Apple’s current “hobby” — also known as Apple TV — doesn’t tell us much about Apple’s future plans for the living room.
It’s a good product under the right circumstances. But five years from now, living rooms are going to be transformed by all-encompassing systems that turn TVs into video phones, gaming systems, home automation control centers and artificial intelligence assistants.
Does Apple have what it takes to compete in the living room?
Lucky Frame made one of my favorite games on iOS ever, Pugs Luv Beats. It’s no surprise, given the game’s focus on my favorite dogs of all time and a wicked-cool beat-making mechanic, adorable graphics, and a spin-off app, Pug Synth. They put out Bad Hotel, next, a quirky and innovative take on the castle defense genre that has the games studio’s signature graphic style and musical theme.
Now they’re taking a similar electronica vibe and marrying it with a two-button, arcade-style side-scrolling game on iOS called Wave Trip. And it looks a beaut.
Mike Schramm writes about technology and games for Joystiq and TUAW during the week. He’s also a pretty decent guy. He also finds it fun to code on the weekends. I know, it makes no sense to me, either.
Schramm has just released his second iOS game to the iTunes app store, and it’s called Benediction. Actually, the full name is Benediction – a game by Mike Schramm, a name most likely necessitated by the many other apps out there with a version of the word ‘benediction’ in the title.
Benediction has three things going for it. Those three things got me to download the game, then play the game, then continue playing the game until I was forced to set my iPhone down and actually do some work. This is a great game, and you’ll be sad if you don’t check it out for yourself.
The developers at Pangalore have released a new game for iOS and Facebook that combines an action RPG with a city building sim. The hybrid game is free to download and play on iOS, and it connects with the Facebook game of the same name.
It’s good looking, plays well, and scratches that free-to-play city building/simulation itch we all seem to have these days. You can build your own fantasy medieval kindgom, cultivate crops, craft items and engage in quests. You can play via your web browser on your Mac via Facebook, and then on your iPad 2 or newer, including the iPad mini, iPhone 4 or newer, or iPod touch 4th Generation device. It’ll be coming to Android soon, as well.
You only have to use Facebook if you want to be able to play on the web; there are Game Center and single player options as well.
Borderlands 2, one of the most anticipated games to hit consoles and the PC this year is now coming to the Mac. The fact that it’ll be available for download two months after the game saw its main release speaks volumes about the attention the Mac gaming market is beginning to get. More importantly though, it means Mac gamers can get ready to blast their pants off this holiday season.
The year was 1983. Arcades were the primary way I played video games, unless you count the Magnavox Odyssey pong clone sitting on our TV at home. I didn’t.
I remember stepping into the local arcade, a pocket full of quarters, and seeing this…amazing game. It was like a animated movie! The characters moved fluidly! I stepped forward.
Dragon’s Lair had my entire pocket of quarters within 30 minutes.
Now we can all relive the glory without the quarters via the Mac, as Dragon’s Lair comes out for the Mac platform tomorrow, November 8, 2012 for $9.99.
The world converges yet again as Microsoft has just updated its My Xbox app, which released last December, giving it a new name to boot. SmartGlass has been the talk of the gaming community since E3 this past summer, as the technology and gaming giant launched its intitiative to rule your living room using the devices you already have; namely, your iPad, iPhone, or Android device.
Think your new iPad mini’s the perfect tablet for gaming on the go? Well it may have some stiff competition ahead. Microsoft is said to be secretly planning a 7-inch “Xbox Surface” tablet that will be developed specifically for touch-based gaming. The slate is expected to make its debut before Microsoft announces the Xbox 720.
Atari’s released a remake of its 1978 home console classic, Outlaw, which actually saw first life as a light gun game in arcades as early as 1976. Well, Flying Wisdom Studios has developed a new version for the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad that looks a whole lot better than the original.
Released just last week, the new iOS version of Outlaw eschews the “pong-with-cowboys” style of gaming for a new art style that actually looks like, well, art. It’s still a 2D affair, with various denizens of the wild west sliding across the screen in a virtual shooting gallery.
This week’s must-have games roundup kicks off with the latest Need for Speed title from EA games, which is quite possibly the best arcade racing game available on iOS right now. We also have an excellent dual-stick shooter from Gameloft, Disney’s Wreck-it Ralph, and more.
Steve Jackson (not the designer of Munchkin card games, sorry) started out writing an adventure gamebook for Penguin back in 1983. As it’s coming up on the 30th anniversary of his four-book Sorcery! series, Jackson decided to bring the proto-RPG to the modern age by teaming up with development studio Inkle and releasing four new iOS gamebook apps for iPhone and iPad.
With Halloween almost upon us, what better way to celebrate than to scare yourself silly with some of the most terrifying games the App Store has to offer? We’ve put together a selection of the best horror titles that will have you watching your back this October 31, with some big hits like Walking Dead, Rage HD, Dead Space, and more.
Halloween, or All Hallows’ Eve, has a tradition stretching back to the 15th century and earlier, though it is currently a more secular holiday, with children and the young at heart dressing up as everything from scary ghouls and monsters to the more tame video game characters or that bane of every feminist out there, the “sexy” nurse/librarian/pikachu/what have you.
Regardless of how you celebrate, though, we thought you’d enjoy this list of the scariest Mac games we could think of, each available to play on current (and some older) Macs just in time for the next couple of creepy weeks.
EA’s much-anticipated Need for Speed Most Wanted makes its debut on iOS today, and it’s an instant purchase if you’re into arcade racing games. It features some of the hottest super cars money can buy, which you’ll use to outrun the cops in some of the most dangerous Need for Speed pursuits you’ve every experienced. All while enjoying console-quality visuals that will blow you away.
Square Enix has revealed that it may reconsider its pricing structure for mobile games following critical feedback from users in Western countries. While the Japanese developer is well-known among iOS users for its awesome RPGs, such as Final Fantasy and Chaos Rings, it’s also famous for its hefty price tags, which can often be as much as $18 per title.
When console-quality games are going for less then $5 these days, those prices are a big problem for some.
After we reported on Steam’s new Big Picture beta coming to the Mac, we got a reader question that I figured it’d be good to write a tip on.
Playing games on your Mac is great fun of course, and all of them use the keyboard and/or mouse to control the games being played. However, with AirPlay mirroring, HDMI cable support, and a bunch of new games showing up for the Mac platform along their Windows brethren, there are times when a console style controller is a better alternative. Being able to sit on the couch and play our favorite Mac games has a lot to recommend it, and using an Xbox controller is fairly easy to set up.
Here’s how.
Ah, the ’80s — back when a Tab was something to drink, not deride, and Members Only wasn’t exactly an exclusive club. Reliving (or living, for those born after 1979) those days is as easy as tracking down a six-pack of Tab on the Internet, or purchasing this purple number.
Those who’d rather not deal with their friends’ hysterical laughter or horribly wilted taste buds can simply download a faithful recreation of DONKEY.BAS, probably the best thing Bill Gates ever made, onto their iPad or iPhone.
The iMpulse Game controller, now with eight days left in its Kickstarter campaign, was already planned to be a sleek little keychain-sized physical game controller. Compatible with iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, and various Android devices, the iMpulse is getting an update to make it 20% thinner, as well as adding shoulder buttons on the bottom of the device.
For a pledge of $25 plus shipping, you can get one of these cute, sleek gaming controllers with a serious d-pad and shoulder buttons sent to your address. There are other levels of reward, as well, including a T-Shirt, dual controllers, fancy metal plating, and the like.
Iceberg Interactive and Kukouri Entertainment announced today an update to adorable little war game, Tiny Troopers, in the guise of a zombie apocalypse. The update comes via Steam to the Mac and PC version, bringing endless waves of brain munching zombies and undead chickens. There will be special air-drops of new special zombie-killing weaponry dropped to lay waste to the zombie hordes, and special forces troopers to take the undead down. There’ll even be special zombies, in case the normal ones just aren’t scary enough.
It’s not a whole lot to go by, but this image surfaced on the Dead Trigger Facebook page, teasing the existence of a Halloween update for the Android and iOS zombie shooter, Dead Trigger. Will you be fighting pumpkin-head zombies?
Apple Head of Marketing, Phil Schiller, took the stage today and asked a very important question. “What does the iPad mini do that the iPad doesn’t already do?” he wondered aloud.
His answer was only half as good – “It can fit in one hand.” Here at Cult of Mac, however, we think that’s only part of the story. The fact is that Apple’s newest, smallest, thinnest iPad makes a perfect gaming controller.
Fieldrunners 2 is one of my favorite iOS games, hands down. Developer Subatomic Studios has taken the tower defense genere to a new level with this sequel to their popular and multi-platform game, Fieldrunners. This second game was released in July of this year, almost 4 years after the first iteration came out on iOS, then Mac.
Today, the studio announced that they’ve added in-app purchasing to the game, something many games come with from the start. Those games, however, typically come at no up-front cost. Fieldrunners 2 was released as a premium, paid game, at $2.99 for the iPhone and $7.99 for the iPad version. Why did they add this freemium-style in-app purchasing system to a game that’s already doing well as a paid app?
The fans of the game wanted it.
Kicking off this week’s must-have iOS app is the 1997 violent driving sensation that is Carmageddon. It finally makes its debut on iOS, and it’s an exact port of the original. It’s accompanied by Sonic Jump, Sega’s latest release; Mikey Shorts Halloween, and True Skate.
Telltale Games announced today that iOS users can now download Episode Three of The Walking Dead: The Game, entitled “Long Road Ahead,” to their iPhone or iPad. It’s the third of five episodes in the critically acclaimed series based on Robert Kirkman’s zombie drama, The Walking Dead, which started as an award-winning comic book, then made its way to become a critically-acclaimed television series on AMC.
Although I’ve used a Mac exclusively since 2005, before that, I was a PC guy, which means I have lots of gauzy memories of halcyon days well-spent in front of a menagerie of beige boxes falling backwards in time through a decade of classic PC gaming, starting with the old 8-bit Ultima games and Nethack under DOS and continuing well into the Windows era with games like Grim Fandango, Half-Life, Planescape: Torment and System Shock 2.
I love the Mac, but the one thing I miss about having a PC is easily playing classic PC games without loading them up in Boot Camp or Parallels. Luckily, it looks like that’s about to change, as GOG.com — a digital distributor of classic PC games updated to work on modern machines and distributed without DRM — is now releasing their titles to work on Mac.