Monthly Archives: October 2008
First Look: Tap Tap Revenge Nine Inch Nails Edition
If you enjoy Tap Tap Revenge and you’re a fan of Nine Inch Nails, you’re in luck. Tapulous has released Tap Tap Revenge Nine Inch Nails Edition (iTunes link). Featuring 13 tracks picked by NIN frontman Trent Reznor, it’s the first game on the iPhone that had my wife playing through toothbrushing time with the kids. After getting the device back I discovered there’s a giveaway that you enter when you post scores of 150,000 or higher online. The prize? A signed Les Paul guitar and tickets to the NIN show of your choice.
Softbank Plans to Bring Live TV to iPhone Users in Japan via $100 TV-Tuner Card
Softbank has announced that it will be selling a TV-Tuner card add-on for iPhone 3G later this year to address a widely-publicized feature omission for iPhone users in Japan.
The add-on TV-Tuner card will also serve as an extended battery pack for the iPhone.
A handful of Halloween for your iPhone or iPod touch
Ready for Halloween on your iPhone? The App Store provides a quick fix for trick-or-treaters, and the offerings provide a little of each category. I happened to grab a random assortment of freebies (several were temporarily free) themed around Halloween. Here’s a quick review of each. Hit the gallery for sample screens. All app names are iTunes links.
Bust-a-spook
A simple tap-and-score game using some gradient-heavy backgrounds and simplistic artwork to keep you entertained. The audio, like most of the Halloween-themed apps, is appropriately annoying. I found this one to be too hard and pointless to play with it long. When ghosts, pumpkins or bats are “busted” they grow larger and fade away. That’s really about it, except for choosing levels of difficulty. Price: $.99
Carve3D
Clever way to carve a 3D pumpkin on the iPhone. You swap between “rotate” and “carve” modes and carve into the pumpkin by tapping corners. A final tap near the first point closes the loop and carves a hole in the geometry. As an interesting touch, the light actually shines through the geometry, so you can project the face you carve, though getting the camera in a good spot is tough. Price: $.99
Square Enix producing a Final Fantasy title for the iPhone
Square Enix, the producers of heavyweight game franchises such as Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest, are reported by Kotaku to be working on an iPhone game, titled Crystal Defenders.
Unlike fully fledged Final Fantasy games, Crystal Defenders will not be an RPG, but rather a “map-based defence simulation” game. The gameplay will focus on protecting a Crystal from waves of monsters using the tactical placement of units with different attributes and abilities, with many enemies, unit upgrades, and over 300 maps to play. Furthermore, Square Enix say they have designed this game with short sessions of play in mind.
One odd note is the format of current screenshots of the game, which have a square format, rather than the current aspect of the iPhone’s 320 x 240 screen.
Gameboy theme for iPhone
We love mods, and this one is on our short list. iGameboy is a theme mod for jailbroken iPhones running springboard. There’s both a button and a full-screen version (I’m partial to the button theme myself). As of this writing, the author, Rob Sheridan, has produced 45 icons to accompany the theme, so chances are your apps are included.
The full download even includes instructions and basic files for making your own icons. Nice work, Rob! We love it.