Actually, I'd play that. Namco recently announced that they were forming an Apple Games division to head up game development for Apple platforms like the iPhone, and in this interview, a producer for them who used to work for Apple says that they're excited to work on bringing great games to the handheld device. Like, for example, Pac-man, Galaga, and... Soulcaliber and Tekken. You heard that right -- fighting games haven't exactly made a splash on the iPhone, as they're primarily a button-based genre, and the iPhone, of course, has no buttons.

But that won't stop Namco's guy from putting the old head gears into motion: "It's just the controls that are a challenge. We are thinking about that." Think away, crazy man -- I'd love to pull out Yoshimitsu for a few rounds while waiting at a bus stop. Obviously, the easiest way to try and port these would be to put overlaid buttons on the screen, but that doesn't leave a lot of room for the fighting (and not having the tactile feedback would probably be a problem as well). Maybe some gesture-based accelerometer movement? Sky's the limit, right?. Your call, Namco -- can't wait to see what you come up with.

[via Joystiq]

Chop Sushi is a brand new game from our friends at THQ in the App Store that combines a love of the Japanese raw fish dish with an interesting twist on the kind of gem-matching battle gameplay that Puzzle Quest made famous (and addictive) a few years ago. It's still a matching game, except you're matching wasabi and rolls instead of gems and skulls, and instead of choosing one gem to switch another, you choose a piece and then swipe it to the end of a row or column, making a match anywhere on the board (as the rest of the pieces fill in for the one you moved). It's hard to explain, but easy to pick up, and tough to master -- the different movements make this one worth a look even if you've played Puzzle Quest or any of its spiritual successors 'till exhaustion.

This is interesting. It's a challenge to produce a replacement for Apple's .Mac online services inspired by the contest earlier this year to boot Windows on the first Intel Macs (this was before Boot Camp for those of you who weren't around then). Apparently this guy Kent has decided that enough is enough; he wants a functional replica of .Mac and is willing to pay to get it. He's offering to match up to $10,000 in contributions to his site with the prize going to anyone who can:

create a free replacement to dotMac's client-based services that's easy enough for a first-time Mac user to install and so fully and transparently integrated that a long-time dotMac user wouldn't notice the difference.

Now there are several ways to get some of the .Mac services for free, from the geeky (and difficult) way, to the relatively easy way (MySync), to the Google-way. (The full rules to the challenge are here). Nonetheless, if this panned out it would be pretty cool for those of us with access to a WebDAV server (which would be necessary to duplicate the server-side functions). As someone who ditched his mac.com email address when Apple replaced the free iTools with the for-pay .mac I applaud this challenge. On the other hand, the $10,000 matching sounds a bit fishy to me. Kent claims that "to make it more interesting and give the prize a running start, [Kent's uncle agreed to] throw $10,000 into the prize pool." The fact that I can't even find Kent's last name on the site also sets my antennae twitching. What do you guys think?

[Via MacDevCenter]

[Edit: HS provides a link to a Macworld article with a bit more info on the guy behind the challenge]

Maynor and Elich's rewards just doubled, though the odds remain the same: Jim Thompson, a blogger who has been doing a knock-out job of dissecting this MacBook Wi-Fi hack fiasco, has offered a second MacBook on top of John Gruber's challenge to the dynamic duo. After all, what are two guys going to do with one MacBook?

In an update post, Mr. Gruber announced the doubled prize for the challenge (which hasn't been accepted yet, by the way), and apparently had to publicly explain why he believes the challenge is actually fair. Check out the post for some key snippets that lay the breadcrumbs for what could likely be one of the most significant security-related showdowns of Mac OS X's career - if the visiting team ever actually makes it to the field, that is.

Oh it's on now: criticism of the MacBook Wi-Fi hack has been mounting against the original hackers (David Maynor and Jon Ellch) and SecureWorks, while they have remained mostly silent. At least one passionate blogger has been defending the hack and the original statements, but John Gruber has issued an open challenge for Maynor and Elich to prove this hack once and for all: "If you can hijack a brand-new MacBook out of the box, it's yours to keep."

From my understanding of the hack as it was originally explained and pseudo-demonstrated, Gruber's criteria and the actual nature of the challenge sound reasonable: he will meet Maynor and/or Elich at an agreed-upon Apple Store or Mac reseller, and he will purchase a brand new MacBook (but the true question is: traditional white, or $150-premium black? Update: he's already laid down a $1099 price; the base configuration). After taking the machine through a default setup with one administrator account, he will enable Wi-Fi (if it isn't turned on out of the box), but will refuse to join any open networks (since Mac OS X is designed to deny this by default, and the attack - understandably - can't be based on a user blindly joining just any open networks, especially one that might be created specifically by an attacking machine). John will then create a basic file on the desktop, with the default permissions assigned by Mac OS X (read/write by user, read-only by Group and the World).

Maynor and/or Elich are then free to attack, and if the file disappears from the desktop - they win a (very slightly used, recently attacked) MacBook. If the file stands its ground, the hackers owe John the price of the MacBook. If the dynamic duo manage to only crash the machine or the current login session, John will call the challenge a tie, whereas he will keep the MacBook, and the duo don't have to whip out their checkbooks.

I am admittedly no security expert, nor am I a 1337 h4x0r, but the challenge seems sound. Any readers who have been following this saga spot any holes? Feel free to sound off - and stay tuned: the challenge must be accepted by Friday, September 8th, and as John already deduced: the most likely outcome is that they'll only take the challenge if the know they can win.