Wow, what a month it’s been for racing fans. Specifically Real Racing fans! You might recall how we kicked things off with our three-part series documenting the history of the Real Racing series, Firemint’s (now Firemonkeys’) approach to designing the first two games, and a peek at Real Racing 3’s Time Shifted Multiplayer that everyone’s been talking about. If you don’t recall you should give them a read. You know, for science or something. Not because I wrote them and am proud of my work or anything.
Since it’s been something of a non-stop Real Racing 3 party here at 148Apps we wanted to draw things to a close with a bit of style. Which is why we’re going to capitalize on all the spirit of Time Shifted competition and challenge you, our readers, to a race. Specifically the Pure Stock Challenge, Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Nissan Silvia (S15) Showcase Cup race pictured above. I think I’ve typed that out correctly. Why this event? Because it requires one of the first cars new players will have access to and doesn’t allow for any other; providing as even and easily accessible a playing field as we could find.
All you have to do is drive your heart out. Snap a screen shot (hit the Power and Home buttons on your iOS device at the same time) of your best time and post it in the comments below along with your Game Center username. We’ll pick random winners from all of the entries and post the results here on Monday (3/4) afternoon.
The prizes? We’ll give away three $10 iTunes gift cards to spend how you see fit. Although in the spirit of the contest we’d suggest something like, oh, maybe the Race Car Booster Pack that includes 65 gold and a 2010 Dodge Viper SRT10 ACR-X?
Update: We’ll contact our three winners via email. Thanks for playing and look for more Real Racing 3 contests coming up soon.
Posted February 27th, 2013 by Rob Rich Our Rating: :: CAN'T BUY ME FUN
Free-to-play or not, Real Racing 3 is a fantastic game that no iOS gamer should be without. Especially if they have Game Center friends to compete with. Turns out the best things in life *are* free.
We got a chance to grab some quality hands on time with Real Racing 3 today. We got about thirty minutes of video we’ll be posting over the coming days. The game, much as we expected, it’s pretty amazing! It looks great, it plays great, and our concerns about the free to play model were somewhat assuaged.
We’ll have more on the free to play model once we get more time with it. But you can at least rest assured it’s not super intrusive. It exists pretty much as we guessed last week, but with less friction and fewer pay walls than I anticipated.
The free to play energy system in Real Racing 3 works like this. You earn cash when racing. When you race, and damage your car, you have to pay for those repairs. The better you are, the less damage you do to your car. To fix you car, you have to use the cash you earn. You also have to pay for upgrades and new cars. While the damage to your car does affect the power of it, you can chose to not repair it and keep racing.
Also, typical to most free to play games there are two currencies included. Dollars and gold coins. Dollars pay for repairs, upgrades, etc., the gold coins speed things up, reducing your wait time.
Repairs and upgrades take time to complete. How long depends on how much damage or how big of an upgrade it is. You can speed them up by using gold coins. You only earn gold coins by leveling up in the game or by buying them with real money via in-app purchase.
All in all, not that intrusive for free to play games. But I can’t totally give it a pass as the device I was playing on had millions in cash and thousands of gold coins. That doesn’t give me a good feel for how fast you earn money or how fast you are forced to spend it. We’ll have more when we get a chance to try it on our devices.
Here’s a quick demo of Real Racing 3, featuring the first full race seen anywhere. We’ll have more videos coming soon with more on the cars in the game, the repair and upgrade system, and more. But first, here’s 4:26 of Real Racing 3 bliss.
Real Racing 3 launches as a Universal app on February 28th. We hope to have a promo code soon so we can start setting some hot laps. When we get one, we’ll have more in-depth info.
Posted by Jeff Scott on September 5th, 2012 + Universal App - Designed for iPhone and iPad
Reckless Racing 2 has been one of my favorite arcade racers. It’s free today via Free App A Day. When we reviewed it earlier this year we loved it and gave it a Editor’s Choice. I highly recommend you grab it if you don’t already have it!
Posted August 16th, 2012 by Tony Cave Our Rating: :: A fun little top down racer, but the only thing that makes it stand out is the portrait view gameplay
A fun little top down racer, but the only thing that makes it stand out is the portrait view gameplay
New mobile app Speadi allows local businesses to create deals for their customers and then have those participants “race” to receive the deals in real-time. Speadi charges a flat fee for each deal, in contrast to competitors like Groupon and LivingSocial.
According to the press release, participating businesses, or sponsors, retain complete control over when, how much, how long, and what kind of traffic they want at any given time of the day. “Love the ability to post a special whenever I want and control the number of specials available,” said Kris Kildea, a business owner who’s used the service.
Last week was the service’s official launch, and around 400 runners raced each other for the 41 different deals. The mobile app itself saw over 1000 runners participate just a few days after that. Sponsors offering deals throughout the day included VG’s, Biggby, French Laundry, Gatsby Grind, Alexander J’s, and Avon.
Save Minecraft, I think the most sought after (and demanded) iOS port would have to be Chris Pirih’s SkiFree. A few have tried their hand at bringing the yeti-infested favorite to iOS, but the results have been a bit… mixed. Pink Zombie Studios has decided to give it a go, regardless, and the result is Ski Dude.
Ski Dude, much like its predecessor, involves avoiding obstacles and jumping off of ramps in order to rack-up a high score. In this iteration there’s no finish line. Players just go until they use up their three lives, then start over from zero. Going over jumps will nab points (as will grabbing presents littered throughout the course), but will also speed up the action. Conversely, plowing through snow piles will slow things down a bit. And this being an iOS game and all, the titular character can be guided left and right with either touch or accelerometer controls.
It may or may not be the release everyone’s been hoping for, but it’s here and it’s totally free to play. I’m a bit disappointed that there don’t appear to be any abominable snow monsters rampaging about, though. Of course, who’s to say they won’t make an appearance at some point? Anything is possible, right?
Racing to an iOS device near you later this week is Race of Champions, an app that hopes to be the most ‘technologically advanced racing game’ on the App Store.
Arriving 28th October, in time for the weekend, Race of Champions is the game of the competition of the same name. It’s a race in Germany in Decemberthat pits the world’s greatest drivers against each other. A series of head-to-head races involving identical cars on a parallel track, the focus is on the drivers and their abilities in order to be crowned ‘Champion of Champions’. Cars are swapped round between heats in order that drivers have to prove themselves using a variety of different machinery.
The game offers a very similar experience by the looks of things with developers Invictus supplying us with a teaser trailer and set of screenshots to excite racing fans across the world.
We’ll be sure to take a closer look at Race of Champions in time for its release date this coming Friday.
NuOxygen has just released “The Racing 3D Flight Simulator,” Ikaro Racing HD for iOS devices, and it’s looking pretty neat. Players will race through a diverse set of environments (and 22 tracks), from sprawling cities to winding canyons, jockeying for first place. It won’t be easy, but it makes winning that much more satisfying.
The game is designed to steadily increase in difficulty, so that players adjust naturally to the curve. It’s meant to be more pleasant than panic-inducing, with cameras that highlight the beauty of the landscape or the details of the planes so that the visuals can truly be appreciated. Of course, spending too much time drinking in the details are a good way to end up face-planting into an obstacle. A danger that becomes even more real when the dynamic weather system opts to replace those clears skies with a thunderstorm.
Ikaro Racing HD was designed with the iPad 2 in mind, but it’s also available for most other iOS devices. It just requires some tweaking in the options menu first. Aspiring air jockeys can grab it off of the App Store right now for free.
World War Z the game is celebrating the movie releasing into theaters by dropping its price for a week. Starting today and lasting until Monday, June 24th, you will be able to download the game for $0.99 cents. That means you get 28 levels of combat for less than a dollar, which is a good [...]
Wow, what a month it’s been for racing fans. Specifically Real Racing fans! You might recall how we kicked things off with our three-part series documenting the history of the Real Racing series, Firemint’s (now Firemonkeys’) approach to designing the first two games, and a peek at Real Racing 3’s Time Shifted Multiplayer that everyone’s been talking about. If you don’t recall you should give them a read. You know, for science or something. Not because I wrote them and am proud of my work or anything.
:: CAN'T BUY ME FUN
:: SQUIRREL POWER!
New mobile app Speadi allows local businesses to create deals for their customers and then have those participants “race” to receive the deals in real-time. Speadi charges a flat fee for each deal, in contrast to competitors like Groupon and LivingSocial. 
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Arriving 28th October, in time for the weekend, Race of Champions is the game of the competition of the same name. It’s a race in Germany in Decemberthat pits the world’s greatest drivers against each other. A series of head-to-head races involving identical cars on a parallel track, the focus is on the drivers and their abilities in order to be crowned ‘Champion of Champions’. Cars are swapped round between heats in order that drivers have to prove themselves using a variety of different machinery. 
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