iPhone Racing Games

Posted on June 25, 2009 by Multimedia Mike

I wanted to see how racing games played on the iPhone and iPod Touch. To that end, I downloaded and tried out 2 different 99-cent racing titles. The first is Concrete Combat Racing and it loads a curious warning:

Intense gameplay. I’m sure that’s it; not bugs or anything. Anyway, let me see what my notes mention from my earlier encounter with this game… ah, here it is: “don’t like this game at all.”

The point of this game is to select a car for yourself and one for your computer opponent and then the 2 of you roll around the parking lot of infinity. You tilt the unit in different directions to steer the car but it’s very difficult to get used to, especially with another car firing bullets and missiles at you. I eventually gunned it in one direction to try to escape. But this parking lot just went on forever. The UI is also sort of mess with all of its buttons (gas and brake on left; 3 buttons on right; pause button at top). It makes me think that this is where the iPhone’s input limitations are revealed.

According to my other notes, the sound effects are crackly and otherwise unclean, the developers didn’t bother with their own soundtrack at all (probably assuming the player could just pick their own soundtrack from thousands of songs already on the unit), the control buttons don’t always seem to do what they say, and why are they driving on concrete anyway? It’s probably best not to ponder that last question too much but rather to move on to a much better iPhone racing game which is similarly bold enough to name the racing surface in the title…

Asphalt 4: Elite Racer is one in a series of Asphalt racing games that are exclusively developed for assorted handheld systems. It’s really quite fun even if I couldn’t get past the first race, held in Los Angeles:

You can tell it’s L.A. because the car is cruising along the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Err, make that the “Avenue of Fame,” as the game calls it. I suspect Hollywood has some potent intellectual property claims on the real thing. Just as well, though; the walk doesn’t look anything like the real deal.

This game has 3 control schemes to choose from and I experimented with each. The first is to touch the tall screen on either side in order to affect direction. The second is to tilt the screen side to side for steering. The third option has a little steering wheel on the bottom of the touch screen. I thought I would like the accelerometer tilting option the best but I had trouble keeping the car moving in a straight line. Control scheme 1 worked the best for me.

Elite Racer seems to come from that “illegal drag race” sub-genre of racing. You’re trying to force other players to crash while the fuzz is in hot pursuit. In fact, you can actually take down the heat, as I demonstrated here, quite by accident:

Asphalt 4: Elite Racer -- Taking down the law

Another feature of Elite Racer — which I understand is not especially uncommon in these underground-type racers — is the ability to unlock new female companionship as the levels progress.

Asphalt 4: Elite Racer -- Unlocking girls

It’s a tad disturbing, I realize, but it’s apparently a mainstay of the genre, based on this game and some other game trailers I’ve seen. It’s a curious concept — unlocking better women as you gain more skill.

Another facet of the game is automobile customization. I know that this game allows you to change the body color and rims. From what I’ve seen of more powerful underground racers on modern systems, customization is a serious part of the game. And I just realized that male gamers who put any serious effort into virtual automobile customization probably have little cause to ridicule female (or male, for that matter) gamers who get a kick out of dressing up characters in their favorite game franchises.

At the App Store:

At MobyGames:

Bloons, Parachute Panic, and StickWars

Posted on June 24, 2009 by Multimedia Mike

I’m on a real kick with these iPhone games. They’re irresistible for my purposes — inexpensive (I’ve been going for the 99-cent ones), simple, fun, casual games that are easy to write up for entry into MobyGames for cheap contribution points. The iPhone and iPod Touch make it effortless to capture, download, and organize a wide range of representative screenshots; the original cover artwork is trivial to separate from the main application; and the creators typically list their credits somewhere accessible (and there aren’t too many of them, which means that MobyGames gets to have credits for the game record but without too much effort on my part).

Enough about my motivations, let’s check out the games. First, there’s Bloons, a relentlessly colorful game in which a monkey sits atop a floating platform and uses darts to pop balloons. You use the touch screen to configure the velocity vector of the throw in order to pop as many balloons as possible. Sounds easy enough, but there are all kinds of catches, though not in the first level:

The first catch is that you have limited darts. Certain levels have special balloons that give you more darts. Then there are lots of other types of special balloons, such as the one filled with tacks– popping it will pop all of the surrounding balloons. Each level has a minimum number of balloons that must be popped before you are allowed to progress to the next stage.

Most levels beyond the first level have other obstacles, such as walls whose segments will disappear if you sacrifice a dart, walls whose sections are impenetrable by darts, and walls whose segments bounce the darts. This is the level that did me in during my first play sessions:

I like this game; it has the same trajectory/velocity gameplay that I have seen in many other places but with a twist I had not seen before. The only thing that really annoyed me (apart from the confusing difficulty met at only level 9) was that the screen orientation was opposite what I was used to for most landscape uses of the iPod Touch. However, the game was published by an outfit named Ninja Kiwi, a name that implies that they are in the southern hemisphere. Perhaps screen orientations are opposite down there, just like toilet flushes (or not).

Next up is Parachute Panic which features a rather distinctive art style made to look like crude pencil and crayon artwork on a sheet of notebook paper. The game also makes industrious use of the unit’s tall screen.

The parachuters need to land safely on the ships below, which may or may not be stationary. Tap on the ‘chuter to open their chute and swipe the screen in their vicinity in order to manipulate the weather to blow them in one direction or the other. Watch out for the varied threats such as sharks, helicopters, and UFOs.

Parachute Panic also features a curious a capella title song about falling. Why these people are parachuting in such deadly conditions is never really explained, though it could just be that the sharks need to be fed, as evidenced in the game over screen:

The last game is StickWars. Like today’s other 2 games, it is designed expressly for the iPhone’s unique control capabilities (unlike, say, Zenonia which had a console-style control schema overlaid on the screen). StickWars has the player defending a fortress wall from invading hoards using magic, apparently. When the stick figure invaders (those poor stick figures take a lot of abuse in today’s games) come on screen, touch them on the screen and fling them high into the air. That would have to be demoralizing to any advancing army and I’m frankly surprised that they have the courage to keep up the assault, level after level.

This flinging shtick gets old in a hurry so the game designer(s) made the act of flinging the barbarians rather lucrative (I think you know the expression: “Step 1) fling invaders; step 2) ???; step 3: PROFIT!“). With this money in the bank (and earning interest during each round), the player can fix walls, fortify walls, build prisons to hold prisoners rather than killing them outright, and lots of other stuff that I have yet to fully explore.

At the App Store:

At MobyGames:

Zenonia RPG

Posted on June 20, 2009 by Multimedia Mike

After my positive experience with my first-ever iPhone application for my iPod Touch, I started wondering what else was available. I don’t know why, but I wondered if there were actually any role playing games for the iPhone. A tiny bit of searching produced a title named Zenonia.

Not only am I having my first experience with iPhone games, I also recognize that I am really having my first genuine experience with handheld games. I’ve never owned any kind of Nintendo handheld device or any other type of portable gaming device (to be fair, there was that brief affair with the contraption I bought on a plane). I’ve always wondered about the gameplay model for a handheld game– are they strictly meant to be distractions when people are traveling or otherwise on the go? Or do people buy involved games and sit down in their homes to experience them? I guess it’s both, given the success of the form factor and the breadth of games available throughout the years. As for involved RPG games, the Final Fantasy series certainly seems to have thrived on the handheld systems.

So how does this game stack up against other games in the genre? I’m probably not qualified to answer that since I’m not really an connoisseur of the genre. I can tell you that Zenonia seems incredibly story-driven and linear, at least at the outset. It’s busy, yet highly simplistic. There are lots of things happening, but the game always tries to keep you on a single track. It’s almost as though the game is designed to grant the illusion of depth that a full console RPG would provide, yet still allow for abbreviated play sessions throughout a series of boring corporate meetings over several weeks, all without the player necessarily forgetting what has happened so far in the game.

The storyline on offer revolves around the protagonist Regret. Yes, Regret. Everyone in this game has strange names. Lord Virulent is another. I think he is one of the bad guys. According to my screenshots, there is a Lady Charity, Vicious, Sun, Tender, and Billy. A tricky thing about playing these iPhone games is that it doesn’t really lend itself to my usual Gaming Pathology workflow, where I take copious notes in the process of playing. Since I end up playing these games wherever I happen to find myself with my iPod Touch and a few minutes to spare, I don’t often have my note pad with me.

Here is what I remember from the storyline: There was an epic battle between the Good Guys and the Bad Guys. The Bad Guys lost and accidentally dropped a baby near the front lines. The general from the Good army adopts the baby and leaves the army to raise the baby. This baby is you, Regret. Years later, a demon comes and kills the adoptive father. Regret, now 17, sets out on a quest to learn why his father was killed, and whether it was a demon. I don’t think anyone actually saw the murder take place because everyone keeps whispering about whether a demon was involved.

Zenonia -- mini-quest to reclaim carrot cake from slime monsters

But as with any good RPG, Zenonia involves lots of insipid quests. I’ve learned that these are sometimes called FedEx quests since they usually take the form of someone asking you to go fetch them something before they agree to help you advance the storyline to its ultimate conclusion. Quests like reclaiming 5 carrot cakes that some slime monsters just outside of town stole (sounds yummy– do you suppose that the person wants the cakes back just as a matter of principle?). At least it’s good, low-impact practice for combat.

Something that people invariably wonder about an iPhone game: What is the control scheme like? For Zenonia, there is a digital gamepad on the lower left of the screen and a general action button on the lower right. The action button attacks when near a monster and talks when near a person. The combat system consists of repeatedly hitting the action button in the general vicinity of a monster, hitting it most of the time, and occasionally missing; the success or failure of the swing is updated in a status window, as are the creature’s return blows.

There is also the status screen button which takes you to a tabbed window to manage a lot of extra information.

I stipulate that Zenonia has a great challenge to cope with– it needs to provide a lot of functionality, playability and control using a very limited input mechanism (relative to even a classic Gameboy which had a built-in gamepad and 4 other buttons) and everything needs to be very intuitive. It does a pretty good job, though the player probably needs to be familiar with RPGs in general to really get up to speed on this. For the first hour I played this, I was just trying to find an opportunity to save, knowing that if I backed out of the game, I would lose my progress and have to suffer through the story setup again. Eventually, I recognized that I could save absolutely anytime from the status screen.

There is also a good/evil aspect at play, which you can see via the status screen above. It begins at 50/50. I witnessed a battle between a Good character and a Bad character and was given the choice to intervene by helping out the Bad character. I took it and saw my alignment tip severely toward the evil end. Day and night also transpire in this game. These 2 features alone make this the single most advanced RPG I have ever played.

So will I keep playing this game after this MobyGames recon session? Most likely. I mean, it comes with me everywhere and it’s never to difficult too remember where I left off. The status screen helps in this respect since it defines what your current mini-quests are and the map screen lays out the world quite well. For now, I need to figure out how to present all the aspects of this game in a concise MobyGames entry.

A brief tech note about this game: the download weighs in at just under 10 MB and decompressed (did you know that iPhone apps are just standard ZIP files with the extension .ipa? It’s true– just run ‘unzip’ against one), it comes in at 15 MB. I merely point this out as evidence that small, efficient, lightweight programming seems to be making a comeback (notwithstanding the Myst remake for the iPhone which allegedly decompresses to 1.5 GB on the phone, phenomenal considering that all the original versions fit on single CD-ROMs, and that the multimedia compression technology that the game extensively relied upon has significantly improved in the intervening years).

Apple App Store link for Zenonia.

At MobyGames:

Zenonia

Wooden Labyrinth 3D

Posted on June 11, 2009 by Multimedia Mike

Once upon a time in this blog, I was seriously looking forward to playing a game called 3D Marble Flip one evening because it reminded me of a game I had always wanted to play when I was a kid but never had the opportunity. The experience left me disappointed.

Today, I was reading about something called The Apple Design Awards. The “Best iPhone Student App” went to a title named Wooden Labyrinth 3D. Now this is more along the lines of what I was looking for. So I finally took the plunge today into Apple’s App Store — only 11 months after it first opened for business (I’m not an early adopter by any stretch of the imagination) — and made this game my first app purchase for my iPod Touch.

This is actually a marked improvement, both over the previously mentioned computerized version as well as the original wooden version. It’s better than 3D Marble Flip because it actually has some decent physics and the board doesn’t right itself when you discontinue input. In fact, you can’t discontinue input, and that’s what makes this game so compelling and appropriate for the platform– you use the unit’s accelerometer to control the ball, i.e., tilt the iPhone/iPod Touch in order to maneuver the marble.

Wooden Labyrinth 3D -- a more challenging maze

How is this better than the original game? The original game had approximately one difficulty level, if memory serves, and it was quite challenging. This game throws you a few softballs to get acclimated and then ramps up the difficulty (see above screenshot). Further, this game has a nifty jump feature that allows you to overcome low obstacles– just tap the bottom of the unit. Brilliant.

I’m pleased to say that this game earns a rare spot on my Good list.

I’m rather looking forward to checking out some more iPhone/iPod Touch games– it’s a rapidly growing area and plenty of opportunity for MobyGames entry. Further, screenshots are unbelievably easy to capture (hold home button and press the top button; Mac software will automatically offer to download screenshots during the next sync).

Apple App Store link for Wooden Labyrinth 3D

See Also:

3D Marble Flip

At MobyGames:

Wooden Labyrinth 3D

DOS Bonanza

Posted on May 31, 2009 by Multimedia Mike

I took a brief vacation a little over a month ago. It was the kind of vacation where I, you know, actually traveled somewhere that was a significant distance from home. And what did I think to do? Play games, of course. Not all the time, fortunately, but during certain downtime. I took my little ASUS Eee PC 701 loaded up with DOSBox and the ripped ISO images of most every DOS game from my collection still unentered into MobyGames.

Executive Summary: None were good. Surprised?

In 3D Cyberpuck, set in 2212, people have channeled their lust for violence into an ultra-violent version of hockey. The point of the game is to hit the goal but there are also lots of weapons and powerups that come into play.

I scored a goal though I am at a loss to explain how. I used my digital gamepad that I thought to bring along for the trip. However, this game was obviously designed for an analog joystick. If you have ever experienced that kind of mismatch, you know how impossible a game can be.

Next up is Megamaze. This is a game that requires at least 2 players and at most 4, so it’s a little tricky for just one person to try. Actually, it would also be rather difficult for the maximum 4 players to play simultaneously since all 4 are expected to use the same keyboard. The players simply roam around the maze and shoot each other.

The game was made by 2 fairly young-looking programmers, neither of whom took credit for the sound. My notes indicate that the sound was rather lacking (and the sample from the game over screen was clearly taken from “Aliens”). Somehow, I feel I can’t be too hard on the game since I made a similar game around the same time.

I tried Xerix II: The Caverns of Mars which, despite being freely available, is not in MobyGames. Maybe others have tried it but, like me, couldn’t get it to run.

Klondike Moon is one of those games that just goes clear over my head. It has something to do with outer space mining. According to my notes, you win a level when you pay off your debt, exit through the wormhole, and block others from making good on their debts.

The more pages that an instruction manual contains, the quicker I lose interest, unfortunately. I’m not looking forward to combing over the manual again in order to create a satisfactory MobyGames description.

Then there’s Tower of Fear. How old school is this game? Check out the video configuration:

It’s hard to believe this came on a CD-ROM (obviously a re-release). This probably would have been a halfway fun action game except for speed issues; I couldn’t make the game run slow enough. Either that or there were input timing issues so that I couldn’t control the character effectively.

At least Tower of Fear came with some interesting demos. Now this sounds like it would be more up my alley: Barney Bear Goes To Space.

One last game I tried was Absolute Zero, which is already in the database but without any appreciable action screenshots. When I tried to play, I realized that the the contributor who submitted the original screenshots probably encountered the same problem I did: the FMV transition segments ran too slowly. When I say “ran too slowly,” I mean on the order of 1 frame per second rather than, say, 15. I got as far as this news segment setting up the story with the headline, “Security Charged With Brutality.” You’d be angry too if you had to deal with this computer system.

Absolute Zero -- Security charged with brutality

See Also:

I went through this capsule review chore with a bunch of Sega CD games: part 1 and part 2

At MobyGames:

Absolute Zero

Tracer

Posted on May 30, 2009 by Multimedia Mike

I recently hunted down the 1996 CD-ROM title Tracer after I found it mentioned in passing in one of my old multimedia exploration journal entries and noticed that it wasn’t in MobyGames. I haven’t read so much inane, incomprehensible cyber-pap to describe how to play a cyberspace-themed game since Forbes: Corporate Warrior. And when I tried to run one of the 4 accompanying tutorial programs, I wasn’t sure if this message screen was just part of the gimmick:

I mean “Tracer” is supposed to be the name of a dreaded computer virus that can kill a hacker like you, so this might be part of the narrative setup. The year is 2023 and you’re a successful, mercenary hacker, highly reputed in the underground for being able to destroy entire multi-national corporations by sabotaging their computer systems. You do this by entering cyberspace somehow and use a series of code pads in order to forge paths to the data core. After you tap into this latest assignment, your coach/agent/guide artificial intelligence (AI) warns you that this job is a setup and that there is a killer virus on your tail.

It was rather frustrating to keep up with all the jargon in the manual describing navigating through cyberspace. As someone who is well familiar with computer hardware and software, I should probably just “go with it”.

It’s a fortunate thing that I was able to let go and roll with it because I have to tell you: once I got into this game and figured out the gameplay, I discovered one very good game. Not a great game, but a very fun one, nonetheless, and one that immediately earns a spot on my “good” list.

What we have here is essentially a fast-paced 3D puzzle game. You are standing in a large grid. You have to put down code pads on an adjacent square in order to move to that square. You have up to 10 code pads which are shown at the bottom of the screen. Each code pad has 4 sides, each of which has a color (red, green, blue, or magenta). Adjoining sides must have the same color. It’s a bit confusing until you jump into it. But you don’t have much time to think about it because the Tracer virus is constantly pursuing you, consuming the code paths that you have already laid down. You must build code paths to areas of the grid that contain refills on code paths as well as a few more items (a magnetic pad slows down the virus’ pursuit for a short time), all while trying to forge your way to the exit.

The game boasts 50 levels, plus a level editor. The levels keep throwing more and clever obstacles for you to think your way around. You are able to cycle through your available code pads in order to build the optimal path to your next destination. In practice, that’s incredibly hard to do since the Tracer virus is always closing in so quickly. The game’s tagline, “Think fast… or your next move may be your last!” is absolutely no joke.

I must mention that the soundtrack is definitely up to snuff for the genre. Great electronic/techno music recorded as 5 redbook CD audio tracks, all ripped, all on my iPod now (part of my ever-growing “Game Music” playlist consisting largely of ripped redbook audio tracks). Here is the first track for your approval:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

The game also has personality. I guess what that boils down to is that I appreciated the voice acting. It wasn’t hard to get into the mood of the game with an intro like this, which starts out with an underground radio DJ and winds up with your fast-talking AI agent briefing you on your next job:

Tech support section (where I display problematic error dialogs I encountered and type out their text for the benefit of search engines): I saw a number of curious dialogs when I tried to install Tracer:

“Severe: 7th Level Setup: Out of memory. (E9)”

“Read Only File Detected: A read only file, .\tracer.txt, was found while attempting to copy files to the destination location. To overwrite the file, click the Yes button, otherwise click the No button.”

“Severe: General file transfer error. Please check your target location and try again.

Error Number:-1
Related File: .\TRACER.TXT”

Wouldn’t you know, the standard remedy applied: Using the properties dialog on the SETUP.EXE file on the CD-ROM, set the compatibility mode to Windows 95. That saves many an old game and never ceases to impress me.

See Also:

Forbes: Corporate Warrior— business-oriented cyberspace FPS
The Lawnmower Man— silly game based on the well-known cyberspace-themed movie

At MobyGames:

Tracer

And as a bonus for the game programming geeks (and wannabes like myself), I observed that the directory structure has a directory named ASCILVLS which I surmised means “ASCII levels”. Sure enough– dozens of .TXT files which pretty clearly spell out the initial arrangement of each level. Program a little game logic around them and you could probably reimplement the game. Here is a sample level file:

Gaming Pathology

Piles Of Games, Copious Free Time, No Standards

Author: Multimedia Mike

iPhone Racing Games

Bloons, Parachute Panic, and StickWars

Zenonia RPG

Wooden Labyrinth 3D

DOS Bonanza

Tracer