Until August 22, the entire series of Real Racing games are on special offer with some impressive discounts available for budding racers.
We at 148apps have been big fans of the series, especially the iPhone versions of Real Racing 1 and 2. With the iPad versions also doingwell so now is surely the ideal time to give them a shot.
Each title offers some excellent simulation based racing and are all equally worth players’ attentions. It’s particularly fun to see just how far iOS gaming has come just in the time that Firemint has been developing the Real Racing series. Real Racing 2 HD is particularly revolutionary with the likes of TV-out functionality and cloud based saving synchronization.
Don’t forget though, these offers end August 22. So be quick to snap up a bargain!
EA is trying to set themselves up as the dominant player in the mobile and iOS markets, and months after acquiring publisher Chillingo, EA has acquired developer Firemint. Based in Australia, Firemint are known for Flight Control and the Real Racing series, which are responsible for over 4.5 million and 2 million downloads respectively. No details have been released on the terms of the transaction, or if Firemint’s operations will change in any way. While Chillingo is largely just a publisher of apps, any changes on their end have been largely in the background, as they have continued to operate normally on the surface, continuing to regularly publish independently-developed games. Firemint being an actual developer themselves, they may be subject to more changes, although any changes are largely speculative at this point. EA reports that Firemint will be maintained as a studio under the EAi group which includes their mobile, social, and online game offerings.
What this move does for EA is that it brings a pair of successful yet disparate franchises into their tent, and that may have been what made Firemint such an appealing acquisition target. Flight Control is a popular casual game that at one point was possibly the most popular game on iOS around when it was released, and is a progenitor of path management games to this day. Meanwhile, Real Racing is a graphics-intensive game, showcasing some of the best graphics and racing gameplay on iOS. As such, it has always sold at a premium price point, but this hasn’t kept the franchise from gaining popularity of its own, based on the number of downloads it too has gotten.
This move could be based on bringing Flight Control and Real Racing, along with any other future Firemint projects, to other platforms. Firemint has partnered with Namco to publish Flight Control on Android and Windows Phone 7, along with a PC version available on Intel AppUp, but we have yet to see Real Racing leave iOS yet. EA has also recently acquired Mobile Post Production, who have largely worked on cross-platform mobile projects, including the porting of games across various smartphone OSes. This could mean that Real Racing might be popping up on non-iOS platforms at some point, but this is all speculation at this point. While it’s unknown what will come of this move by EA, it’s another example of them making a big splash in the mobile gaming market.
Firemint have done it again. Real Racing 2 HD hits on the eve of the iPad 2 launch.
One of our highest rated games of all time, Real Racing 2 has been given the HD treatment just in time for the iPad 2 launch.
Firemint have released Real Racing 2 HD to really show off what the iPad 2 can do. This version includes full screen anti-aliasing for an ultra sharp look. In addition, seven new career events are exclusive to Real Racing 2 HD.
The feature that really stood out to me is one that more games need – your progress is synced between the iPhone and the iPad versions, ensuring that you can pick up just where you left off when you switch from one device to the next.
A big announcement kicking off the day today, as Firemint announced that they have acquired fellow Aussie developer Infinite Interactive. The agreement means that Firemint will now be the exclusive publisher of all Infinite Interactive games, which means they’ll need more kangaroo pouches in which to stuff all the money they’re about to make.
“I’m incredibly pleased to welcome Steve (Fawkner, founder of Infinite Interactive) and his team to Firemint,” said Firemint founder Rob Murray. “Steve is an outstanding game designer and our two studios evolved very similar philosophies of developing addictive, fun and polished original games. By bringing our studios’ talents together, we will be able to create even more awesome games – and more of them.”
Fawkner added, “Firemint has had huge success designing, developing and publishing great original games. By joining forces, we now have a way to further develop some of the exciting new concepts we’ve been working on. This new position really frees me up to focus on game design and I can’t wait to get stuck into it!”
Infinite Interactive is the studio behind the extremely popular Puzzle Quest franchise, while Firemint is best known for games like Flight Control and Real Racing 2. With the two studios set to work together it likely means that none of us will ever get anything done ever again, so we may as well just all quit our jobs now and wait for the companies’ first joint-venture game. Will their combined power be enough to knock the traditional powerhouses from their perch atop the App Store? It’s impossible to know right now but we wouldn’t be surprised if whatever they come up with makes some major waves in the realm of iOS and beyond. This is truly a powerhouse pairing, and one with a whole lot of promise.
iPhone App - Designed for the iPhone, compatible with the iPad
Posted December 17th, 2010 by Chris Hall Our Rating: :: FANTASTIC
Sony has Gran Turismo, Apple has Real Racing. Real Racing 2 can't compete with the 1,031 cars that GT5 has, but for a mobile device it's just as impressive.
As the year winds down and we look ahead to the next decade it’s time for all those wonderful end-of-year lists we all get so excited about. Today we have some exciting news, as Apple has detailed all the top paid and free apps for the iPhone and iPad, as well as the top grossing apps on each platform. Here’s the full rundown, for your edification.
1. Facebook
2. Angry Birds Lite
3. Words With Friends Free
4. Skype
5. Tap Tap Revenge 3
6. The Weather Channel®
7. Paper Toss
8. Bing
9. ROCK BAND FREE
10. Talking Tom Cat
11/19/10 – UPDATE: New Trailer. Feast your eyes on this:
Firemint today announced that the upcoming sequel to Real Racing will include licensed cars instead of the nameless cars of the original. We’ve seen Firemint release a special version of Real Racing for Volkswagon (Real Racing GTI), but this will be the first time that licensed cars will be including in the main game.
While this isn’t a big deal to many, in the world of video games this feature sets the high end racers apart from the pack by adding a certain prestige. Not to mention people love to drive cars that they could never afford to own, even if it is in a video game. I think this announcement just sets the stage for what we can expect from Real Racing 2. I think we can expect some amazing features in Real Racing 2. But what the wizards at Firemint have up their sleeves, we don’t yet know.
What new features would you like to see in Real Racing 2? What other cars would you like to see in Real Racing 2? Let us know your thoughts in the comments and we’ll let you know more details on Real Racing 2 as soon as we are allowed to!
We don’t yet know the full list of what cars will be included in Real Racing 2, but in the above image you can see the 2006 BMW Z4 M Coupe on the left and the 2010 Chevrolet Corvette C6.R on the right. Seems like a good start, but I’m sure we’ll see more.
The pending release of iOS 4.2 will include multiplayer support, and Firemint stands at the ready by announcing that Real Racing HD for the iPad will feature online multiplayer once the update goes live. The free feature will be handled via Game Center, allowing players to log in and vie for the checkered flag in races featuring up to 4 human competitors.
This is a nice addition, as the game already supports 6 player local races via Wi-Fi as well as head-to-head races over Bluetooth: now the multiplayer suite of options is fully fleshed-out. While we don’t yet know when iOS 4.2 is coming out (should be any day now), the Real Racing HD update should be available to launch right alongside it.
The inclusion of simultaneous online multiplayer in the latest iOS update shows just how seriously Apple is competing in the handheld gaming space these days. While people largely wrote off mobile gaming back when the iPhone originally launched, Apple’s devices have become a major player in the handheld space and have sent traditional gaming companies like Sony and Nintendo into a minor panic. After all, when you can play games on your phone that are just as good or better than what you find on a traditional handheld, and you end up paying far less per game, what’s the point in buying anything else?
As for the matter at hand, congrats to all those Real Racing HD owners out there who will soon be able to take on other human competitors in the hopes of being crowned king (or queen) of the raceway. We’d throw in a “Gentlemen, start your engines” joke at this point but it just feels forced, so instead we’ll simply say have fun with this new mode.
The App Hall of Fame (the original App Hall of Fame, not the Apple knock off) is an independent initiative launched by 148Apps that includes selection committee members from over 40 web and print publications.
Our goal is to archive the very best mobile apps by honoring only 12 applications per month. To be eligible, applications must be available for download from the App Store for at least 6 months. Applications are nominated and voted on monthly by the selection committee with the applications that get the most votes being inducted into the hall of fame.
We want you to join in on the celebration. We’ll be giving away copies of the newly inducted applications to subscribers of our mailing list later this week. Subscribe now for a chance to win.
We are very proud to announce the November inductees into the App Hall of Fame:
Editor’s Choice and 5-star rated Real Racing is finding itself on a week long sale beginning September 30. The 40% off sale will bring Real Racing down to the low price of $2.99 for a limited time. For those of you unaware of the racing powerhouse, you can find our glowing review here.
Those of you well versed in the beauty that is Real Racing understand what it means to get such a great app for such a low price. Even if you own it, don’t forget about the 6-person local multi-player mode. Snatch it up for a friend through the gift-an-app program and introduce someone else to this racing giant.
Firemint is celebrating this sale by offering their Twitter and Facebook communities a chance to win promo codes for free copies of Real Racing. Send a tweet or like them on Facebook and your set. (Full Contest Details).
In case you need additional convincing, Real Racing took, among other things, Best Game Graphics, Best Racing Game, and an honorable mention as the best app of 2009 in the Best App Ever Awards last year.
Eighteen months ago, the then-little-known developer company Firemint published Flight Control – a game where you land increasing quantities of planes on runways with a limited amount of space both on the ground and in air. It was awarded five stars across the board by 148Apps, as well as the Editor’s Choice badge.
Today, Firemint has announced that sales of Flight Control have passed the three million mark – on average, a little over 5500 copies a day are bought by new users for their iPhone or iPod Touch. At $0.99 a piece, with developers earning 70% of revenue, that totals just under $2.1 million for Firemint’s work – or, to put it another way, $3814.67 a day. In other statistics, some two billion planes have been landed according to Flight Control’s online leaderboards, equating to 2548 planes a minute or a little over 42 every second.
Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced on September 1st that the iPod Touch alone has more than 50% of market share for portable gaming, outselling Nintendo and Sony combined. The App store has already enjoyed over a quarter of a billion downloads to date, reflecting the ever-growing importance of third party application developers and their software.
Firemint, creators of Flight Control and Real Racing, have announced that a number of in-game achievements and leaderboards for their popular games will integrate with Apple’s soon-to-be-released Game Center application, built to bring iPhone and iPod Touch gamers together both socially and competitively.
For Flight Control there are currently three known achievements: Safety Card (read the game tutorial); First Flights (land an aircraft on every level) and Jet Power (land 20 jets in a game). Leaderboards will also exist, presumably for each level, to see exactly who the best flight controller in the world really is, and how you stack up against your friends.
Real Racing will see at least five achievements, including: Real Racer (complete a race using methods B or E); Between the Lines (win the race without going off track); Clean Sweep (get all gold in a championship); Perfectionist (beat the gold qualifying time for all classes) and Cream of the Crop (rank in the top 100 for any track).
What makes Firemint’s integration with Game Center so unique is that the developers won’t be scrapping their established CloudCell platform, which already provides features that Game Center offers, like leaderboards. Instead, where possible, achievements and leaderboards will exist to offer those with older devices a chance to get in on the action. “Originally launched in April 2009, Cloudcell enables extensive connected features and is currently being streamlined to make it even easier to use and even more unobtrusive” writes Firemint. “As well as extensive online leaderboards, both Real Racing and Flight Control integrate with Twitter and Facebook, making it easy to share new personal bests.”
Game Center is supported on the iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4 and third/fourth generation iPod Touches, and will roll out next week with the public release of iOS 4.1. If you haven’t yet bought Flight Control or Real Racing, you can read our reviews at the links below. Real Racing was awarded the 148Apps Editor’s Choice badge.
The increased resolution of the iPhone 4 has been the point of a lot of conversation from the moment it was first announced. Most of the conversation focusing on if it really is a “retina display,” one with such a high pixel density that the human eye can’t see the individual pixels. And around that, most of the conversation had to do how great text will look on the display. But what about games? How will the increased resolution impact games? Can they actually approach photographic quality? Wow, that would be staggering — and I can’t wait to see it!
In what I believe are the first games to be approved to take advantage of the Retina Display on the iPhone 4, Real Racing and Flight Control updates are now live. They include increased resolution graphics to fit the new display — rather than rely on pixel doubled graphics. In addition, Real Racing control has been updated to take advantage of the gyroscope in the iPhone 4. It should provide for even better control of the steering in the game.
I make no bones about it. Real Racing is my favorite iPhone game ever. I’ve always been a fan of racing games. Real Racing just hits a chord with my by making the game fun, very well made, and not crazy complex (and boring) with car customization options.
While I haven’t seen it yet, this is a preview you know, Real Racing HD looks to be everything that I love about Real Racing, but on a much bigger screen.
“We’re all very excited about the launch of iPad, and Real Racing HD really shows off the new possibilities that come with this breakthrough device,” said Firemint CEO Robert Murray. “Real Racing is all about authentic pack racing action. iPad is incredibly immersive and personal so playing the Real Racing HD App will be an adrenaline-fuelled rush.”
One of my biggest concerns with Real Racing HD, and any racing games on the iPad is how you will control it. When a racing game was shown at the iPad launch I was initially excited. Then I started to think — who wants to hold a 1.5 pound $500 device as a steering wheel controller? Not me for sure. Not only is it heavy, but seems like the risk of dropping it is increased greatly with rapid gameplay. Luckily it looks like Firemint have put some thought into this problem and implemented some iPad specific control schemes.
In addition, Real Racing HD adds some ghost racing options, and the ability to customize your car skin by importing an image from your camera roll. Real Racing HD is available now in the App Store — even if you don’t have an iPad to play it on!
Firemint have developed a special version of their racing game, Real Racing, to help promote the 2010 VW GTI. You could even win a GTI by playing the game. Details on the contest will be posted soon.
VW tapped Firemint to create a special version of their Real Racing, sort of a lite version, with tie-ins to the marketing campaign promoting the 2010 GTI. The app was released late last night at the conclusion of a special premier event in New York hosted by G4′s Olivia Munn. Sorry to say, I couldn’t be there.
iPhone App - Designed for the iPhone, compatible with the iPad
Released: 2009-10-22 :: Category: Games
The game itself is a slimmed down one based on the engine of the five star racing game we love so much. The main focus of the game, of course, is to push the new 2010 GTI. So, that’s the only car you have to drive in the game and you only have 1 course to drive. What this will give you is a good sense of the realism and amazing console-level quality of the full game, Real Racing.
Try out the 2010 GTI version of the game and if you like it, I highly recommend that you pick up the full version, Real Racing. I really can’t say enough good things about it.
Apple announced recently that over 2 billion apps have been downloaded from the App Store. Notable is the timing; this announcement comes only six months after the download of the billionth app, which occurred 9 months after the App Store was launched. This indicated exponential growth of the store. Obviously these numbers are a bit inflated from a developer’s perspective because they seem to include free downloads, but the numbers also indicate that among the user base of 50 million, the average number of apps downloaded is 40, a surprisingly high number. In contrast, the average number of times one of 85,000 apps has been downloaded is only about 2350, hardly a safe bet for business prospects when you consider that most apps are $.99 and that Apple takes 30% of sales. In addition, these numbers are disproportionately eschewed by the top 100 apps; my guess is the median would be much lower. Despite all of your various incompetencies in managing the App Store, Apple, I have to congratulate you on a truly unprecedented event.
Critical Contrast
No matter how experienced we are here at 148apps, no two reviewers agree about every game. That’s why I thought it would be nice to offer some separate best app lists, just so you’ll know what we think is worth buying right now.
Will’s Top 3 Current Apps (games):
1. iBlast Moki
2. Meteor Blitz
3. Unify
Will’s Top 3 Apps of All Time:
1. Rolando 2
2. Real Racing
3. Space Invaders Infinity Gene
Chris’s Top 3 Current Apps (games):
1. geoDefense Swarm
2. Orbital
3. Aera
Chris’s Top 3 Apps of All Time:
1. Orbital
2. Fieldrunners
3. Need For Speed: Undercover
A special mention has to go out to geoDefense Swarm, as it may enter the top 3 after a bit more time spent on my iPhone.
This week’s sign of the apocalypse of the world being fair and just. By Chris Hall
This space is usually reserved for calamity, but this week we have one instance of people being quite rational. Family Guy: Uncensored appeared in the app store this week for an insanely high app price of $4.99. I’m not against spending $5 on an app, as I do quite often, but this one is just bad. How can you have a Family Guy game with absolutely no voices, only text bubbles? Even a simple “giggidy” would’ve been appreciated given the premium app price, but I suppose that Glu Mobile just figured that the Family Guy license alone would bring customers. Apparently the people aren’t biting though, as Family Guy: Uncensored is nowhere to be found in the top 100 apps.
iPhone App - Designed for the iPhone, compatible with the iPad
Released: 2009-09-23 :: Category: Games
Apps of the Week
Robocalypse: Mobile Mayhem
The strongest App Store Real Time Strategy game yet comes loaded with an extensive single player campaign, online multiplayer, and a humorous and engaging story. The game covers all of the proverbial RTS bases while forging a unique identity. My main complaint about the game is the lack of the ability to minutely control your troops, you must place “action flags” that attract your troops but don’t allow for the same degree of precision. Besides this quirk, however, the game is highly recommended.
geoDefense Swarm, by guest writer Chris Hall
I usually don’t work myself into MMAHQ, but I have found a new love. geoDefense Swarm (gDS) may be the best tower defense app in the app store, and with a crowded field of apps that include Fieldrunners, The Creeps!, and Sentinel, that is saying something. Unlike so many apps in the tower defense genre, including some of the iPhone greats, gDS is genuinely challenging from the start. The graphics are great in a Tron sort of way, and the sound effects are surprisingly effective. This game is not only my new favorite tower defense game, but it may be my favorite iPhone game… period.
iPhone App - Designed for the iPhone, compatible with the iPad
Posted July 17th, 2009 by Jeff Scott Our Rating: :: Best Racer Ever
Real Racing has taken a little longer than anticipated to reach our anxious little hands. The extra time was used to fine tune and perfect the game. It appears from the time I've spent with the game that it was well worth it.
Firemint gotten their hands on an iPhone 3GS and decided to take it for a little test drive. With it’s increased processor speed, better graphics processor, and extra memory, it’s built for killer games. The best way they came up with to test drive the 3GS was to make a special version of their fantastic racing game, Real Racing to stress it. The normal version of Real Racing has 6 cars on the track at once. Their iPhone 3GS test version has not 12, not 20, but 40 cars on the track at the same time! Take a look at the demo video below for the amazing proof — the real fun starts around 30 seconds in.
Amazing, just amazing. Looks like they might have even been able to put even more cars on the track! If you haven’t picked up Real Racing yet, what are you waiting for? It’s the best arcade game we’ve seen yet for the iPhone.
I got a pleasant surprise in my inbox today, and I hardly slept last night for playing it so much.
Hot on the heals of their great update to Flight Control, Firemint have submitted to the app store a completely different game, Real Racing. Possibly the best racing game we’ve ever see on the iPhone, it’s coming really soon and I’ve got a final build ad-hoc copy. I’ve commented before about how great of a game this is. The final version is even better. It has amazing fit and finish and looks even better than the previous versions I’ve seen. Well done Firemint!
The racing game features 12 tracks, 26 cars, and five different game modes. The most interesting feature, to me, is the asynchronous multiplayer mode. Very well done, and a ton of fun to play.
If you’re on Twitter, you can follow the game specific Twitter account, or become a fan of the Facebook page.
No word yet on price, we’ll see that when the app goes live. And we’ll have a full review ready for when the app goes live. That is if I can stop playing it. For now, check after the jump for the official trailer video, more screen shots, and the official app description.
If it’s one thing that GDC taught me it’s that the iPhone has a long way to go as a game console. It’s still a tiny little player in the whole gigantic video games world. But in the nine months since the app store launch, it has made some great strides.
For one thing, the iPhone totally dominated the Independent Games Festival Mobile awards. Not only did they will all the categories, they had most of the nominations as well. The iPhone is now, as far as most are concerned, the best mobile phone platform to develop on. As one developer put it, finally a mobile platform that doesn’t suck.
This past week we did get many clues about what 2009 will bring for iPhone games. First, this will be the year the big boys go full force after the iPhone market. EA, Chillingo, Glu, and others have announced some huge portfolios of games coming out this year.
We will also see an explosion in backend community systems, think XBox Live for your iPhone, and probably some consolidation of those services as well. Consumers aren’t best served by having multiple community systems, everyone knows that, but who will win out as the best? With GameSpy announcing they are bringing over their backend that already powers many console and desktop titles, they will likely start out in the lead. Then ngmoco announced they were opening up their platform to third party developers, another strong contender, but no release date announced. Then you have the underdogs such as OpenFeint, ByteClub, and a new contender, Agon. Then there’s also the Facebook Connect for iPhone that many systems are using. It’s not purely a gaming system, but many have adapted it. A force for sure, with Facebook having over 160 million users.
We also were fortunate to meet with some really cool developers and get a sneak peak at some of the great games coming out in the not too distant future.
Real Racing from Firemint Release Date: Late April, 2009 at an unknown price
Without a doubt, the best we saw was Real Racing from Firemint. Real Racing is a racing game just short of a racing sim. It’s ultra-realistic and features some amazing community and asynchronous multiplayer modes. You even have the ability to publish hot laps to YouTube, automatically. The controls by default work great and are very responsive. This is one to watch for. Firemint are being close to the chest with the price on this one, but it will be released late April.
Touch Pets from ngmoco Release Date: unknown
I’ll have to admit I was originally nonplussed on Touch Pets. But after spending some time with it I can see what the excitement it about it. For one this, this game is deep. There’s lots to do, lots of things to collect, there are missions to go on, there are achievements, tons of stuff. But above all, this game has a social aspect that could set it apart from all of the other virtual pet type games. This all ads up to a game that will be very enormously engrossing to many people, maybe even me.
Star Defense from ngmoco Release Date: pretty soon at an unknown price
Tower Defense games are filling up the app store quickly. And many are really good. Star Defense takes a slightly different direction and adds 3D to the standard game. So instead of playing tower defense on a flat landscape, you play it on a 3D world. One of the more interesting parts of this is that, in one level, you are playing on a cube instead of a sphere. This basically divides up each level into 6 parts as you have to place defense on each of the sides since the weapons don’t seem to work around the corners of the cube. The game itself seems really well done and stable, and should be released soon. We’ll give it more playtime when it comes out and get a full review.
Star Trader: Moon Madness from HermitWorks Release Date: very soon at $0.99
This game is an expanded version of the DopeWars genre that I’m sure everyone is familiar with. But it’s set in outerspace and uses the Quake engine to provide a 3D world where you can walk around and barter. The controls are a modified 2 location virtual touch pad as we’ve seen on other games and works well for movement and changing the angle you are viewing the world. The developers are releasing this at $0.99 and will be raising the price as they add features such as multiplayer in the future.
All in all a fantastic GDC. Had to great opportunity to speak with some amazing people. We’ll try to get full reviews of these games up as soon as they are available.
The IGF Mobile awards were announced at the Game Developers Conference this week, and the iPhone, less than a year after commercial games became available for it, swept the awards winning all categories.
In celebration of these awards and due to extra publicity by Apple in the App Store, have reduced their prices to help increase sales for the nominated applications. Here’s a rundown of the winners:
We at 148apps have been big fans of the series, especially the iPhone versions of Real Racing 1 and 2. With the iPad versions also doing well so now is surely the ideal time to give them a shot.
:: FANTASTIC
:: REAL FRUSTRATING
EA is trying to set themselves up as the dominant player in the mobile and iOS markets, 
Firemint is celebrating this sale by offering their Twitter and Facebook communities a chance to win promo codes for free copies of Real Racing. Send a tweet or like them on Facebook and your set. 
The increased resolution of the iPhone 4 has been the point of a lot of conversation from the moment it was first announced. Most of the conversation focusing on if it really is a “retina display,” one with such a high pixel density that the human eye can’t see the individual pixels. And around that, most of the conversation had to do how great text will look on the display. But what about games? How will the increased resolution impact games? Can they actually approach photographic quality? Wow, that would be staggering — and I can’t wait to see it!
I got a pleasant surprise in my inbox today, and I hardly slept last night for playing it so much.
