iOS – Obsolete Gamer

Organ Trail: Director’s Cut (Multi-Platform)

I won’t spoil the story too much, but Clements isn’t with you for long, but gives you his diary to help you out, explaining how much of what things you need. You and your party leave D.C. to head cross country with the supplies you’ve scavenged thus far. Just like in Oregon trail, things break on your station wagon, friends get hurt. They may get by a zombie and you may be forced to put them down, or they may get dysentary, or one of 9 other diseases, and if you don’t heal them with medkits they eventually die. As you travel from city to city, you have to scavenge for supplies such as food, ammo, fuel, money, medkits and car scraps and upgrades to survive.

Company Representatives Gamer Profiles

J.A. Laraque

Dominique Vial: Domsware

We were on our final “lycée” studies and we needed to prepare THE french exam named “baccalauréat”. It’s very important to make a big score to this exam because it’s the passcard to university and High Schools. Anyway. We spend a lot of time playing DM instead of working our final exams. Locked on my friend’s bedroom, our parents believed we were working on our studies! Ah ah ah! It was a really immersive and addictive game. And, for the story purpose, a friend of my elder brother was working on some computer science laboratory on some kind of “network”. He was helping us by providing us printed listings containing the precious answers to hard DM’s issues: these was from this mysterious “network”. Later and later I found the name of this guy on a W3C document: I then understood he was one of the first working on the internet and that was the mysterious network. He was a pioneer while we were exploring dungeons !

Blog

J.A. Laraque

Sonic 1 Coming to the 3DS

Hey, if you haven’t gotten your Sonic 1 fix on every other platform coming in about a week you will be able to get the classic game on your 3DS. Now this is considered a remake, but for the most part everything will stay the same except changes in the games background thanks to the features of the 3DS. If this isn’t enough Sonic news, Christian “The Taxman” Whitehead and Stealth are working on a Sonic 1 remake for Sega. Those of you who played Sonic CD on your smart phone should know about that team. Either way, soon there will be no place you cannot find a Sonic game to play.

Blog

J.A. Laraque

Sonic the Hedgehog Remastered

Coming in April the remastered version of Sonic the Hedgehog arranged by Christian “The Taxman” Whitehead will be available for the Android and iOS platforms. The cost will be three dollars and you can expect it to be a lot like Whitehead’s last release of Sonic CD. In addition, Sonic 2 will also be getting the remastered treatment soon.

Mobile Games

Patrick Scott Patterson

Twonky Beam app review

The video quality of the beamed content was just as good as the content appears within the websites themselves. While using the app only a little buffering was apparent early on in some higher quality videos, but at a level far less than often encountered when playing content straight from the built-in XBox 360 applications. Each HD video used to test the application, once streaming on the television, was indistinguishable from broadcast quality programming.

Blog

Glen McNamee

Sword of Fargoal 2 Revamps Classic c64 game

Sword of Fargoal was remade for iOS and Mac OS by developer Paul Pridham (who created Saucelifter and the upcoming Punch Quest), Emmy award-winning animator Charlie Canfield, and noted British composer Daniel Pemberton (LittleBIGPlanet) to bring the game back. The remake won numerous awards, including “Best Retro Game (iPad division)” for the “2010 Best App Ever Awards” (“Sword of Fargoal Legends,” published by Chillingo/EA). Fargoal has even been recognized by the Guinness World Records 2012, Gamer’s Edition as “Most critically acclaimed ‘Roguelike’ for iOS”.

Blog

Glen McNamee

Punch Quest

Endless runner games are very popular at the moment, especially on mobile devices. As they seem to be very sutied to the format but still provide a fast arcade like gaming experience. Punch Quest is an Endless runner game, but with a twist. It dispenses with the simple run and jump format and adds punching, graphics that hark back to games like Double Dragon and Golden Axe, punching, explosion, punching, monsters and so much more punching.

Indie Games

Konstantinos Dimopoulos

Call of Cthulhu: The Wasted Land

You get your characters, your action points, your experience points, your oppressive 3D terrains, your campy but delightful plot, your spells, your otherworldly monstrosities, your cultists and your zombified soldiers in one of the most honest (and cheap) strategy games I’ve recently played. What you also get is a truly elegant adaptation of Chaosium’s Call of Cthulhu rules, the first ever sanity mechanics to actually work in a wargame and a most successful atmosphere. On the downside, this is a really short game sporting ten or so missions, that will last you for roughly ten hours, and, irritatingly, a game with a few control problems. Apparently, its iOS roots haven’t been ironed out, but trust me when I say that you’ll very soon be used to its, uhm, eccentricities.

Editorials

Thomas Whitaker

The beauty of their dreams

Independent marketing schemes such as those created by Innovatty on twitter, involving all of the indie developers retweeting about each other’s ideas were also invaluable as well as the forums on sites such as TouchArcade. The challenge was intimidating, attempting to do battle with companies such as EA, in an arena that they were swiftly trying to dominate. Adverts such as the one above, were circulated across the globe in an attempt to build up a buzz before the game was released. Finally, towards the end of August, we gained permission from Apple for the game to go live and after hours spent blogging, tweeting, face booking and you-tubing, all we could do was hope.

Editorials

Konstantin Popov

Evolution: Indie development in Russia and one company’s transition to the U.S.

Stephane Gonod – the guy from Gost Publishing – disappeared and half a year later announced himself bankrupt. It is funny that a year ago he set up a new company in cooperation with an ex-Frogster employee and when we accidentally met at a conference, his only words were “Shit happens”. God will judge him.

Blog

Glen McNamee

Amiga Classic Battle Squadron now available for iOS

For the iOS version we have conserved the highly praised gameplay exactly like on the original, while at the same time adapting it to excellent play on mobile devices. Further improvements, not possible in the original, include Game Center to compete against your friends, and Daily Leaderboards updates with player comments.

Blog

J.A. Laraque

Street Fighter IV iOS sale: Proceeds to help Japan Earthquake Victims

As can be expected there are many organizations that have setup relief to go to the people of Japan and Capcom has joined that list by offering the Street Fighter IV iOs for only 99 cents. All proceeds from the sale will go toward the Japan earthquake relief effort. Capcom did not stop there; the company also donated 100 million yen to help those affected by this disaster.

Editorials

Umar Khan

Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode 1: A Mediocre Adventure Begins!

Sonic the Hedgehog 4 released this week across multiple platforms and I finally got the chance to play it. What I thought would be a blissful coming of age adventure for Sonic ended up crushing my faith in Sega’s ability to produce quality games anymore.