Written by Charlie Mihelich

Last Friday, like over a million people all over the world, I stood in line for Apple’s iPhone 3G.  As eager as I was to get my hands on the souped-up device, I was just as excited for the app store, a 3^rd party revolution in iPhone software that promised to blow the iPhone’s potential wide open.  All this really means: I wanted to be able to play games on it.

Now, being the owner of a jailbroken iPod Touch, I’ve been playing games on my “iPhone Jr.” for months.  I had a NES and Sega Genesis emulator, Tetris, some puzzle games and other fun toys.  While I was impressed with what the iPhone/iPod Touch could do, all of these programs were essentially homebrew: free programs that were developed for fun and without true funding or sponsorship, meaning that they could freely break copyright regulations, but also, for the most part, the programs were beta demos that were extremely buggy or extremely limited in their execution.

Now that Apple has opened the iPhone to third party developers, there are some serious bucks being thrown behind these licensed offerings.  While the officialness of it all means we have to kiss emulators and free licensed properties goodbye, it also means that the development dollars are finally being used to tap into what the iPhone and iPod touch can produce, but graphically and technologically.

Turning the iPhone/iPod touch into a viable mobile gaming platform is a tough task.  Without any buttons (other than the home button, the sleep button and the volume buttons [only on the Touch]), the platform must rely entirely on its touch screen and the accelerometer for controls.  While the Nintendo DS has been working with a touch screen for years, it also features a fully functional control system and requires a stylus for precise touch input.  While gaming on the iPhone is a risky venture, it is also an extremely exciting territory for developers to take mobile gaming to new levels. 

Electronic Arts has given me a chance to see what mobile gaming can be like on the iPhone by letting me download the three games they have available at the AppStore’s launch.  My reviews below:

Tetris: Tetris rules in general.  The game is nearly 20 years old now, and it remains one of the most popular puzzle games of all time.  It is one of the most prominent cell phone games available today, and developers are still finding ways to expand upon its very simple game premise.  EA has done so by presenting a re-imagining of Tetris that provides an aural and visual experience that intensifies an already brain-racking puzzle challenge.  There are two modes here: Marathon is your standard Tetris, with 15 progressively faster difficulty levels in a quest for a high score, and Magic, an objective style Tetris game in which you are given a specific number of lines to clear.  Magic spices up the traditional “mission” based puzzle game by given you items to use that earned progressively and by clearing a certain number of lines.  For instance, “Bubble” turns all of the blocks on the screen into bubbles that can be popped by touching them.  You have a time limit in which to pop as many as you can, but be careful: any holes you leave between blocks will remain when the timer runs out.  “Crayon” lets you draw the puzzle piece you want, which can help you get that 4 lines in a row that you desperately need.  It makes the game easier, but it can also mean your games last longer, and it alleviates some of the feelings of “oh my god I’m so screwed and now I have to wait for the screen to fill up” that has been a staple of Tetris since the beginning.  Visually, the game is gorgeous.  The frame rate is ridiculously sexy, and graphically looks as good as Lumines for the PSP (which I really hope gets ported to the iPhone...please?).  The music is poppy Eurobeat stuff, and it sounds really crisp on the iPhones onboard speaker (and of course, much better through headphones).  The entire game is controlled via finger taps, drags, and flicks, which makes it a cool, “Minority Report” like gaming experience.  It’s not perfect, as one or two of the items seem useless (I still have no idea how the “Pinch” works), and the game crashed on me the first couple of times I played it, but it seems to be working great now.  The game does cost $9.99, which is a more expensive than other mobile iterations of Tetris, but with how good the game looks and how much there is to do here (even with just two game modes, Marathon lasts forever and Magic can be approached with multiple strategies), this is a great first impression for iPhone gaming.

Scrabble: Scrabble is another example of EA hitting the ball out of the park visually.  The menus are slick, the scrabble board is brightly lit, and sleek graphics tabulate your scores for you, with plenty of bells and whistles when you hit a double or triple word or letter score.  There are three modes of play: 1 vs. Computer, Play n’ Pass, and Solo.  1 vs. Computer is exactly what it sounds like: you vs. the computer, who is the equivalent to the friend you had growing up who always wanted to play Scrabble because he or she knew they’d win.  No matter how good your last word was, your AI opponent will top you, and sometimes leave you so badly in the dust that all you want to do is quit.  Unlike growing up, however, the computer won’t call you a bad sport and you can quit while you’re behind all you want.  Pass n’ Play is Scrabble for multiple players.  You can have up to 4 players playing at a time, passing the iPhone to the next player to take his or her turn.  This definitely can lead to impromptu Scrabble games at anytime, but the regulatory dictionary means no faking out your friends and hoping they don’t challenge you or raining on your friends’ parade by challenging their obviously made up words. In the multiplayer sense, it really pales in comparison to having the real board in front of you, and you might look extremely dorky passing around a phone to four different people.  Solo mode is basically just a solitary version of Scrabble where you compete to see how high your score can get and place as many creative words as possible.  It’s a great way to practice up for the real thing.  The interactive Scrabble board is really cool.  You can pinch and expand the board, double tap to zoom, re-arrange your own letters to make words appear clearer, and exchange letters on the fly.  Like in Tetris, the game is accompanied by catchy Eurobeats that can make a solo experience a little less mundane.  Though Scrabble has never really been my game, I can’t fault the developers for not changing my mind, and I really can see a Scrabble fan getting a ton of mileage out of this one.

Sudoku: Sudoku is just a flashy version of the popular newspaper puzzle game.  It randomly generates puzzles based on the difficulty you select, and it comes with a caveat of options that either make your experience easier or harder.  You can have the game correct your errors for you, or have it let you embarrass yourself by painstakingly completing a puzzle only to find that one misplaced number 15 tiles back completely screwed your entire game up.  A cool thing this game does is let you assign tiny numbers to certain tiles, the equivalent of jotting potential number sequences inside each square like so many pro-players do.  You can’t really jazz Sudoku up much because the game design is so simplistic, and I don’t really know if this one is worth the inevitable battery drain that accompanies the visual onslaught that EA has created.  I think there may be simpler Sudoku variants on the AppStore, and those might be better suited for the casual player.  Still, for the cost of a big book of Sudoku puzzles ($7.99), and if the idea of unlimited puzzle variety and portable brain teasers is your cup of tea and you’re tired of smudging up recycled paper with your errant pencil strokes, Sudoku may be the iPhone game for you.

Long story short: Scrabble and Sudoku will have niche appeal, but Tetris is really where it’s at.