Imagine: suddenly you’re in charge at Nintendo. You’ve got just 24 hours to order any course of action, and the deal is, once you’ve ordered it, the company will do its best to carry out your wishes for the next year, no matter the cost or consequences.
Here’s what I’d do, right now:
Scribblenauts Remix, a “best of†blend of DS’s two well-reviewed Scribblenauts releases (plus some new levels), just hit the App Store for $4.99. And it’s awesome–one of the strongest titles in the iOS library. This is no lazy port of the DS series, but a full-featured entry in the Scribblenauts line, looking sharper than ever and playing brilliantly.
So, why bring this up? Because this release hits close to home for Nintendo fans, and you couldn’t ask for a clearer example of the changing handheld game market, as a popular series previously only available on Nintendo hardware makes the leap to the Apple world, radically changing its price model in the process. The first two Scribblenauts games hit DS at a price point of $29.99. And they were worth it. The iPhone edition (which loses part 2’s joypad/button support but gains sharper graphics and faster loading), at five bucks, seems like the bargain of the year.
There’s an interesting free app available for iPhone called i3D. An experiment in face-tracking via the front camera, it shifts the perspective of several demo objects as if you were looking at three dimensional scenes. It’s interesting and fun, but (and even the app’s creator admits this) it still looks flat. The effect doesn’t come close to the what the 3Ds achieves, but it’s still worth checking out.
The funny part comes when you find two of the included demos feature a gaggle of Miis! I can only assume that the app’s creator is a Nintendo fan; he could have used any other images in the world. Perhaps he hasn’t heard that Nintendo counts the Miis among their copyrighted characters.
Sometimes I wonder how closely Apple really screens their app store submissions.
