Games The iPhone And iPod Touch Need

The iPhone and iPod Touch promise to be full-out pocketable computers with more power than any PDA ever offered.

Yet even with all that power, when it comes to games, I’d like simplicity — even a chance of winning.

So multi-level games with skateboarding acrobatics, fast-paced jet fighter simulations, and twisty submersive mysteries are just too involved for my tastes. I’d get frustrated fast. Knowing that, I won’t buy them.

But there are some games I’d really, really like to have for the iPhone/iPod Touch.

Astraware has some word games for PDAs that look interesting: What Word and Text Twist.

I’ve never played What Word but I did try the demo of Text Twist and liked it. I hope these and similar games will appear for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

Back in my Commodore-64 days, I saw the strangest game ever. Unfortunately, I don’t recall the name of it. And I’ve never, ever seen it done for any other computer! It actually was more of a toy than a game. There was an on-screen ball that was moved around either by joystick or keyboard. It left a multicolored trail and played music. The music would change based on the direction and velocity of the ball and also when it intersected its own trail. The music was never discordant and turned out to be a precursor of what was eventually called New Age music. It had no point other than pure entertainment. It was great!

The closest thing to it I’ve been able to find on YouTube is this demonstration of a Commodore-64 game called Moon Dust:

I also came across this remix tribute to music from a Commodore-64 game and was amazed by the animation that was set to it:

Look at that! That’s stunningly beautiful! And just weird! I don’t know if the iPhone/iPod Touch can accommodate animation like that, but any game developers reading this should take the hint from that video: think weird, think strange, think offbeat! And beautiful, too.

Remember: Don’t restrict games to touch! Use that accelerometer. And, if possible, the proximity sensor too.

Just don’t make it so incredibly complex or dense that game eejits like me will get frustrated and consider our money wasted! Hey, I won’t be insulted if you market your game with the explicit tagline, “Contains Special Eejit Mode!”

To me, that’d be a selling point!

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