iLounge

By Jesse David Hollington

Contributing Editor
Published: Friday, May 29, 2009
News Category: iPhone Applications

BeatRider, a new rhythm game, has been released in the App Store. Similar to the popular Tap Tap series of games, BeatRider players tap the screen along with the rhythm of the music. BeatRider, however, allows players to use their own music when playing the game, rather than only canned music provided within the application itself. As the Apple SDK does not currently provide the ability for third-party applications to access the device’s music library, BeatRider uses a hosted web site where players can upload their own tracks in MP3 or M4A format. BeatRider is available from the App Store in both a full version for $5 and a free lite version.

Apple and Electronic Arts have released demonstration versions of the highly-anticipated game, The Sims 3 in Apple Retail stores in advanced of the game’s release on June 2. At the Apple Store, customers can use the “Create A Sim” feature to test-drive the game by creating their own unique Sim characters. [via MacDailyNews]

Gameloft has begun to release “lite” versions of some of their games, such as Hero of Sparta (iLounge rating: A-) which provide single-level demo versions that users can try before purchasing the full games. As many of the Gameloft titles have rated high or general recommendations from iLounge, these lite versions may be of special interest to readers.

Doom creator John Carmack has posted a progress report on his iPhone Doom Classic project, describing the development process and some of the challenges he has been facing in bringing Doom to the iPhone platform. Specifically, Carmack indicates while making Doom run on a new platform is relatively simple, “making it a really good game on a platform that doesn’t have a keyboard and mouse or an excess of processing power is an honest development effort.”  Carmack states that he is making good progress and hopes to have Doom Classic available on the App Store by next month.  [via TouchArcade]