Back when I was in college -- way back in early 1997, I'm afraid -- I wrote a well-reasoned letter to the online arm of
Ultra Game Players magazine in defense of Nintendo, whose star was starting to take on a distinct tinge of tarnish among the nascent online hardcore gaming fanbase. The N64's strong launch had deteriorated into the likes of
Yoshi's Story, with little but
Star Fox 64 and the far-distant
Ocarina of Time to look forward to for the foreseeable future. But that's okay, I argued; Nintendo has always employed the same model as Apple Computer, whose Macintosh suffered from the same problems as the N64 -- an expensive proprietary format, relatively sparse releases, an insular corporate culture -- but also offered the same ultimate benefit: powerful hardware and quality software.
"Yeah, but Apple sucks," was the website's thoughtful response. Fortunately, I can take some pleasure in knowing that history has lent weight to my comparison, with Nintendo seemingly aping Apple at every turn since then. Apple makes colorful computers and a laptop in translucent blue or orange with white accents; Nintendo unveils N64s in the same color, along with its upcoming Game Boy Advance hardware in translucent blue or orange with white accents. Apple makes a compact, cube-shaped computer that founders in the marketplace; Nintendo follows with a compact, cube-shaped console that founders in the marketplace. Nintendo's current systems, the DS and Wii, want so badly to be Mac hardware it's not even funny. Where Apple leads, Nintendo seems to follow in lockstep.
But for the first time, perhaps Apple would do well to learn from its imitator. They've suddenly decided that video gaming is the future -- a distinct change of pace for a company whose boss deliberately pushed the Macintosh platform away from gaming for fear that the ability to have fun on Macs would lend credence to the view that the system was a toy next to its stodgy, command-line-driven competition. Aside from the occasional bit of MacWorld keynote lip-service -- look, it's John Carmack! And he's playing Quake III on an iMac! -- Apple's relationship with gaming has largely been one of disinterest, with a few stalwarts like Blizzard, Freeverse, Ambrosia, Pangaea, and Spiderweb keeping the home fires burning for those few Mac gamers who haven't given up and installed Boot Camp.
But now Apple has a powerful portable computing device running Mac OS X in the form of the iPhone, along with a homegrown content delivery service in the iTunes Store. Not surprisingly, someone added two and two and came up with the realization that gaming should be Apple's next big initiative. It makes sense; the iPhone is proving to be a runaway success even as iPod sales reach the inevitable point of saturation, and power players in both the movie and music industries are doing their best to keep Apple from muscling any further onto their turf. Games, on the other hand, are wide-open territory, and the iPhone is a tempting platform for developers; the App Store averages 2 million downloads a day, and there are dozens of Cinderella stories of amateur programmers like Trism's Steve Detemer making a fortune on a single homebrew creation. Unsurprisingly, when Apple released the revised iPod Touch a few months ago -- effectively an iPhone minus the phone -- they called it "the funnest iPod ever" and made a lot of noise about how many games are available for the platform.
Still, while gaming is a more open medium than the corporate-controlled recording and film industries, the company has its work cut out for it. Sony and especially Nintendo dominate portable gaming. Apple is quick to point out that the iPhone is considerably more powerful than Nintendo's DS, but power alone wasn't enough to give PSP the victory over DS that most observers predicted would be a foregone conclusion. Ultimately, the contest comes down to software -- and while iPhone already offers far more titles than either of its direct competitors, quality is a serious issue. Apple has ultimate say over whether or not a given app makes its way onto the App Store, but to date the company seems to have used this ability sparingly (mainly to prevent copyright infringement); understandable, since the iPhone's core audience consists largely of tech-savvy computer users who cry foul at the first hint of any sort of interference with the free market. Still, the console gaming market is very different from PC gaming, with manufacturers serving as licensors with full control over their proprietary platforms. The iPhone seems to straddle these two very different schools of commerce, with elements of both console and PC philosophies guiding it.
Apple could almost be seen as positioning its iPhone as the PC equivalent to the DS and PSP consoles. At the moment, though, the App Store seems to embody as many of each market's flaws as it does their strengths. With roughly 1,500 games already available through the App Store, iPhone games suffer the same signal-to-noise ratio as shareware PC games. Unfortunately, the only portal to the games is the App Store, which is ill-suited for the job; it was designed to sell songs grouped by bands and divided out by albums, not to organize the free-for-all chaos of thousands of independent publishers each with a single title under their belts.
Even more significantly, Apple's games have yet to make a strong impression on the core gaming market. Ironically, it was Nintendo that proved there's more to the medium than the action fare that's dominated since its inception, but the audience for those games still account for billions of dollars of annual sales. Apple's going to need to win their hearts and minds in order to make a dent in the competition. Unfortunately, it's tough to come by "hardcore" iPhone games, and those currently available are less than perfect. Sega's Super Monkey Ball gets trotted out as an example of success every time iPhone gaming comes up in conversation, but despite its impressive sales it's netted only mediocre reviews. And oddities like Sega CD RPG Vay are ergonomic disasters: games designed for traditional controls with touchscreen input shoehorned in quite painfully.
This is where Apple looks to Nintendo, or should: the iPhone today is right where the DS was the end of 2004. The DS launched with a decent slate of games, but none that are worth remembering four years later. Even the heavily hyped Super Mario 64 DS is better forgotten: a showcase for N64's analog controller forced to rely on either a D-pad or an awkward virtual analog stick that few other developers have bothered to imitate. It wasn't until the second generation of DS games arrived in 2005 that people started to realize that there was more to the system than badly ported titles from other system and fumbling, gimmicky attempts at utilizing the hardware's unique features. Kirby's Canvas Curse is widely regarded as the system's turning point: a creative spin on the classic platformer genre that could only have worked on DS -- and it was incredibly fun too boot. iPhone needs its second generation to help it break out of the rut of casual puzzlers that it's currently mired in.
Fortunately, that turning point may be nearby. Apple recently demoed few new and upcoming games, including a pair of sharp-looking racers: Electronic Arts' Need for Speed Undercover and Gameloft's Ferrari GT Evolution, each slated for release within the coming month and priced at $9.99. Both look solid, but the most exciting game previewed was a new title from a new developer: ngmoco's Rolando (pictured above) -- the title that could well be iPhone's Canvas Curse.
Rolando owes an obvious debt Sony's Loco Roco: its clean vector art depicts the adventures of tiny, charming creatures who move about primarily through gravity. But in many ways, it seems to be the game that Loco Roco should have been. The motion control is entirely accelerometer-based, and levels are smaller and more puzzle-like. Players have more granular control over their subjects; only actively selected creatures will move as the iPhone is tilted, and it's possible to drag-click to activate multiple creatures in the style of a PC RTS. Rolando actually uses the full bag of iPhone tricks -- players can pan the camera through a level by swiping with two fingers, while it's possible to manipulate specific parts of the environment with a single touch. It looks in every way like the sort of game that would be a satisfying $30 PSP title; as a ten dollar download, it should be a no brainer.
Perhaps it should come as no surprise that ngmoco is at the vanguard of a new wave of iPhone games; the company was founded by Neil Young, who left EA to capitalize on the opportunity he saw in iPhone gaming. ngmoco's approach is interesting, and arguably demonstrates the real strength of iPhone development: rather than build games internally, the company seeks out promising amateur projects and offers their creators the guidance and support to push their work to the next level. Young is focusing on a two-pronged approach, producing a single "premium" full-price app and several smaller free or inexpensive titles each month. These range from the self-consciously ridiculous Dr. Awesome, Microsurgeon M.D. (a cross between Qix and Trauma Center) and the stylish Dropship (a take on PC classic Thrust reworked with slick 3D vector graphics).
Apple is new to the portable games, but the company has proven remarkably adept at taking the lead in new markets. The iPhone gaming market has a long way to go, and the content delivery system needs a major overhaul, but if anyone can overcome the outsider stigma that affects mobile gaming in the U.S., it's Apple. More and more major developers are signing aboard -- most recently Square Enix -- and 1UP will be covering Apple's efforts in greater detail beginning next month with the launch of our iPhone news and review blog.
Source : http://www.1up.com/
