iphone posts

Last month, publisher THQ went all out at the San Diego Comic-Con to promote the upcoming third person shooter Red Faction: Armageddon. One of its promotions was a give away of a free 0 issue of a Red Faction: Armageddon comic book created by DC Comics' Wildstorm line.

Unless you purchase the comic on eBay there's no way to get a physical copy of the free giveaway. However DC Comics has now offered the entire issues as a free download via its DC Comics iPhone app. The comic serves as a prequel to the events of the Volition-developed game which is due out in March 2011. There's no word yet if Wildstorm plans to release a full fledged Red Faction mini-series.

Last month, our sister site Joystiq launched a total revamp of its site design. However that's not all that our mothership has been working on. This weekend Joystiq also launched its first app for Apple's iPhone and iPod Touch (it also works on the iPad but it's not designed specifically for that device). The app is free to download right now from Apple's app store and has tons of features to check out.

That includes not just easy access to all of Joystiq's news stories (some of which use Big Download as its source) but also access to screenshot galleries, videos and Joystiq and Xbox 360 Fancast podcasts. You can even comment or send a news tip to Joystiq directly from the app. If you have an iPhone or iPod Touch its a must download.

Though many have derided Steve Jobs's claims that the iPhone is a gaming device, that hasn't stopped a large number of developers from having a go at it. What might be a surprise is the number of large publishers and developers that have also hitched their wagon to the iPhone's -- and now the iPad's -- rising star. Many of them are testing the waters by choosing to create spin-off games based on existing titles in hopes that the popularity will transfer over from one platform to the next. Here are 10 mobile games that extend your PC gaming experience, for better or worse.

To the surprise of almost no one (except maybe Old Man McKinkle down the street from us) Apple made its introduction of the iPad today. It's basically a much bigger version of the iPod Touch with a 9.7 inch screen and can run most iPhone-iPod touch apps that are already out. However, Apple is also pushing the fact that developers can make apps specifically for the big-screen iPad including games. Two such titles were shown at the iPad debut today; a sci-fi FPS called N.O.V.A and a revamped version of the iPod Touch port of Need For Speed Shift.

So what is the iPad anyway? It's not designed to be a phone but the processor and OS that were revealed today don't seem to be on the high end of the PC laptop market either. Apple is promoting the device for gamers (indeed many gaming media outlets including our sister site Joystiq, were invited to the iPad unveiling today). But the iPad's big screen would certainly suggest that developers could make games that are more complex that the somewhat simplistic titles that mostly are on the iPhone/iPod Touch.

The TechCrunch 50 conference has already introduced us to the console-to-PC streaming set-top box made by Spawn Labs. Now another new company, iMo, has made its debut at the same conference. Their product promises to turn an iPhone or iPod Touch into a PC game controller.

Basically the software uses the product's accelomenter to control the movement of PC games via WiFi. There must be special software downloaded for the PC as well as the iPod/iPod Touch app for the system to work. We are not sure if this will replace the mouse/keyboard combo or a regular joystick or gamepad anytime soon. The video presenting the software at TechCrunch 50 was entertaining, however. At the moment the software is in private beta and there's no word on a price or release date.

Apparently, there's some big event of some sort happening in Los Angeles this week. Supposed to be a huge deal in the video game industry, something like that? Lots of news? Anyone know what all the fuss is about?

BI just keeps seeing poorly-lit phone-cam pictures of hotel rooms from Callaham's Twitter feed and snarky IM's from our head honcho about how long the line at Starbucks is.

Why, yes, BI wasn't able to make it to the E3 party (apologies to the fine folks at $Unspecified_Vendor, at whose party we were not able to cause chaos the likes of which would be spoken of in hushed tones for decades to come; maybe next year). Truthfully, we're not actually bitter about it. Given the flood of news that's been coming from this year's edition of the expo, hardware, especially for anyone not using a console and/or prone to waving things around, seems to be pretty much an afterthought.

Well, there was a particularly festive flight sim joystick. Thank you, Logitech.

The big news of the past week for desktop gamers was the official release of Nvidia's GTX 295 dual-GPU card to the wild. Not content to sit on their hands, AMD announced, via the ever-thrilling Press Release, that they're undertaking development of a platform to provide high-shiny graphics to devices that don't sport the hardware to create them, as well as a realtime rendering system for photorealistic content that developers and cinematographers can utilize.

So, it looks like both ends of the spectrum are getting some love. Maybe even a three-way kind of thing.

At some point, BI's mind will leave the gutter it currently inhabits, but we don't advise anyone to hold their breath waiting for that to happen. (Hey, at least there hasn't been a "Two chips, one card" joke made yet. Oh, wait....)

So, it's two thousand and nine. Sure, our digital minions are faster and more capable than ever before, but do you ever feel like you're missing out on the whole Gernsback experience? Where the hell is my flying car? This was supposed to be the future, but it's just.... now. We're still using magnetic media, transistors, and keyboards -- no fancy bubble chips, rod logic, or tactical neural implants (to quote Montgomery Scott, "The keyboard; how quaint").

So, what does 2009 have in store for us?

For one thing, Small Iron, and lots of it. Manufacturers and hardware vendors throughout the industry spectrum are anticipating a boom in the so-called "netbook" segment. Everyone from AMD and Intel to Acer and Asustek are gearing up in expectation of soaring demand for the ultra-portable/mini-notebook niches that were more or less defined by the introduction of Apple's Macbook Air and the subsequent introduction of the Atom and Eee PC. These certainly aren't desktop-replacement level equipment, but for folks who are frequently on the go and need something more robust than an iPhone or Blackberry, there's every expectation in the industry that these are the New BigSmall Thing.

It's become one of the most anticipated indie PC games in some time and some folks could be playing with the game right now. It's Crayon Physics Deluxe, the full commercial version of the winner of the Independent Games Festival last year. Developed by Finnish game designer Petri Purho, the game features a player trying to get a 2D ball on screen to move from one point to another, assisted by the player drawing crayon-like shapes via a mouse or (if you have a Tablet PC) via a stylus.

On the game's official blog site Purho announced that Crayon Physics Deluxe will be released officially on Wednesday, January 7 and that folks who pre-ordered the game before January 3 will be able to get the full version today (there's no official word as of this writing if that has happened yet). In addition, a iPhone version of the game is already available (although Purho did not develop the iPhone port).

Update: The game is now being sent to everyone who pre-ordered before January 4.

Download Crayon Physics Deluxe Demo (6 MB)

Earlier this year Marc Ecko Enterprises announced plans to publish a game based on Dexter, the Showtime TV series about a "good" serial killer and truly one of the best and creepiest TV shows ever made for American television. At the San Diego Comic Con, however, it was revealed that the game would be coming exclusively to the iPhone and the iPod Touch.

Well, our sister site Joystiq recently attended a Dexter press event and was told that the game is actually coming to the PC as well as the iPhone and that it will be due out in in February 2009. Unfortunately there's still no word on what the game will actually be like so we will have to see if this game will be worthy of the Dexter license.