Robot Claw

Recently the iOS version of the Bard’s Tale action RPG that came out for XBox a few years back has been updated to include the original games! I eagerly downloaded Bard’s Tale and started playing on the iPad.

I rolled my party, exited the guild, went into the house next door (2 steps from the guild), and this happened…

I chose to fight. Here’s the result after one round:

After two rounds:

And after a third round:

Can anyone guess the character classes based on the names I gave them and the relative position in the party?

The new Llamasoft iOS game is out, and what did Mr Minter bring us this time?

He wrote a blog post about how easy it was to port the game to iOS using (IIRC) some old ST code. Since it was so quick and easy, and the release is so close after Caverns of Minos, the sheer brilliance of this game was unexpected. It’s a major update of the game that made him famous 30 years ago.

His iOS games always have a hardware theme, and until now he’s done 2600, Intellivision, Vic 20 etc. Gridrunner is ‘1980’s arcade game’, and he’s absolutely nailed it, since the graphics bring to mind a classic such as Galaxian. Of course only in spirit, since I doubt this madness was possible in those old arcade boards:

This game is only $0.99, and it’s close to perfect tablet gaming. Absolutely gets my highest recommendation, and if your initials are AW and you don’t have an iOS device games like this is why you should get one ASAP 🙂

Oh yes… It has the Vic 20 and C64 versions included (rotate the device to landscape):

It’s my birthday soon, so I thought it nice to treat my WoW avatar, Momomo, to a gift as well. Therefore I purchased for her the horribly overpriced but very, very pretty new Heart Of The Aspects cash-store mount for World of Warcraft.

It’s a glowy, amazingly animated golden dragon thing. Here’s a shot:

A pretty girl on a pretty dragon 🙂

It’s my birthday soon, a big one at that. Rumour is “it’s going to be massive”! KLS seems to be having difficulty coming up with gifts, and yesterday asked me if I wanted a Vita.

This is the new Sony handheld, which comes out next week. It’s been failing in a big way in Japan, and shockingly undermarketed (so far) in the US. So I did some investigation into the system and – more importantly – the launch games.

The answer was an overwhelming “No”! No, I don’t want this overpriced system with no good games with the only interesting aspect being one of this games is called ‘Army Corps Of Hell’. Given the reaction in Japan, and the price and lackluster launch games here in the US, I think the future for this system looks grim indeed.

Soooo… I wonder what I will get for my birthday 🙂