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Filed under: Software, iPhone

Lights Off: a native iPhone game

Given the fast and furious rate that iPhone native apps are becoming available you might get the mistaken impression that Apple has finally released an API for coders to get their hands on. Nope, Apple is still defending AT&T's network from third party developers, but that doesn't stop motivated people (and it helps if they are clever to boot).

The latest iPhone application is the first fully native iPhone game, Lights Off. The game is simple enough; turn off all the lights by pressing them and you advance to the next level. The real shocker here is the polish. This app looks like it shipped with the iPhone, and that's a huge accomplishment especially when compared with the command line iPhone apps that have been available as of late, impressive as those may be.

Sadly, the lack of support from Apple means that getting Lights Off running on your iPhone is harder than it should be, but I'm hopeful that Apple will see all this cool developer activity and open up the iPhone a little. It could happen, right?

A word of warning, this software is provided as is, so if you aren't comfortable mucking around with your iPhone's innards it might behoove you to wait until Apple supports this sort of thing.

[via Daring Fireball]

Filed under: Gaming, Hacks, Odds and ends, iPhone

NES emulator on the iPhone


Wow-- something I've noticed after my little vacation last week is that the iPhone application community is at a full sprint (no pun intended) on making applications. When I left, people were dropping Hello World, and now we're up to the evolutionary step of NES emulator. By this time next week, we'll have a screenshot grabber (oh wait, we've already got that-- guess it's time to go for Open Office).

Wily programmer "stepwhite" has brought the InfoNES core onto the iPhone, along with Mario, Zelda, and all your favorite NES roms. As you can see, it's not quite done-- the emulator runs too slowly to be playable, and the controls are implemented with an actual controller image which, as the programmer says, "...while cute, sucks."

I don't know if theres any way to save states, either. Not a problem for Super Mario Bros., but Dragon Warrior or Final Fantasy might be a little long to have all in one go. But it is awesome, and just amazing that we've already gotten to this level on the iPhone. At this rate, we may not even need an SDK.

Thanks, Karl!

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