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Filed under: Gaming, iPhone, iPod touch

Destroy the Death Star from the comfort of your iPhone

Wanna blow up the Death Star? There's an app for that! At least there should be soon.

StarWars.com
has word of the upcoming iPhone and iPod Touch game "Star Wars: Trench Run," letting players do the cool stuff Luke Skywalker did in Episode IV (minus the whining), namely: blow up the Death Star.

Developers say "Trench Run" uses simple motion controls, relying on a player's command of the iPhone's accelerometer to avoid walls, other ships, gun turrets, and inexplicable solid beams laid across the trench (video). Manage all of that and they can take their shot at the Death Star's exhaust port and send the Empire reeling. Why did they never cover that port, anyway (YouTube)? If blowing up a space station the size of a small moon isn't a player's cup of tea, they can engage in dogfights with TIE fighters over the Death Star instead.

The game's pitch promises music, sound effects, and clips from the movie for immersive gameplay, varying degrees of difficulty (from Easy to Jedi), and Leader Boards to let pilots see how they rank with other would-be Jedi from around the world.

As exciting as blowing up the Death Star may be, the game screams for in-app purchases. Can pilots buy "Battle of Hoth" expansions down the road? And fly against the second Death Star? Can we?!? I mean... can they?!? Please?

Until then, "Star Wars: Trench Run" has a price set of $4.99. No word on when the game will hit the App Store but it needs to happen soon. The Death Star must be stopped!

[via starwars.com]

Filed under: Hardware, Software, Hacks, iPhone

iPhone-controlled R2D2



It's impossible not to love a blog post that begins, "I found a way to remote control my R2D2 with an iPhone."

The video above shows the author, ggpipe, using the iPhone's accelerometer to control R2's dome. Pretty cool. In the future, he plans to use the phone to send text to R2's logic displays. We love it and can't wait to see a fully assembled, iPhone-powered R2D2!

It's great to see people extending the iPhone's capabilities, and homegrown remotes are a cool choice. A couple of weeks ago, we posted a story about a guy who turned his iPhone into an R/C aircraft controller, and last year we saw Delphi's Wireless Vehicle Access software that lets you control many of your car's functions. Keep up the good work, everyone!

[Via Rick Yaeger]

Filed under: Gaming, iPod Family, iPhone, App Store

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed hits the App Store

Back in July, we got our first glimpse of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed for the iPhone. In the demo, the game seemed to make clever (although possibly somewhat distracting) use of the touch screen. In the end, we were eager to try it out.

Today, we finally can. Star Wars: The Force Unleashed is now available in the App Store [link]. As of this writing there are only four user reviews written, but each gives the game a four-star rating. It sells for $9.99US.

We're going to begin playing with this immediately, so check back soon for our full review. Star Wars in your pocket? What more could you want?

Filed under: Gaming, Software, Universal Binary

LEGO Star Wars goes Universal


A long time ago, in a squarish galaxy far, far away... Aspyr media, in an effort to save Mac users of the planet Earth from certain doom and boredom, released a Universal patch for LEGO Star Wars.

That's right: it's been a while since we've had to write about an app (finally) going Universal (Adobe CS3 notwithstanding), and even longer since I've had the opportunity to make a Star Wars pun, so there it is. All joking aside though, Aspyr apparently released this patch earlier in the month, but I just caught it in today's newsletter. You can snag the 4.71MB update from Macgamefiles.com.

Filed under: Software, Odds and ends

Star Wars TSG, because everyone wants to be George Lucas

Grubs (that's what I call Daring Fireball's John Gruber, we're cool like that) posted Star Wars TSG to his Linked List and it is a winner. And by winner I mean a small, free application that wastes far more of your time than it should, but for some reason you're not upset about all that lost time.

Star Wars TSG does one thing: lets you create your very own 'Star Wars title crawl.' If you don't know your Ewoks from your Klingons you might not be aware that the opening title sequence to each Star Wars movie follows the same basic format. This is the format that Star Wars TSG allows you to create for yourself. It even outputs your creation in a number of different sizes. One word of caution: this application renders a sequence of bitmaps that you can stitch together using QuickTime (or another movie editing suite). This means that you should be careful where you point the 'Destination Folder' in the Generate section. You're going to be generating around 800 images to create your masterpiece, and something tells me you don't want them all cluttering up your desktop.

Filed under: iTS, iTunes

Star Wars: Clone Wars in iTunes

Star Wars: Clone Wars animated series has been added to the US iTunes Music Store [iTunes link]. I haven't seen it, but as an admitted Star Wars geek I know I should.

It's priced at the usual $1.99US per episode, which seems rather odd as most of them are around four minutes long. Still, season 1 is available. Go and get it, Star Wars geeks.

Filed under: iPod Family

Star Wars iPod Cover

Proof that when it comes to iPod cases, there's something for everyone. An official Star Wars-themed iPod cover for only $29.95. It's not for me (I think it's ugly), but I know a few Star Wars fans who would buy this. At least you can use the clickwheel though the case (unlike another overpriced case that was recently released).

Note: There are a few more Star Wars cases that aren't quite so hideous.

Tip of the Day

Holding the Command key (aka the Apple key) and pressing Tab will cycle through your open applications. It's easier to Cmd-Tab if you are Copy (Cmd-C) and Pasting (Cmd-V) to and from various applications.


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