The Amiga legend - Free to Play on iOS

[Bif]

Going to have to give this a whirl later, but I've found through experience any kind of arcade-like game with touch screen and/or gyro as input totally sucks to the point of being a completely annoying and frustrating experience. It's no fault of the game makers. I REALLY wish these devices makers would at least put one very small d-pad on one side and a button or two on the other side as standard equipment. That would open up a wealth of new game play possibilities. Heck they could even be used for other useful purposes such as camera zoom and shutter, how novel of an idea.

Going off topic but I find it really frustrating that after all this time there is not a device out there that fits my idea of what a portable entertainment/information device should be, which would be easiest to describe as taking for example a Samsung Galaxy II S, add the d-pad and buttons, and remove the cell phone part of it (to make it an Android equivalent to an iPod), and then price it closer to iPod territory than cell phone territory. Doesn't seem that hard to come up with but I have yet to see anything like it (let me know if I am ignorant of something that exists).

[Bif]

http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/cellphone/e8f5/

Yeah I've seen these, in fact I've used a Wii controller with my Android tablet to play with MAME. It's a very awkward experience to try and hold both a tablet and your controller at the same time. Only useful if you can set your tablet down on a table and sit in front of it, a position I am absolutely never in when mobile gaming.

The stick on joystick is an interesting idea but I can imagine all sorts of problems with that. For one, it's not a d-pad, it sticks out way too much, so you'd have to take it off and put it in another pocket or whatever when not using it. I don't see why they couldn't make a d-pad version though. I am sure every game has the virtual d-pad in a different spot, so you'd also need to be moving it around each time you play a different game.

I think unless Apple heavily commits to gaming I'm not sure d-pads and a button built into the hardware will take off any time soon. Oddly, if Apple did make it a spec to include a d-pad, I bet you'd see every Android device follow suit immediately for fear of not keeping up. It's a bit of a sad world that way right now.

I'm still trying to download Battle Squadron right now, unfortunately Apple's app store rarely wants to download or update apps, they just sit there waiting to download and never do until the moon is magically aligned with some planet. Don't get me started on how much I loathe Apple. :furious:

[Bif]

Finally got to try it.

The default control made no sense to me, makes me think it's not working correctly on my 2nd gen iPod touch. No matter what I touched or tilted my ship would only travel diagonally across the screen. Switched to virtual d-pad ... ugh ... I don't know how anyone could play an arcade game like that, totally impossible for me to control, maybe because I have giant thumbs or something.

Anyway, looks like it would be great retro fun if I could actually control the ship.

[Bif]

I don't doubt that my 2nd Gen iPod sucks and probably doesn't handle input as well. It was nice and snappy when I bought it, then within a few months an iOS update turned it into Windows 95 running on a 486. I almost feel like Apple is purposely screwing over older hardware and not even requiring apps to actually be certified on older hardware. It's amazing how few things work properly.