Filed under: Gaming, Odds and ends, Freeware, iPhone, App Store, iPod touch
Normally we’d just send out a tweet about this (that’s usually what we do with free app deals, so if you’re not one of the almost 40,000 people following us yet, you definitely should be), but this is a good one, and it’s a holiday, so we wanted to make sure you knew. Sega is feeling particularly generous this weekend, so they’re giving away free copies of their Columns Deluxe, a port of the old Genesis game, for the iPhone. The game is a pretty straightforward port — it doesn’t have any extras, and the accelerometer controls are a little tacked on from what we hear, but if you like the puzzler gameplay of Columns, and you should, it’s a fun one to pull up for a few minutes at a time.
Plus, it’s free — from July 3rd to Monday, July 6th, Sega says it’ll be on sale for the low price of nothing at all. Sounds good to us — sit back, put a few brats and burgers on the grill, grab a Corona (and lime, of course), and enjoy some old-school dropping block gameplay for no money at all.
TUAWSega giving away Columns on iPhone for free all this weekend originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 03 Jul 2009 19:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Filed under: Hardware, Software, Hacks, iPhone
It’s impossible not to love a blog post that begins, “I found a way to remote control my R2D2 with an iPhone.”
The video above shows the author, ggpipe, using the iPhone’s accelerometer to control R2’s dome. Pretty cool. In the future, he plans to use the phone to send text to R2’s logic displays. We love it and can’t wait to see a fully assembled, iPhone-powered R2D2!
It’s great to see people extending the iPhone’s capabilities, and homegrown remotes are a cool choice. A couple of weeks ago, we posted a story about a guy who turned his iPhone into an R/C aircraft controller, and last year we saw Delphi’s Wireless Vehicle Access software that lets you control many of your car’s functions. Keep up the good work, everyone!
[Via Rick Yaeger]
TUAWiPhone-controlled R2D2 originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 12 May 2009 23:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Filed under: Odds and ends, Found Footage, iPhone
Take one radio-controlled airplane or helicopter, add a Wi-Fi router and some custom software, then mix in an iPhone’s accelerometer and touch interface. What do you get? An R/C aircraft controller.
Joshua Ziering loves to fly radio-controlled ‘copters and planes, and he describes exactly how he went about developing an app and the associated hardware to control their flight by tilting his iPhone and moving throttle controls on the screen in a post on his blog. Check it all out in the video below.
Gary Z. at MacMost.com — thanks for the tip!
TUAWFound Footage: Controlling radio control aircraft with an iPhone originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sat, 02 May 2009 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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[Via Make]
Continue reading Vinyl record iPod touch app gives you the spins
Filed under: Cellphones
Vinyl record iPod touch app gives you the spins originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 28 Apr 2009 20:36:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Galaga seems like an easy fit for the iPhone and iPod touch, but it often seems as if the easy ports are often the ones that get messed with. I’m happy to report that Galaga Remix does a great job of keeping what was great about the original, while adding updates that don’t ruin the experience.
You can use the accelerometer and tilt the hardware to move your ship, or you can use the slider or a set of arrow keys to move back and forth. Both button-based approaches work fine, although the tilt functionality felt like a waste of time. Shooting is done by tapping a button on the right-hand side of the screen. You fire up at the enemies that zoom in and try to take you out, and every five stages you get to fight a boss in the Remix mode. The original game is, of course, the original game.
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Filed under: iPhone, App Store, iPod touch, App Review
Got a hankering to fly through some pylons? Red Bull Air Race World Championship Lite Version [App Store link] might be just the ticket. The $0.99US game puts you in air races in either San Diego or Abu Dhabi. Red Bull Air Race is not a flight simulator like X-Plane, but more of an arcade game. It uses the iPhone accelerometer for steering. and is pretty responsive. The course, said to be an accurate representation of the real locations, is rendered in nice 3D. On-screen markers point you in the right direction if you get off course. You will.
Flying the race is a good challenge, and happily you can choose to turn off the background music if you want to. You can choose a cockpit eye view, or follow along behind your plane.
In the hangar you can chose from 2 planes to fly, but you have no options to configure them further. An options screen allows you to change the volume, the vibration and sensitivity of the controls. There is also a calibration screen if things get off a bit.
The game is the lite version, with a more full-featured version coming. It runs on both the iPhone and the iPod touch.
My only complaint is that the game has a slow load time, made even slower by seeing an animated logo from the developers, then a video from a real race. It takes about a minute from the time you launch the app until you are flying. As they used to say around the flight schools, ‘Got time to spare, go by air.’
Screen shots are here:
Gallery: Red Bull Air Race World Championship
TUAWRed Bull Air Racing on the iPhone originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 17 Apr 2009 16:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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