Namco's net ninjas have silently slipped an iPhone version ofKatamariDamacy (fittingly renamed i Love Katamari – lower-case "i") onto the iTunes App Store (clicking opens iTunes). The latest portable version of the eccentric action game is being sold for $7.99 and, as you'd expect, is mainly controlled using the accelerometer inside the iPhone and iPod Touch. We downloaded the game to take it for a spin tilt.
Apart from some weird hiccups (we wouldn't call them framerate problems since the game, well, freezes momentarily) and some early wrangling with the controls (tilt is used for turning and forwards/backwards movement, touching the left or right side of the screen "strafes") we found it to be an enjoyable pint-sized packaging of one of our favorite games. The art style is well suited to iPhone / iPod Touch – as is its overall pick-up-and-play-anytime nature. Hopefully Namco will push out an update soon to address the initial bugs, and iPhone can continue being "the future of gameplay" in the meantime.
Oh wow, we're embarrassingly excited by this news: Yoot Saito is working on what appears to be a reworked version of Seaman 2 for the iPhone called Gabo. Though it's only headed to Japan at the moment, a worldwide release seems to be in the cards, judging from a shoddy translation of Saito's blog. The only bad news is we'll have to remember for 364 days to give thanks for the universe's kindness.
Though there doesn't seem to be any voice recognition in Gabo, what Saito's currently showing off (in a video you can see after the break) looks just delightful.
Taking a break from merely educating the world about bees with tiny radios and environmental dangers, National Geographic has announced that it is getting into the video game biz. The educational institution has formed a new game division shockingly called National Geographic Games, which will be focused on delivering educational titles across all platforms, including PCs, consoles and handhelds.
Some early fruits of this venture have already fallen from the tree, including Herod's Lost Tomb on the iPhone, as well as Namco Bandai'sNational Geographic: Panda for the DS. The division is also working with Sony on National Geographic: Africa, with future projects including Rain Forests and Greencity also in the works. The division describes each of these efforts as offering "entertainment with substance," though whether or not that will keep players from tuning out after they get bored of ogling topless natives remains to be seen.
We gamers tend to cheer getting things cheaply (to say nothing of free) but Pocket Gamer UK has a new piece lamenting that discounted games are choking the life out of the iPhone. Developers can't afford to spend a lot of time and money on a title, they argue, because they can't compete with the many, many 99-cent games on Apple's store.
PG insists that $9.99 entries like Super Monkey Ball aren't the answer, but calls for more leadership from Apple, something that, so far, the company has been unwilling to provide. Have you iPhone owners out there had much trouble separating the wheat from the chaff?
For players who wrestle with the virtual greens, Electronic Arts has announced a way to better your game while on the go. The newly launched mobile version of Tiger Woods PGA Tour 09 includes a feature called Console Boost, which (as you might have guessed from the all-too-descriptive title) gives Xbox 360 and PS3 players a stat hike in EA's annual trip to the links.
Explains EA Mobile exec Adam Sussman, Console Boost "enables players to improve the skill level of their console character" by storing their mobile triumphs to their online EA account. Depending on the skill level completed in the mobile version, players will see their home version's stats likewise improved, hopefully ensuring a little more time on the fairway and a little less time fishing balls out of water hazards.
We've seen the iPhone used for a great deal of useless enterprises -- the drinking of virtual beers, the swinging of virtual lightsabers, the placing of actual telephone calls to other people, etc. However, a new application from Smule serves a rather legendary purpose -- the salvation of Hyrule. Yes, by downloading the Smule Ocarina (now available on the iTunes App Store for $0.99), users can either travel seven years into the future to thwart the plans of an evil dictator, or three days into the past to prevent a lunar catastrophe.
Two demo videos of the iOcarina are posted after the break. The first shows a man blowing his way through the Legend of Zelda theme song. The second, when played in reverse, reveals hidden Satanist propaganda.
Electronic Arts has answered the call for more games on Google's Android mobile device platform – i.e. the T-Mobile G1 – with a version of Tetris now available for download from the EA Mobile site. The game is selling for $7.99. It will be followed next month by Bejeweled and Monopoly: Here & Now Edition.
In an official release, EA Mobile America and Asia publishing veep Adam Sussman calls Android an "exciting new platform" and says that the division has "more games in development" beyond the three revealed today. Looking at its catalog of iPhone / iPod Touch games, it's probably safe to expect some variation of Spore and Scrabble to be in the bunch.
Shouldn't a game about a serial killer ... killer be on gaming platforms other than the iPhone? That's what we were thinking when Marc Ecko made that surprise announcement at this year's Comic Con. Well, looks like the upcoming Dexter game is expanding to at least one other platform besides Apple's touch device: the PC.
A Dexter-themed party held by Marc Ecko Entertainment gave us an opportunity to talk with Ecko's creative VP, Marc Fernandez, and Phil Hall, production VP at developer Icarus Studios. The two confirmed their plans to bring Showtime's lovable serial killer to other platforms, provided they find success (and money) with their upcoming PC/iPhone release. We're sure fans of the show won't mind playing a Dexter game on their Xbox 360s.
While no gameplay footage was available at the event, we did get to see some renders taken from the iPhone version of the game (pictured above). The environments look very impressive, and remind us how powerful the iPhone truly is. However, without a real gameplay demonstration, we remain skeptical that the iPhone can do justice to the Dexter franchise.
As iPhone users have known for a while now, there's nothing more satisfying than staring into your handset's screen and ... seeing that your friends are at home, playing video games? For those who roll with a Crackberry Blackberry and simply must keep tabs on their friends' Gamerscores at all times, Juan Xavier Larrea has developed the free Xberry Live.
Available via this link, the app functions much like Microsoft's own web-based friends list, displaying Gamertags, status, and Gamerscores along with a Gamercard sub-screen with icons representing your friends' most recently played games. Friends must be added manually for the time being ... which is fine, unless you have a maxed-out list.
Xberry Live has been tested and works on Blackberry 81xx, 83xx, 87xx, 88xx, and 9000 handsets, and requires OS 4.2.1. or higher. No word on whether it (or similar apps) will experience any problems when the New Xbox Experience launches November 19.
Valve has done pretty well for itself with its digital distribution service Steam and it seems other companies want in on the easy money to be had. Take software developers Level-5 (Rogue Galaxy, Professor Layton) for example who'll be pumping out their own digital downloads with a little something called ROID. Level-5's ROID service targets both PC and Mobile gaming and will launch for Japan in April 2009.
What's most interesting about this service is that Level-5 currently doesn't have any PC-developed or Mobile-developed games in their portfolio. Does this mean they'll be porting some of their older games like Dark Cloud to the PC? Or, are they going to make all new IP in support of the service? While the answer to those questions won't pop up just yet, we do have a little bit more on ROID you can check out. You can distract yourself with photos of the ROID mascot (which is apparently a console transformer) in our gallery below. Also, you can head over to the official website here.
Intent on making Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords impossible to avoid regardless of your platform preferences (seriously: DS, PSP, Xbox Live Arcade, Windows, Mac OS X, Wii, PlayStation 2, mobile phones), D3Publisher has announced the puzzle phenomenon will be its very first foray into the wide, wide world of iPhone apps.
Having proven their chops getting things to run on Apple platforms with Cider, the alchemists at TransGaming will be responsible for the iPhone port, bringing all the match-three slash RPG gameplay you know and love to the App Store "this fall."
Beware citizens, for it would appear that the T-Virus has mutated, and has now taken to resurrecting not only the recently deceased, but also mobile platforms thought long since dead. Or at the very least irrelevant. Gamasutra reports that Capcom is bringing a game based on its upcoming CGI flick, Resident Evil: Degeneration, to Nokia's N-Gage service, which (re)launched earlier this year and is available on multiple Nokia smartphones.
According to the report, the movie tie-in will feature two separate modes of play and 3D graphics designed to both show off the platform's capabilities and illustrate Capcom's "dedication to N-Gage," a fascination we imagine will blur the line between devotion and necrophilia when the title launches later this year.
All right, kiddies, we know all of you out there have dutifully replaced your DS with a gaming-powered iPhone 2.0, but with all that gaming power comes the responsibility to be careful. Thus, you should all be on the lookout for a new Windows virus masquerading as apparently popular iPhone game Penguin Panic.
According to Sophos, the computer-controlling Trojan shows up as a zipped attachment to an e-mail with a subject like "Virtual iPhone games!" or "Apple: The most popular game!" Ironically, it seems the virus won't actually infect your iPhone or any Mac-based computers. It also seems incapable of infecting other portable gaming systems, which should be a relief to those of you still living in the past with those long-defunct platforms.
During his AGDC keynote,Deus Ex lead designer (and outspoken critic of Midway's BlackSite: Area 51), Harvey Smith, revealed that he's at work on a new FPS-RPG for his current employer, Arkane Studios (Dark Messiah of Might & Magic). The studio is currently working in conjunction with Valve on The Crossing, a first-person "crossplayer" FPS, but Smith's reference to role-playing (and lack of reference to The Crossing) indicates an all-new project.
Smith said that his design focus "is very much around games like Deus Ex," although his other keynote revelation – a "casual strategy game" for iPhone – shows that he's open to dabbling. Unless, of course, it's a casual Deus Ex universe strategy title ... super-deformed art style and everything.
EA announced today that it will create mobile versions of financially beleaguered Eidos Interactive's franchises. EA now holds the licenses to "all existing mobile channels and devices" for Tomb Raider Underworld, Just Cause 2, California Games X and Minesweeper. EA has the option of doing mobile versions of most Eidos games for the next three years.
The Tomb Raider and Just Cause titles will be based off the upcoming sequels, while California Games X will be a "brand new version" of the '87 Commodore 64 game (hacky sack, y'all!). Of course, Minesweeper is the game which has been packaged with Windows since 1992.
