper’s new app that helps you keep track of the App Store.

Check out a few of our favorite apps from the past week after the break!

Last year, Apple pulled Google Voice’s official application from the App Store without either ceremony or explanation. The move always seemed pretty suspect, and intended more to protect the interests of AT&T than iOS users, but it seems that there is good news on the horizon: Google Voice is likely heading back to the App Store.

According to the developer of the third-party Google Voice application GV Mobile, he emailed Apple’s approval board after the release of yesterday’s App Store guidelines, pointing out there seemed to be no provision at all explaining a Google Voice ban, and asking what the chances were of getting his app reinstated. Apparently, the response was encouraging, and Kovacs was led to believe that if he resubmitted his app, it would likely be improved.

On Google’s part, they say they have nothing to announce at this time, but if third–party Google Voice applications start getting approved again, it’s very likely the official app will soon possible. Let’s hope that Kovac’s exchange wasn’t a fluke and Apple has come around on its senseless ban against Voice once and for all.

Rockstar Games’ superb iOS entry into their infamous Grand Theft Auto series has finally hit the iPad with Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars HD, a native port that improves the already superlative game’s lighting, polygon counts and even the games’ already impressive explosions.

The biggest advantage, though, is the controls: while an up-sampled Chinatown Wars was technically playable (if ugly) before, the control scheme really needed some tweaking for more adept thumb control. The new iPad accomplishes that quite nicely.

Ultimately, it’s a fine update… but it’s hard to recommend because it’s not a universal app. Instead, Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars HD is a whole new $9.99 to spend on a game you probably already own, if you were interested at all to begin with, on the iPhone, Nintendo DS and Sony PSP. If this is your first go at the title, though, Chinatown Wars is an easy recommendation: it’s one of the best games on the App Store.

iOS 4.1 is now live, and along with the much anticipated software update comes Game Center, Apple’s new Xbox-Live-like gaming service that brings officially sanctioned achievements and multiplayer matchmaking to supported iPhones and iPod Touches.

Game Center seems promising, but unfortunately, it’s been hard to figure out exactly what games have Game Center support and which ones don’t… making early testing of the service frustrating. To make things easier, Apple has just updated the App Store with a dedicated Game Center section, highlighting all of the apps that have baked in Game Center support so far.

Unfortunately, most of the games currently on display are a little lackluster, with Flight Control, Fieldrunners and Zen Bound 2 being the real standouts… but hopefully that will change sooner rather than later.

The popular open-source media player VLC is headed to an iPad near you thanks to App Store developer Applidium… and while it’s currently waiting for approval, there’s every indication that this time, Apple will let it through.

That wouldn’t have been the case a few months ago: Apple had tended to reject media playing apps from the App Store for “duplicating functionality.” This was an extraordinary headache for individuals who wanted to watch media on their iOS devices without first undergoing the cumbersome conversion process to QuickTime compatible MP4.

Recently, though, that’s started to change, with Apple approving more universal media-playing apps like OPlayer and CineXPlayer. If the new VLC is subject to the same standards, it should have no problem getting through the approval process.

Let’s keep our fingers crossed that it does. VLC has long obviated QuickTime on my Mac. I’m ready to let it do the same for my iPad as well.

Nike has released its Nike+ GPS app in to the App Store this morning, and it allows users with a GPS enabled device to track their runs without the $19 Nike+ shoe sensor accessory. Record your pace, distance and the route you ran using just your device’s built-in GPS and accelerometer.

It’s a $1.99 app and it does a whole lot of impressive stuff: motivational messages from Nike’s top athletes aim to push you further to improve your workout and reach your goals, while your personalized ‘PowerSong’ is designed to give you that extra boost.

Voice feedback as you run to tells you how you’re doing and when you’ve finished, you can upload your stats to your Nikeplus.com account (free) to compete with friends, join challenges, set goals and connect with the rest of the Nike+ community.

At just $1.99, the athletes among you will save themselves a small fortune by not having to fork out for the shoe sensor running accessory.

Nike+ GPS is compatible with the iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4 and the iPod Touch (2nd generation and above), running iOS 4.0. Get it in the App Store here.

The lack of an official, native version of the Twitter client for the iPad has been a puzzling omission, but now the big blue bird has set things right, having pushed their native iPad app to iTunes.

I haven’t had a chance to play with it, but it seems that a big part of the native client’s delay was because Twitter had big ideas for the app, grafting a truly unique (and, perhaps, a bit quirky) interface on top.

Gizmodo’s Matt Buchanan explains the new interface:

The interface starts out straightforward, like a simple cross between the Tweetie for Mac and the iPhone app. But Twitter for iPad is actually a bit more complicated than it lets on—it’s the most complex of the three. Rather than sticking with the iPad’s standard split-pane views, like in Mail, Twitter is kind of like its own desktop environment, with overlapping, stacked panes that move from left to right. So, on the far left, you’ve got the main control panel, like Tweetie for Mac, which is the bottom pane. To the right of that, and on top of it, you’ve got the tweet list—either the main feed, mentions or direct messages. Whenever you touch on a tweet, a third pane opens to the right, on top of the other two. If there’s a link in the tweet, it’ll open the browser. If not, it’ll open that person’s somebody’s profile. (And if you type a direct message, that’s layered on top of everything else via a popover, for four total layers.) You can switch back to the main tweet list or control pane by touching it, and it’ll load browser pages in the background while you browse through other tweets. It can get cluttered quickly if you’re opening sub-menus and other things—at the same time, it gives you a lot of flexibility.

Buchanan ultimately finds the new interface bold, but quirky, but Techcrunch’s MC Siegler declares it a triumph, announcing that it completely and totally obviates not only any other Twitter app out there, but Twitter’s own website. Then again, I thought pretty much any Twitter client had killed the need to visit Twitter.com over a year ago.

Twitter for iPad is a free download, and it’s available now on iTunes

OPlayer, from olimsoft, is an iOS application for both iPhone/iPod Touch and iPad, that claims to boost your device’s media capabilities by allowing playback of a huge list of audio and video file formats.

The list of supported formats is pretty impressive, and will save you a great deal of effort if you often find yourself having to convert movies to watch on your device while you’re on the move. A fairly big video file can take a while to convert and it’s not the most exciting of tasks. But with OPlayer conversion isn’t needed – simply transfer your media to your device.

The full list of supported formats includes MP3, WMA, RM, AAC, WMV, AVI, MKV, RMVB, XVID, MP4, MOV, 3GP and MPG.

You can transfer files to your device using the File Sharing feature within iTunes or you can download them using the built-in browser from your computer, from the internet or from an FTP server. It’s also possible to stream media to your device over Wi-Fi and 3G.

The release of OPlayer, and of CineXPlayer last week, in to the App Store certainly suggests that Apple is relaxing some of its restrictions on app approvals, most likely in a bid to discourage users from jailbreaking their devices. Will this open the doors for other third-party media players?

Get OPlayer for your iPhone & iPod Touch from the App Store here, or get the HD version for your iPad here.

With hundreds of thousands of applications and games already in the App Store, and more and more added daily, it’s often hard to notice some of the great apps that are available for your iOS device. That’s where Cult of Mac’s weekly must-have shortlist comes in: we’ll compile a list at the end of each week to showcase a few of our favorites and pick out the best of the bunch. Check out this week’s after the break!

In a surprise move, Apple has today approved CineXPlayer for the iPad, which is a free application that allows you to watch Xvid movies on your device.

Great news for those of you out there with a collection of Xvid video files you would previously have had to convert before you could watch on your iPad, but is this just another app that’s temporarily slipped through Apple’s net? Apple doesn’t normally approve apps of this kind for the App Store and famously stands by the MPEG-4 and H.264 formats, brushing other formats aside.

It could mean, of course, that in an attempt to deter us from jailbreaking our devices, Apple is beginning to loosen up on its strict control of the App Store approval process. Many applications have passed Apple’s approval process, however, only to be withdrawn from the App Store hours later. And I get the feeling CineXPlayer will be next on the list.

Only time will tell whether CineXPlayer remains in the App Store or whether it will soon be pulled, but I’d advise you get your hands on it quick just in case.

Independent app developer Tim Sears has just released his latest creation for iPhone, and if you are a Foursquare user, this is one for you.

Future Checkin utilizes the new background location features available with iOS 4 and allows you to check-in to your favorite, recent or nearby venues without even getting your phone out of your pocket.

To celebrate their 3rd anniversary, Readdle have started a 48-hour sale from today which sees all of their iOS applications reduced to just $0.99. In addition to this massive sale, Readdle are also giving away an iPad to 3 lucky winners who retweet their anniversary message on Twitter.

To be in with a chance of winning, just follow these 3 simple steps:

For more information, visit the Readdle 3 years anniversary page. To get your hands on one of Readdle’s great applications, check out their App Store page.

Archetype, the instantly popular online FPS by Villain that impressed many of us upon its release earlier this month has been pulled from the App Store.

The game’s recent update to version 1.2.1 brought with it several bugs that caused issues when loading on certain devices, and in turn a large number of unhappy customers.

Archetype’s Twitter page confirms that Villain are currently working with Apple to resolve the issue and get Archetype back in to the App Store. One tweet suggests that users with a backup of version 1.05 can continue to use that for the time being:

We’re working with Apple to resolve the problem. 1.05 should work if you have a backup (assuming you downloaded 1.2.1). 

Let us know if you’ve had problems with Archetype and what device you’re using in the comments. We’ll keep you updated on the game’s return.