Falcon Gunner, Star Wars augmented reality game for iPhone

Falcon Gunner (US$4.99) is a Star Wars-themed, augmented reality game for iPhone that superimposes battle scenes over live video of your surroundings. You say people give you grief for staring at your iPhone too much as it is? Now you can annoy them with the power of The Force.

Like many young boys in the late 70's, I dreamed of piloting the Millennium Falcon through space. That's just the experience that Falcon Gunner hopes to emulate, swapping outer space for wherever you happen to be. Your mission is to destroy incoming TIE fighters and ultimately the Death Star. Once the game is up and running, you're seated inside the cockpit, with two controls on either side of the screen. The left positions your gun while the right fires.

The augmented reality feature works much better than I expected. Ships zoom through your backyard as you fire. Authentic Star Wars sounds add to the experience, with roaring ships and encouraging squawks from R2D2 (at least I think he was being encouraging).

The temptation to blast lasers at your dog (or kids) is strong, but that leads to the Dark Side...and a quick death, as the TIE fighters aren't fooling around. For five dollars it's a good bit of fun and definitely challenging. Click the link below to see a video of Falcon Gunner in action.