Another ‘analyst’ clearly earning their money, commenting on iOS making ground on the PSP and DS in mobile gaming:

Michael Pachter, an analyst at Wedbush Morgan Securities:

what’s the difference if you play Tetris on an iPod Touch or on a DS? Well, you pay a buck on the iPod Touch, you pay $20 on the DS. Parents prefer $1 or free software. I think the iPod Touch is going to sell really, really well. I really think as the iPod Touch gets more and more powerful, you’re going to see a lot of free games over there.

Yes, because iOS doesn’t already have a lot of free games. And the iPod touch isn’t already selling ‘really well’. Let’s also ignore the primary reasons behind the success of iOS as a gaming platform: huge range, bringing fun and novelty back to gaming, millions of credit cards already being hooked up to iTunes, the ability of bedroom coders to fight alongside industry giants. But, no, it’s all about cheap shit, says the analyst.

Gah.

Also, Tetris. Great example. First, it’s very rarely a buck on iOS (usually $2.99); secondly, it’s a pretty mediocre version, unlike the rather spiffy DS one.

GAH.

…

Just… GAH.

Being Contributing Editor, Games for Tap!, I have to keep an eye on all the new iOS games coming out. I’ve therefore got an AppShopper RSS feed that spits all new iOS games into Google Reader. This morning, I discovered uninspiring word game Letter Labyrinth. It looks OK, if a bit rough, and I was thinking “not another Pac-Man IP rip”.

Turns out it isn’t another Pac-Man IP rip, because the game is by Namco. And if the game’s description doesn’t get you thrilled and excited, well, you’re in agreement with me:

As only he can, PAC-MAN has gobbled up your old and tired iPhone anagram games to create Letter Labyrinth: a new, addictive puzzle game chock full of words, phrases, proverbs, and even calculations!

Translation: “We’ve gobbled up all the old and tired iPhone anagram games and crapped out an old and tired iPhone anagram game, STARRING PAC-MAN”.

Don’t all rush at once.

I spent a fair chunk of October working on content for Tap!, the iPhone and iPad magazine, on the stands later this month. The magazine’s official Twitter feed just announced that it’s doing a one-off special offer of three issues for a fiver, for anyone who subscribes before Friday.

From what I’ve seen of the mag so far, it’s going to be all kinds of fab, and so anyone with an iPhone, iPod touch or iPad would be a banana to not take advantage of the offer.

These days, videogame companies have access to mainstream 3D tools, but it wasn’t always this way. Back in the 1990s, 3D was in its infancy, so when Dennis Harper decided he wanted to do a game like Street Fighter 2, but starring realistic dinosaur-like deities, he had a problem. In the end, Primal Rage became a mash-up of one-on-one fighter and Ray Harryhausen stop-motion animation (and then went on to become a crazy marketing phenomenon—there was even a Primal Rage slide projector).

For the full story, check out my interview with Dennis in Retro Gamer 83.

UPDATE: So someone from Touch Arcade found this post and said to me: “Really Craig? Your blog post is preceded with ‘I haven’t tried iDOS yet’ and you still go on to admonish Eli? Grain of salt.”

It’s a fair point, but my argument was more to do with the fact emulators for iOS never work as well as native games. Having since spent a couple of happy hours mucking about with iDOS, I certainly agree that it’s a fun curiosity, but the game-playing experience pales in comparison to games designed specifically for iOS, much as you’d expect.

Yesterday, an app called iDOS came to the App Store. Essentially a port of DOSBox with a couple of nicely IP-infringing Namco games welded to it, I predicted the emulator would be pulled off the store within two days. In fact, it only took a few hours before the Apple Police took it out back and shot it.

I’ve not tried iDOS yet (the developer was kind enough to send me a promo during the few hours the app was live), but I like me some retro-gaming, and it’s a nice curiosity. I have vague ideas about maybe getting a few old DOS games I’ve got knocking around working, but ultimately I probably won’t have enough time.

This is a good thing. That’s because it’s part of the slippery slope that I experienced with DS-based emulation. On Nintendo’s system, the lack of decent new games meant I very often ended up playing ZX Spectrum games via an emulator. On iOS, I pretty much download a new game every day, which is far more interesting than repeatedly playing stuff I’ve already played; also, I’m potentially supporting more developers; additionally, this means I’m getting optimal experiences, since the games are made for the system.

Touch Arcade doesn’t get this. In an article called The Importance of iDOS, Eli Hodapp says this:

What if developers leveraged the power of iDOS, or, more accurately, the open source nature of both Dospad and Dosbox to release individually tailored versions of iDOS with a specific game embedded and the emulator extensively tweaked to run that game well?

I can’t think of anything worse for iOS gaming. Emulators already exist on the system. Sega’s Mega Drive one is dire. Manomio’s C64 one is a good effort, but those old 8-bit games just don’t work without digital controllers. About the only emulator I can deal with is Frotz, and that’s because it’s a text adventure player (specifically, it runs Z-Machine files), and so it only needs a decent keyboard, which the iPad happily has.

I’m fine with retro games on iOS, but I sincerely hope if iDOS has inspired people, it’s inspired them to remake old games, or at least adapt them to iOS. I’d love to see Cannon Fodder for iOS. I’d be perfectly happy with the DOS version, but only if it had controls reworked specifically for iOS devices. What I don’t want is to be swiping my iPad screen like a crazy person, trying to move a cursor, thereby providing another layer of control abstraction that’s totally unnecessary in iOS gaming.