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VW Partner with Firemint for VW GTI Advergame

Posted by Jeff Scott on October 22nd, 2009

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.

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.

Tuesday Morning App HQ?

Posted by Will on September 29th, 2009

Random musings of the App Store

2 Billion Apps Served

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.

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.

Real Racing (Updated Version 1.10)

iPhone App - Designed for iPhone, compatible with iPad
By Jeff Scott on July 17th, 2009
Our rating: starstarstarstarstar :: 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.
Read The Full Review »

Firemint Kick The Tires of the iPhone 3GS

Posted by Jeff Scott on July 1st, 2009
iPhone App - Designed for iPhone, compatible with iPad
Our rating: starstarstarstarstar :: Best Racer Ever :: Read Review »

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.

[youtube Z7SnwkdHO2o]

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.

Real Racing Revs Up

Posted by Jeff Scott on June 4th, 2009

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.

GDC 2009 Wrap-up - iPhone Games Coming on Strong

Posted by Jeff Scott on March 28th, 2009

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.

Independent Games Festival Mobile Winners Announced - iPhone Sweeps!

Posted by Jeff Scott on March 26th, 2009

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:

Best Mobile Game - Fieldrunners
(on sale for $2.99, down from $4.99 iTunes Link)

Best iPhone Game - Zen Bound
($4.99 iTunes Link)

Innovation in Game Design - Galcon
(on sale for $0.99, down from $4.99 iTunes Link)

Mobile Achievement in Art - Fieldrunners
(on sale for $2.99, down from $4.99 iTunes Link)

Technical Achievement Award - Real Racing
(Not yet released - target release date: late April, 2009)

Mobile Audio Achievement - Zen Bound
($4.99 iTunes Link)