New Potato, who brought us the Jackpot Slots [App Store] game / accessory for the iPhone, has just released another such bundle for the iPhone and iPod touch — but this time around, the game in question is pinball.

Pinball Magic is a gaming accessory that is intended to transform your iPhone or iPod touch into a realistic pinball machine, albeit a rather diminutive one. The pinball table-shaped accessory sports flipper buttons, a ball-launching plunger, a credit / select button,an animated LED backbox display, and foldable legs for easy transport. The device mates with your device's 30-pin dock connector and delivers a pinball experience by way of New Potato's free Pinball Magic [link] app.

Game features, listed by the developer:

• Multiple classic and unique playboard layout
• Advanced multi-level and multiplayer competition
• Four possible multi-ball modes
• End-of-ball and replay bonuses
• Tilt detection, tilt warning and activation
• Ball saver

Pinball Magic is currently available from Best Buy, online and at certain retail locations at a price of $39.99. And don't bother downloading the game app if you don't have the accessory — it won't play at all.

[ via ChipChick ]

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Gameprom, the 2010 winners of the elusive Apple Design Award in Games, have just launched Pinball HD 4 iPhone, an iPhone only version of the top-selling iPad game, Pinball HD. It’ll set you back $1.99 and, in return, provide you with three tables and a plethora of new and exclusive features.

The first of such new features is full 326ppi display support – meaning iPhone 4 owners will reap all the benefits of their immensely clear screen. This particular version of Pinball houses all three tables: Wild West Pinball, The Deep and Jungle Style Pinball. In addition, multiplayer support means “as many players as you like” (according to their press release) can challenge each other, assuming they are on the same Wi-Fi network.

“If you have an iPad, you already know how incredible playing Pinball HD can be. With the release of Pinball HD 4 iPhone, anyone with an iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS or iPod touch third generation can get in on the fun” writes the official press team. “Featuring the Retina Display on the iPhone 4, the graphics really pop and the new multiplayer feature brings a new level of involvement and thrills to what is already the best Pinball experience in the app store.”

Other features include an option between portrait and landscape view; built in help for each table; local and global high scores to bring out your competitive nature; unique soundtracks, sound effects and voices and camera tilt, which provides 3D dimensionality without the need of 3D glasses (although if you do own a pair, they’ll work with the application to give you a full sense of immersion).

Given its unique features, the application is not universal – meaning iPad owners of the application will have to shell out an extra $1.99 if they want to enjoy the game on their iPhone. In addition, it looks like multiplayer mode is only available on iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, iPad or a third generation iPod Touch. It’s currently unconfirmed whether the iPhone 3G will support multiplayer mode. Confirmed: iPhone 3G, iPod Touch 2G and models older than this are not supported. The game is available to download now through iTunes. You can click on the link below the YouTube video to take you there.

$1.99

Pinball HD 4 iPhone

iPhone App – Designed for the iPhone, compatible with the iPad
Released: 2010-08-08 :: Category: Games / Simulation

[ Award-Winning Pinball HD is Now Available on Your iPhone or iPod Touch is a post from 148Apps ]

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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.

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It’s Friday! Hurray! Of course, for me it’s summer vacation and Fridays aren’t quite as exciting. But, we’ve still got our traditional sampling of delightful new releases from the past week, so that’s something. Big names like ngmoco and Illusion Labs make an appearance this week, as well as a few more mainstream companies like ESPN. Enjoy!

Godfinger
Godfinger from ngmoco allows you to build up a little world of cartoony followers and exert your godly powers on them. In Godfinger, you can be a kind, caring deity—performing Wonders and helping your civilization prosper—or a wicked demagogue, leaving a path of destruction in your wake. You can control sun, rain, lightning, floods, and fire. As you play Godfinger, your actions shape the terrain and your populace’s opinion. It’s almost ngmoco’s answer to Pocket God. Go on, give it a try and test out your godly abilities…Godfinger, like many of ngmoco’s newer games, is free.

FREE!

GodFinger

iPhone App – Designed for the iPhone, compatible with the iPad
Released: 2010-06-17 :: Category: Games / Action

Geometry Wars: Touch
Geometry Wars was already a classic Xbox game, but it made its iPad debut back in March. Now, it’s a universal app, meaning that iPhone and iPod owners can get in on the action! Geometry Wars is a simplistic arcade shooter with basic, geometric graphics and a strong retro theme. It also was one of the first major games to make good use of the dual-stick shooter system that’s so popular on the App Store today. The iPhone/iPad version also includes a brand-new mode, Titan, in which you gradually break giant foes apart into swarms of smaller pieces.

$4.99

$9.99

Geometry Wars™: Touch

+ Universal App – Designed for iPhone and iPad
Released: 2010-04-01 :: Category: Games / Arcade

ESPN Pinball
In honor of the World Cup, ESPN has a released a pinball app with some football-themed tables (ahem, soccer for us Americans). There’s also a Basketball table. The new pinball app is full of flashy graphics and boasts pass-and-play multiplayer, global and local leaderboards, and voice-overs from ESPN Sports Center host Jay Harris. It’s a marriage of a TV network, sports, and pinball…if that sounds a little strange, well, it is, but the game looks like some solid pinball fun nevertheless.

$3.99

ESPN Pinball

iPhone App – Designed for the iPhone, compatible with the iPad
Released: 2010-06-14 :: Category: Games / Sports

Onion News Network
Where would we be without the Onion? In case you haven’t heard of this magnificent publication, the Onion is a completely satirical news network with both an online and a print publication. (Yes, that’s right: you can get a real Onion newspaper.) Their stories are funny, witty, snide, and clever; you’d be crazy not to enjoy browsing them. The Onion’s new app gives you mobile access to the entire Onion archives, including both textual stories and videos. There’s not much more to say: it’s a typical newspaper app. The only difference is that the Onion is anything but a serious, esteemed publication. It’s here to make you grin, and, perhaps, think.

FREE!

Onion News Network

iPhone App – Designed for the iPhone, compatible with the iPad
Released: 2010-06-11 :: Category: News

Foosball HD
Illusion Labs has long expressed an interest in touchscreen gaming on larger screens (think back to their tabletop demo of Touchgrind) and now they’ve released an impressive iPad-only title: Foosbal HD. Foosball HD takes full advantage of the iPad’s large screen, transforming it into a top-down view of a foosball table designed perfectly for “local multiplayer”: both you and your friend just play foosball! You can also play against the computer, of course, but multiplayer is the real draw. Foosball seems like a natural fit for the iPad, and it’s great to see Illusion Labs putting the iPad to good use. Sorry, iPhone users; this one isn’t for us.

$2.99

Foosball HD

iPad Only App – Designed for the iPad
Released: 2010-06-11 :: Category: Games / Simulation

[ Friday Five: June 18th, 2010 is a post from 148Apps ]

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[ Pinball HD Review is a post from 148Apps ]

Okay, stay with me on this one. We’ll take it slow.

Now, we’re all familiar with Die Fantastischen Vier, otherwise known as “Fanta 4.” The group is a pioneer in German rap, and produced what is arguably the world’s first German-language hip hop hit, “Die Da?!”

Today, Fanta 4 makes its App Store debut with Fanta 4 Pinball ($3.99), an Amiga-styled pinball sim from Bad Monkee, publishers of the well-received iPhone remake of Giana Sisters.

And that’s it, basically. If you enjoy titles like Pinball Dreams and Pinball Fantasies and have longed for a pinball sim that also addresses your passion for German hip hop, today is officially the greatest day of your life.

Sometimes, I love the iPhone. There’s also a trailer, which you absolutely must watch:

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Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

• Price: $4.99 (Download here)
• Version: 1.0.1
• Official Site: BeXide, Inc.

Pinball is a very technical game — there’s a craft to playing it. It takes a lot of practice before one even begins to approach competency. Learning to manipulate the flippers and line up shots while coming to grips with the intricacies of a table is far from second nature.

When pinball is reproduced in video game form, it becomes technical in another sense; that is, it relates to technology. It’s technological.

If that game is then emulated to run on a different hardware configuration, as the cult classic pinball game Last Gladiators has been, another usage of the word can be applied. In this case, technical implies a straight-down-the-lines approach to replicating the object at hand.

So when I say this is a technical review of Last Gladiators Pinball, I mean in it all three ways.

Since I’m traditionally of the opinion that the design of a game, that is the designer’s skill at evoking technique, outweighs the value of technical achievement, design seems a good jumping-off point.

The design in Last Gladiators is forgettable. It’s hard to understand what all those Saturn proponents on YouTube are praising. The game feels like it was made by people who knew what pinball was but didn’t get what it was about.

The best pinball tables have a puzzle-box quality in how you manipulate the bumpers and targets to gradually unlock the playfield for a huge payout, lighting up hundreds of dazzling, multi-colored indicators along the way.

Last Gladiators opts for a more arcade-like approach (if that even makes sense). Almost everything that can be known about the table is taken as a given. The game relies on the immediacy of its objectives for its kicks, serving up a frantic pace with a perchance for multi-ball, but at the expense of any semblance of depth.

The game has issues at the foundational level as well. I’m pretty sure it’s running on an emulator. Requests for the player to press the Saturn’s L and R buttons seem to be a good indicator.

The game runs fairly smoothly, though. It has a few hiccups here and there and crashes far too often, but when it’s working, it works well enough. If you happened to download and be let down by the ultra-slow Ultra Legend Pinball demo — an Ultraman skinned version of this exact table — you’ll find that Last Gladiators runs a LOT faster.

Still, emulation is less than ideal. The visuals lack sharpness and everything is far too tiny for its own good. I had trouble hitting the ramp from the right flipper and attribute this to flipper shrinkage (I was in the pool!).

One thing that’s definitely not small is the price. Last Gladiators is an expensive proposition. The initial purchase comes with one table. That’s what I reviewed. Three additional tables are available as in-app purchases, and maybe they’re better, but at $5 a pop, I’m not willing to find out.

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Last Gladiators Ver.2010 is a port of a 1995 pinball game for the Sega Saturn. In a world where there's so many different options to satisfy your pinball needs available on the App Store, some aspects about this release will stick out like sore thumbs. The price, the dated graphics, a lack of features, no online scores… the price. It can be kind of a hard sell on the surface. But make no mistake about it, this is hands down the best pinball gameplay available for your device. If I'm going to be trapped on a desert island with my iPhone and can only have one pinball app, I want it to be Last Gladiators.

Let's get right to the elephant in the room, the cost. The app itself is $4.99, and comes with the Gladiators table. The other three tables that make up the original Saturn game are sold separately as DLC for $4.99 apiece. Yep, $4.99 for each additional table. I know that most of us who were fortunate enough to have grown up during the arcade era have probably spent well more than five bucks playing a good table for a couple of hours. So asking that much for a table you can play infinitely that fits in your pocket doesn't sound unreasonable. In the App Store economy, however, it's equivalent to an arm and a leg. The pricing alone means this game won't be for everybody.

Pricing aside, Last Gladiators does everything right in the gameplay department. It's amazing that with all the different pinball games that have been released on iPhone, none of them have ever quite felt like playing a real life table. This one's different, this one feels right. The physics of the ball and the design of the tables are nearly perfect. I'm not going to go into specific table detail (a video of each one can be seen in the thread in our forums) but all four feature multiball and more rounds and missions than I can even count. The instructions run 30+ pages for each table so you can familiarize yourself with every scoring nook and cranny, and also get an idea of just how much depth is on offer here.

This isn't the most visually impressive pinball game, after all it is 15 years old, but it still manages to have a great look that functions well. The table designs are more akin to the pinball tables of the late 80's and early 90's, rather than the highly complex mechanical behemoths of the later 90's. A neat effect is a scaling ball, so it looks smaller while in the back of the table and quite a bit larger as it's near the flippers. Handy on-screen indicators point you towards active goals, and it's always clear what you're supposed to be doing even for a beginner. There aren't really any iPhone specific features, and as far as ports are concerned this is pretty bare-bones. This is basically the Saturn game reworked with touch screen controls, and that's about it.

There's no official lite version available, but you can try Ultra Legend Pinball which is basically the Gladiators table with slightly reworked functionality and Ultraman artwork. I hesitate a bit recommending this, as it's entirely in Japanese and the Ultraman version of the table isn't nearly as good as the original, but at the very least it gives you and idea of what the Last Gladiators tables are like. Whatever your feelings on the pricing of Last Gladiators, it's a stellar game that shouldn't be missed if you're looking for an accurate simulation of pinball.

App Store Link: Last Gladiators Ver.2010, $4.99

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Developer KAZe’s 1995 pinball compilation Last Gladiators has been ported to the iPhone and iPod Touch, under the unassuming title LGR2010 ($4.99).

Last Gladiators and its Japan-only sequel Digital Pinball: Necronomicon are regarded as two of the best pinball sims to ever see release on home consoles. Recent titles in Crave’s Pinball Hall of Fame series have surpassed KAZe’s offerings in terms of realism, but Last Gladiators still remains a compelling play for pinball fans.

LGR2010 includes the “Gladiators” table from Last Gladiators, with the “Knight of the Roses,” “Dragon Showdown,” and “Warlock” tables available as somewhat pricy in-app purchases at $4.99 each.

An Ultraman-themed free trial version of the “Gladiators” table is available in Ultra Legend Pinball, if you’d like an example of the kind of quality you can expect from the LGR2010 collection.

[via @rdb_aaa]

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