Nuclear Monster

  • Apple added a heap of games to their video game subscription service today, new games like Taiko no Tatsujin Pop Tap Beat and old games like Mini Metro that have been updated for the service.

    Having just checked out Namco’s Taiko no Tatsujin Pop Tap Beat, it’s a decent version of the drumming series but it does feel a little bit like an odd one-and-done thing for a music game to be on Apple Arcade.

    Part of the deal with Apple’s subscription service is that games on don’t have ads and won’t sell in-app-purchases. This means that you won’t ever be able to buy more songs for a music game like Taiko no Tatsujin Pop Tap Beat. In terms of other ways for the game to work with the platform there is exactly one achievement and it is for completing the tutorial. It is fun to tap to the beat on an iPad, the drum controllers for the console versions are hard to come by here, but it’s clear that Namco got paid and probably won’t ever look at this version again which is a blessing for most games on mobile platforms that are riddled with ads and in-app-purchases.

    Apple Arcade games are usually required to be on the Mac, and Taiko gives you a keyboard option there which is a great way to play it. However some of the games added to Apple Arcade today don’t seem to be in the Mac App Store. More might be available for users with M1 Macs.

    Overall, I’m pretty happy with the service because I don’t like ads and in-app-purchases in general but it still makes it clear that the Apple TV box desperately needs an update to run these games better. Many of them won’t run well on that device because it hasn’t been updated in 4 years.

  • OpenTTD, the open-source game of business transport simulation based on Transport Tycoon Deluxe, is now available for free on Steam for Windows, macOS, and Linux. The developers recommend that new players check out OpenTTD’s manual, a 26-part tutorial series on YouTube, and a short 14 minute video on signaling. This seems like it’s in the Dwarf Fortress realm of difficulty but those guides should help.

  • Tim Hunkin is back today with another episode in his The Secret Life of Components series. Springs are covered and it’s fun to watch Hunkin explain the subject with real-world demonstrations of how different springs work and then applying them to his creative arcade machines.

    There are just three episodes left in The Secret Life of Components, as Hunkin has already covered chains, LEDs, hinges, and switches, next week we should have access to his thoughts on connectors, then glue, and finally bearings. As always I recommend checking out Hunkin’s site for more details on the series.

  • The title could be for a game jam, but Paper Jam! is a virtual reality word game for Steam VR. Looks like a little bit like a Diner Dash type of system where you’re serving a queue of customers at the book store, but you’re hitting huge VR typewriter keys to make words out of a jumble to serve them. It’s important to note this game requires space for room scale.

    Paper Jam! is $6.29 on Steam for Windows until April 9th when it goes up to $7.

  • Lucas Matney writing for Tech Crunch:

    Today, Microsoft announced that it has received a contract to outfit the United States Army with tens of thousands of augmented reality headsets based on the company’s HoloLens tech. This contract could be worth as much as $21.88 billion over 10 years, the company says.

    Microsoft will be fulfilling an order for 120,000 AR headsets for the Army based on their Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS) design. The modified design upgrades the capabilities of the HoloLens 2 for the needs of soldiers in the field.

    Microsoft has a long history of working with the government to help murder people and their GitHub unit famously contracts with ICE and helps to cage children.