Originally released in 1985 by the now defunct Data East, Road Blaster is a LaserDisc game in the style of Cobra Command [99¢]. Road Blaster was one of the last LaserDisc games ever released, and is set in a Mad Max-like post apocalyptic world where you play as a vigilante on the road hunting down a biker gang in attempt to bring them to justice for the death of your wife. Along the way you will need to do all kinds of tricky driving maneuvers before finally facing off with the gang's leader.
The only time this game has been seen outside of Japan is in the Sega CD port which not only suffered from the same horrid video compression of all Sega CD games, but also got renamed to Road Avenger. Revolutionary Concepts have completely remastered the game, and when it is finally released, it will play at 60FPS at full iPhone 4 or iPad resolutions. They've also completely redesigned the dashboard of the car, added in tilt controls, and made a whole list of other tweaks.
Check out this comparison between the original arcade and iPad versions of the game:
Road Blaster is currently in the final stages of development, and is expected to be released on the App Store sometime next month.
The Madden series hardly needs an introduction, as football player turned coach turned commentator John Madden has had his name on football games for the better part of 20 years now. On home consoles, it has become tradition for EA to release a new Madden game each year with updated rosters, a few new features, and other various tweaks. As of tonight, the second yearly installment of the Madden series has arrived for the iPhone.
Last year we took a close look at Madden NFL 10 and thought it was a really great football game for the iPhone. Madden '10 came loaded with all the licensed players, stadiums, logos, and everything else you'd expect of a Madden game along with game modes ranging from single exhibition games to full seasons. The two hip new features of Madden NFL 10 for the iPhone were hot routes allowing players to draw on the screen to control players, and "action control time" which switched the game to slow motion mode allowing for precise maneuvers with the virtual controls.
There wasn't much to complain about with last year's Madden, which really left me wondering what EA was going to include in this year's release to up the ante. The preview we got revealed substantial graphical upgrades including Retina Display support, but it wasn't until I got to spend more time with the game today that I realized just how much more fun the other new features made playing Madden NFL 11.
In the interest of full disclosure, I'm not a sports person by any means. I don't remember the last time I watched anything more than the Super Bowl on TV, and the only sporting events I've attended have been the result of friends with extra tickets. I play sports games, but generally gravitate towards arcade style sports games like Homerun Battle 3D [$4.99 / Free], or sports games that have RPG elements such as Baseball Superstars 2010 [$4.99 / Free].
I mention this because I generally never really got into a Madden game, or really any full football game. The weak link for me always came in choosing from an endless array of both offensive and defensive plays, with each yearly iteration of football game boasting even more plays to choose from. I don't know enough about the strategy of football plays to have ever felt like I was making a wise decision, and when it got down to it, play selection just always seemed like a needless interruption every few seconds while playing the game.
GameFlow changes all of this, and I really can't overstate how awesome a feature it actually is. Using some new AI algorithm likely designed by a team of people who know way more about football than I ever care to, Madden 11's GameFlow will intelligently chooses plays for you. It is absolutely insane how much this changes both the feel and the pace of the game. Using GameFlow, endless submenus of plays are a thing of the past. Instead, you just play football. The plays it selects work fairly well too, or at least, much better than my typical choice of plays which usually alternate between the hail mary and the fake field goal kick– both favorites of mine.
What's also shocking is how much this actually speeds up playing the game. You can tap the screen to skip through the extra animations, victory dances, and other junk and play through a whole football game in what barely seems like any time at all. Of course, if you are the kind of person who knows exactly what every play does, all you have to do is flip GameFlow to off and you have complete control of each and every play.
The hot routes functionality from last year has been expanded, and at any point during the game you can pause the action and draw paths for your players. If you're playing offense and do this, you can save those routes as an audible, or if you're playing defense you can just send your players wherever you want. The whole system works very well, and by drawing lines you can send dispatch players to man to man duty, follow the ball, or really anything else. This really makes defense a lot more fun because you can now actually sensibly direct your team around instead of just tabbing in between players and chasing after whoever has the ball. Check out my top secret LOL offense:
As mentioned already, the graphics of Madden NFL 11 look fantastic. The stadium crowd has actual depth now, and they even wave around signs for the home team. The included weather effects look good, and overall it seems like all the player models and animations are more detailed. Every texture in game also seems to have been substantially improved, making going back and forth between 10 and 11 seem fairly drastic.
Madden 11 also is host to some other noticeable tweaks over last year's as well such as controls that feel a little better and a spruced up interface. There's an in-game store which currently is home to a free roster update, but seems like it might be used for future DLC . Finally, Madden NFL 11 behaves beautifully as an iPhone game, gracefully saving your game and resuming quickly when you load it again.
Like last year, the inevitable comparison between Gameloft's NFL 11 [$6.99] and Madden NFL 11 will likely take place in our forums for months to come, but in my opinion, Madden wins by a landslide. Gameloft's offering seems to run at a higher frame rate, but Madden looks better overall– rspecially when it comes to how the crowd and stadiums are rendered. Madden NFL 11 has local bluetooth multiplayer while NFL 11 is single player only, and the commentary in Madden seems less repetitive than Gameloft's. Where Madden really wins though is in the extra features. With how much I've fallen in love with GameFlow I can hardly bring myself to deal with NFL 11's play selection, and Madden's total defensive control makes playing defense in NFL 11 flat out boring in comparison.
At the end of the day, people who like Madden games likely don't need this review, or anything more than the iTunes link to download the game for that matter. Who I really expect to sway into checking out Madden NFL 11 are the casual sports fans, or people like me, who are vaguely interested in sports games but found the various technicalities of football games to generally be annoying. GameFlow fixes all this, and I can hardly believe that I spent the majority of my day today playing Madden 11 on my iPhone– not because I was trying to power through it to write a review, but because I was actually really enjoying a football game for the first time since Mutant League Football on the Sega Genesis.
The iPad and iPhone versions are essentially the same aside from the price difference and UI tweaks to make the controls more comfortable for playing on the iPad. The iPhone version is workable with pixel doubling, and the only thing you're really going to be missing out on is the upcoming "Vintage Voltage Football" mode which is basically just Super Shock Football [$1.99 / Free] with Madden graphics.
Shortly after the iPad arrived, Gameprom treated iPad gamers to Pinball HD [App Store], a collection of their excellent stand-alone iPhone pinball titles — Wild West Pinball [$.99], The Deep Pinball [$.99], and Jungle Style Pinball [$.99] — all in one high resolution, iPad application. We found the title easy to recommend, and we weren't the only ones; Pinball HD was a WWDC 2010 Apple Design Award winner.
When the iPhone 4 was unveiled, sporting its high resolution Retina display, we hoped to see the same fine collection adapted to suit Apple's new iOS flagship. And, today, we're happy to report that Pinball HD 4 iPhone [link] has arrived and is now available for download in the App Store.
Pinball HD 4 iPhone delivers everything that the iPad's Pinball HD does, beautifully rendered on the iPhone 4's Retina display with a sharpness that almost makes your eyes bleed. (Though, the iPhone 3GS and 3G iPod touch are supported at their native resolution, as well.) And we're happy to see that Gameprom added the fixed, portrait table view mode that we requested in our April look at the iPad version. (This mode sits in addition to the floating, portrait view mode and the fixed, landscape mode.)
Like its forerunner, Pinball HD features split-screen, tap paddle controls, WiFi and Bluetooth multiplayer, online score tracking, and support for 3D anaglyph (red/blue, etc.) glasses rendering. And you get all that for buck less than the iPad version. Any pinball fan with an iPhone 4 (or a 3GS if you're new to the series) needs to get this game on their device.
The iphone 4 bumper is actually a case which is provided by the apple to its consumers, who purchases the phone. The bumper case has become quite popular because consumers can get this case from the house of the Apple and simultaneously they can protect the phone from scratches, etc. It is necessary to give your iphone some kind of protection as a substantial part of it is made up of steel and it can succumb to scratches. With the bumper case you will not have any difficulty to see the screen of the iphone. This case is made up of both rubber as well as plastic, so that the case becomes a lot more flexible and at the same time, it becomes to easy to put the phone inside the case. The grip on your iphone can increase once you put on the bumper case, as it is made in such a way to provide great accessibility.
Your iphone 4 can get a lot of protection when it is placed in a flat surface as its screen will not get damaged because of the bumper case which has extra padding on the edges of the iphone. So when the iphone is kept on a surface which is flat then technically your phone does not get in contact with the surface, due to the case, and hence it is protected from the scratches and other common type of damages. You can get this bumper case within the price range of twenty nine dollars and they are available in all the stores of Apple. If you are unable to locate an apple store then you can purchase the iPhone 4 bumper case from heir website as well. It is advisable to get an additional protector for your screen, as the iPhone 4 bumper case cannot protect the iphone 4 screen completely.
After purchasing the iphone 4, many people have faced various kinds of reception issues with the phone and this bumper case was made in such a way that it can deal with the reception problems. So for people who are already frustrated because of the reception problem of the phone then they should immediately purchase a iPhone 4 bumper cover, as it will help you to get rid of the reception problems. Off late the bumper case was provided free of cost by Apple and for people who had already purchased the same can get their money refunded. This was done by Apple in order to cover up the uproar that was caused in the market due to the bad reception of the phone. Another reason that the bumper case has been so popular is because people are always in need of a case for their iphone 4, and they would prefer to stick to a brand like Apple, when it comes to the phone accessories. It is a good idea to choose a cover which comes from the house of Apple, so that you can have a product of great quality at an affordable price.
Sega has released a number of classic Genesis games on the App Store- Sonic the Hedgehog [$5.99], Sonic the Hedgehog 2 [$5.99], Golden Axe [$2.99], Streets of Rage [$2.99], and as of last night, Ecco the Dolphin [$2.99] and Space Harrier II [99¢]. In the past we've been increasingly critical of Sega releasing these emulated games, as while the games wrapped in the emulator are undoubtedly classics, the emulator itself leaves much to be desired.
Revisiting these games with my iPhone 4 has revealed that Apple has finally released hardware that is fast enough to properly run Sega's emulator (although I have had weird crashing issues with Sonic 2). If you've got an iPhone 4, the games run substantially better than the 3GS/3rd generation iPod touch, leaving the touch controls as the only issue. If you're stuck in the world of the iPhone 3G or 2nd Generation iPod touch, you're still better off skipping all of these because the performance really isn't that great. The games are playable, yes, but not a good experience by any means.
Anyway, Ecco the Dolphin is an action adventure side scroller released on the Sega Genesis in 1992. In the game you play as a dolphin, ramming in to things and using your sonar to both talk to other friendly sea creatures and interact with various objects in the game world. When I played the game the first time around on my Genesis, I thought it was surprisingly difficult as you need to manage Ecco's air supply while navigating vast underwater mazes. Drowning over and over was not something I was expecting to get myself in to when I first saw the cute box art.
There's a fairly extensive library of clips on YouTube of people playing the game in various emulators:
Ecco the Dolphin is just as much of a classic as the other games Sega has released, and really should be played by anyone who considers themselves a gamer who hasn't yet. If you want to go back in time even further, Space Harrier II was a launch title for the Genesis and debuted with the system in mid-August of 1989. Like most games of the time, Space Harrier II came packed with a nonsensical story where you're searching out a distress call from the 214th sector in the year 6236. You run around on a pseudo-3D checkerboard landscape shooting your laser at anything that crosses your path.
Like Ecco, there are no shortage of Space Harrier II gameplay videos captured from various emulators on YouTube:
Space Harrier II hasn't aged as well as the other classics Sega has released, but it's still pretty cool to take a look at what was considered cutting-edge mind blowing graphics over 20 years ago. But like all these games, the touch controls of the Genesis emulator on the iPhone aren't ideal and the framerate is low on older devices. Because of this, they're all hard to really recommend, but at least they exist in some form on the App Store if you're determined to revisit these classics on your iPhone.
Ever since the demonstration of the iPhone 4 at the WWDC keynote, the far and away most talked about feature has been the stunning Retina Display. When the iPhone 4 finally released, some developers took the opportunity to update their existing games to harness the power of the eyeball burning high resolution. Previously, we've covered games that have added retina support including Real Racing, Flight Control, Archetype, Sword of Fargoal, Jet Car Stunts, Zen Bound 2, and a host of games from Pangea Software. Well it's time to add another to the list as Gameloft's Halo inspired first-person shooter N.O.V.A. has been given the Retina Display treatment as well, along with support for the iPhone 4's gyroscope.
N.O.V.A. wasn't a bad looking game to begin with, but with this latest update it's hard to believe that I ever thought so. Gone are the many jagged edges that are rife within the game, replaced with silky smooth graphical models that can only be possible with the four times as many pixels on the iPhone 4 display. The game literally pops of the screen now (although the voice acting remains comically terrible). I could go on about the enhanced visual clarity of N.O.V.A., but these comparison screens tell the story better than I ever could:
Perhaps an even more intriguing addition to N.O.V.A. is support for the iPhone 4's gyroscope. The gyroscope must be enabled when starting a new game or from the control options, and is actually a combination of screen swiping and movement. Swiping still moves your aim in an extreme manner, so you still pretty much move and turn the same throughout the game. But the gyroscope offers refined accuracy within your current view (unless you are moving your entire body around, in which case your entire view changes with you), and it works beautifully. It can be a little disorienting to get used to at first, but one you do you'll never want to play an FPS game any other way, and this is coming from someone that typically hates tilt-to-aim in FPS games. This slightly cheesy video demonstrates the new controls:
The touch and gyro combination just sings, and makes N.O.V.A. feel like a whole new experience. The new updated graphics are gorgeous, and still impress even for a seven month old game. And there's the always handy iOS4 fast app switching thrown in this update for good measure. Needless to say, if you're an iPhone 4 owner with a copy of N.O.V.A., don't hesitate to grab this latest update and play through one of the better iPhone FPS games all over again.
Leading iPhone developers EA Mobile have just released details of their summer mobile gaming line up. A number of big name titles are amongst the list, including the new Madden NFL, SimCity, RISK and Yahtzee.
Most of the games are expected to ship this summer (2010). We’ll be posting full reviews as the apps are released.
MADDEN NFL 11 – iPad, iPhone and iPod touch
The most authentic NFL game on the App Store just got even better. In Madden NFL 11 for iPad, iPhone and iPod touch, fans and gamers will be able to play both sides of the ball with equal intensity with Total Defensive Control. Players will enjoy less time in the playbook and more time on the field with the new GameFlow feature. This year, players can draw “Hot Routes Everywhere” literally drawing players’ movements on the field pre-snap, creating the play they want to run. Plus, enjoy eye-popping graphics and maximized controls that set the new standards for gameplay on iPod touch and iPhone. There’s simply never been anything like it. Street Date: Fall 2010
Reckless Racing – iPhone and iPad
Roaring engines, squealing tires and amazing graphics. Reckless Racing mixes old-school top-down racing game play with state of the art graphics and engaging multiplayer features. Perfectly balanced controls let players skid, slip and slide through the most beautiful tracks ever seen on a handheld device – leaving nothing but mud-splattered opponents and skid marks behind. Reckless Racing features a fully stocked internet multiplayer mode, on-line leaderboards and the ability to trade ghost races with other players from all over the world. Street Date: Summer 2010
NCAA Football ? iPhone 4 and iOS3.x
NCAA Football, the first game by EA Mobile designed specifically for iPhone 4, takes advantage of the device’s new Retina display. Players choose from over 55 of the most popular colleges to represent their school or create a new one, and lead them to glory in the BCS National Championship. Multiplayer rivalries with head-to-head play and broadcast commentary from real-life commentators Lee Corso and Kirk Herbstreit further bring the intensity of college football to iPhone 4 gamers. With rules and plays reflecting the real NCAA Division 1 experience, sports enthusiasts can enjoy playing their favorite game the way it’s meant to be played. Street Date: Now available for iPhone 4 and iOS3.x through the App Store
SimCity Deluxe – iPhone and iPod touch
Build and manage your dream city with SimCity Deluxe for iPhone and iPod touch. Designed for dedicated and casual fans, let your inner urban planner run wild with easier controls, optimized performance, improved visuals, starter cities, and exciting new scenarios. Street Date: Summer 2010
RISK – iPhone and iPod touch
The Real RISK Experience! Soon on iPhone and iPod touch, pursue world domination with the original game of strategic conquest. Mobilize against realistic AI adversaries or challenge up to six multiplayer opponents. Play the game that has fired dreams of global conquest for generations! Street Date: Summer 2010
R-Type – iPhone and iPod touch
R-Type for iPhone keeps 100 percent true to the original game allowing fans to get back to the ‘80s video-arcade experience in the palm of their hands. Players will Blast off and strike the evil Bydo Empire, pilot a R-9a “Arrowhead” futuristic fighter, and attack wave after wave of Bydo baddies in old-school side-shooter style. R-Type will include original arcade game features such as eight unique levels with eight different bosses each and three different controls. Street Date: Summer 2010
YAHTZEE – iPad
Roll with the original best-selling family favorite – now designed just for the iPad™! The bigger screen and the bright, bold touch interface make gameplay on iPad easy and intuitive. Players shake the cup and roll the dice, select dice they want to hold, and keep score with simple tap controls. Four different gameplay modes, including an iPad exclusive “Duplicate Rainbow Mode,” challenge players in unique ways. Players can also become a “YAHTZEE Adventurer” and take on in-game characters designed to test their skills. Along with solo play and Pass ‘n Play with up to four friends, players can also post scores and issue challenges with family and friends using Facebook Connect. Street Date: Summer 2010
Last week we posted about Secret Exit dropping the price of Zen Bound 2 [$2.99] and submitting an update to add universal compatibility along with all kinds of new visual effects and other tweaks. Zen Bound 2 now uses full OpenGL ES 2.0 graphics on 3rd generation devices and newer which means even better shadows and lighting effects as well as even more detailed paint spread. When playing on the iPad, the random framerate drops have been completely fixed, and the game even performs a little better too. Also, third generation iPod touch and iPhone 3GS users will see incredibly smooth visuals with full anti-aliasing, and Zen Bound 2 looks simply incredible on the Retina Display of the iPhone 4.
If you were waiting for any reason, now is an absolutely fantastic time to pick up Zen Bound 2. It is filled with relaxing gameplay supplemented by one of the best (if not the best) soundtrack I've heard in an iPhone game, and the gameplay mechanic of rotating string around a 3D object to cover it in paint works phenomenally with the multi-touch controls of iOS devices– and even more so when you throw the gyroscope of the iPhone 4 in to the mix. Zen Bound 2 is the best looking game I've played on my iPhone 4, as Secret Exit's knack for creating lifelike textures and lighting effects is perfectly paired with the Retina Display to create an experience that looks nearly photorealistic, a term I never thought I'd ever use to describe an iPhone game.
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Sega has released a number of classic Genesis games on the App Store- Sonic the Hedgehog [
Ever since the demonstration of the iPhone 4 at the WWDC keynote, the far and away most talked about feature has been the stunning Retina Display. When the iPhone 4 finally released, some developers took the opportunity to update their existing games to harness the power of the eyeball burning high resolution. Previously, we've covered games that have added retina support including 
Last week 