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Both Final Fantasy I and Final Fantasy II [iTunes links] — two games from one of the most revered console game franchises of all time — are available for purchase in the Apple App Store for the iPhone and iPod touch right now.

We knew they were coming a while ago, but we didn’t know the pricing. Each game costs $8.99 and features upgraded graphics similar to those found on the Sony PSP versions released a couple years ago. Both titles debuted on the Nintendo Entertainment System in the late 1980s.

Note that the App Store received the Japanese version of Final Fantasy II, not the American one. Japan’s Final Fantasy IV was released as Final Fantasy II in the United States for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, but this is the original Final Fantasy II that wasn’t released in the States until much later — confusing, we know.

If you’re not familiar with the Final Fantasy series, it’s one of the seminal franchises of Japanese role-playing games. Final Fantasy games involve a lot of random strategic battles with monsters in addition to some dialogue and exploration. They’re difficult, but they’re rewarding if you’re willing to invest some serious time.

Chances are these early titles won’t appeal to people who aren’t already fans. Developer Square Enix is banking on nostalgia here. Folks who aren’t fans might want to wait for the later, more accessible games in the series to hit the iPhone OS — not that anything’s been announced yet.

Tags: apple app store, Final Fantasy, final fantasy ii, iphone, iPod Touch, Square Enix, video games

Filed under: iPhone, App Store, iPod touch, App Review

While most iPhone and iPod touch users make do with the built-in Mobile Safari web browser, there are a number of alternative browsers that offer features that didn’t make it into Safari. All of these alternative browsers have one thing in common — they are all based on MobileSafari as a result of Apple’s policies. What the other browsers bring to the table are features like full-screen browsing, different ways of organizing tabs, and ad blocking.

Many of the alternative browsers have passed by my iPhone home screen at least once before being summarily dismissed, but there is one that has actually been getting some use lately; bitStorm’s VanillaSurf. The free browser, which is now at version 2.1, offers features that seem more at home on a laptop or desktop machine than on a smartphone.

Launching VanillaSurf for the first time brings up a blank screen with the familiar address bar at the top and an unfamiliar toolbar at the bottom. The toolbar sports eight icons — back, forward, settings, downloads, actions, bookmarks, tabs, and full-screen. The back and forward (or previous and next) icons provide their usual functionality, while the settings icon is a portal into some more useful items.While most iPhone and iPod touch users make do with the built-in Mobile Safari web browser, there are a number of alternative browsers that offer features that didn’t make it into Safari. All of these alternative browsers have one thing in common — they are all based on MobileSafari as a result of Apple’s policies. What the other browsers bring to the table are features like full-screen browsing, different ways of organizing tabs, and ad blocking.

Many of the alternative browsers have passed by my iPhone home screen at least once before being summarily dismissed, but there is one that has actually been getting some use lately; bitStorm’s VanillaSurf. The free browser, which is now at version 2.1, offers features that seem more at home on a laptop or desktop machine than on a smartphone.

Launching VanillaSurf for the first time brings up a blank screen with the familiar address bar at the top and an unfamiliar toolbar at the bottom. The toolbar sports eight icons — back, forward, settings, downloads, actions, bookmarks, tabs, and full-screen. The back and forward (or previous and next) icons provide their usual functionality, while the settings icon is a portal into some more useful items.

TUAWTUAW review: Smoother iPhone browsing with VanillaSurf originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 25 Feb 2010 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The iPhone is twice as popular as comparable smartphones among young’uns and older folks. This from a survey conducted by the analysts at mobile advertising firm AdMob, who polled a total of 963 iPhone, Android OS, webOS, and iPod touch users on their demographics and usage patterns. The survey was part of an opt-in initiative sent to users on their mobile devices.

According to the statistics, 14 percent of those on the iPhone were 55 or older, while only eight percent of Android users and seven percent of webOS were in the same age group. Similarly, iPhone users under the age of 17 made up for 13 percent of the sample, while Android and webOS users of the same age made up for less than 10 percent combined. Apple could do especially well if its young iPod touch demographic (65 percent of all iPod touch users were under 17) eventually upgrades to the iPhone, too. 

It’s difficult to tell just how accurately the statistics portray the entire smartphone-using demographic. Likewise, without RIM’s series of BlackBerry devices, it’s even harder to see the whole picture. Nonetheless, the numbers are at least representative of users receiving ads on the AdMob network, and it seems at least a little curious as to why the upper and lower echelon of age are so heavily in Apple’s favor. The teenagers are most likely using the device as a status symbol while the handset’s ease of use might have a hand in attracting the older demographic. But twice as much as other smartphones? Let us know what you think.

Filed under: App Review

Last week I was pleased to suggest some free astronomy programs of interest to star-gazers. This week, I’m at it again hoping that space or science buffs get a look at Moon Globe.

This very handy app gives you a complete map of our nearest space neighbor, showing you what is visible on any night and from any location. The on-screen display of the moon at the current phase is striking, and very detailed. You can zoom in or out with the usual pinch and stretch moves you are familiar with. It’s easy to magnify up to 300 times with stunning detail. With a tap, you will see where spacecraft have landed on the moon and identify surface features like craters, mountain ranges and valleys.

The mosaic of pictures that make up the presentation are seamless, and the app gives you the tools to exactly match what you might see in binoculars or a telescope. That’s really helpful, because some telescopes reverse the image left to right, or up and down. You can duplicate those views, so it is easy to match up what you are seeing with the display.

Clicking on surface feature or a spacecraft name will give you some information that is built into the app, or allow you to link directly to Wikipedia or launch a Google search.

There’s a lot to like with this app, and with the moon overhead this week, there’s a lot to explore. Moon Globe runs on the iPhone and iPod touch, and requires iPhone OS 2.0 or later.

The sky is no longer the limit. Check out some screen shots below.

TUAWCarry the Moon in your pocket with this free iPhone app originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 24 Feb 2010 16:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We cover mostly productivity-related iPhone apps around these parts, but if you’ve got a little one who could use some educational—or just distracting—games, MetaFilter founder, blogger, and dad Matt Haughey has rounded up 14 kid-tested, parent-approved iPhone games for kids.

It started out innocuously. We were waiting for a table at a restaurant, my daughter was about two years old and fidgeting. I checked the App Store on my iPhone for a kid genre, found a fake phone game, and let her go to town on it. It saved the day and bought us 20 min of quiet time. Since then I’ve downloaded a lot of games and educational apps for my daughter (who is now four and a half) and I’ve been meaning to write up the ones I think are worth a few bucks and have stood the test of time, and here they are.

They’re not all free (most are a couple of bucks), but they’ve saved the parents in the Haughey household from many a long wait with an impatient kid. If that sounds like something you might appreciate from time to time, head over to the post for his full run-down. Got a little experience of your own hunting down great, kid-friendly iPhone apps? Share your favorites in the comments.

These things are a dime a dozen, sure, but you can’t fault Gear4 for trying. In fact, it has managed to create something that’s marginally unique in a world full of me-toos, as the SmartDock relies on hardware and software aspects in order to shine. At first blush, the actual dock isn’t much to look at, but the bundled app enables you to search through stations using the iPhone’s touchscreen and pause / rewind at will. You can also sync the alarm clock to play through the dock’s speakers, and it’ll work just fine on the iPod touch. We certainly wish a remote would’ve been thrown in for good measure, but hopefully the whole package will be cheap enough to make us overlook the omission. Wink, wink.

Gear4 ups the iPhone alarm clock ante with SmartDock originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 20 Feb 2010 08:46:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Want a little stronger security lock-down for your iPhone than what the 4-digit PIN offers? Weblog 9 to 5 Mac details how to enable a more secure alpha-numeric passcode on your device with a few tweaks.

You’ve always been able to turn on the passcode lock in Settings -> General, requiring users to enter a four-digit PIN to unlock your device. But if you’ve ever wanted a little added security, 9 to 5 Mac has put together a simple profile using Apple’s corporate development kit that you can install on your device to enable the alpha-numeric passcode. It’s a one-click download-and-passcode affair, but if you’d prefer not using their pre-made profile, you can make one yourself by following these instructions.

Filed under: iPhone, iPod touch, App Review

One of the criticisms launched against prolific game designer Reiner Knizia is that his games get their the theme pasted on. This means that whatever the players are trying to accomplish through the game’s mechanics really doesn’t have much to do with the graphics and the box description. He has at least 200 published games – and might have another one thought up by the time you’re done reading this review – so we understand that they can’t all be perfect matches.

Knizia’s card game Poison, first released for the table top in 2005, is a perfect example of this. The game could almost be played with standard cards – the deck includes three colors/suits (each with three 1s, two fours and one each of 2, 5 and 7) and eight “poison” cards worth 4 each – but the company that released the game, Playroom Entertainment, printed it with a magician/warlock/witch theme. It was later rebranded and slightly tweaked to include donuts as the game Baker’s Dozen in 2008.

The iPhone and iPod touch version of the game (US$2.99) uses the earlier Poison graphics, and it’s a gorgeous looking little translation. The app was released 2009 by Griptonite Games and we honestly wish they’d have updated a few nagging items by now. Read on to find out what is good, and what could be improved, in this clever card game.

The Game

There isn’t much to the rules of Poison. In fact, all of the rules fit onto one iPhone screen (right). For people who can’t read the image, here’s how the game works.

Each player is dealt a hand of cards and must, on their turn, play a card into one of three piles. Cards of the same suit need to go together, poison cards can go anywhere. If the sum of any pile (depicted as little cauldrons) gets to 14 or more, the player who broke the 13 barrier needs to collect all of the cards in that cauldron except the one he just played into his score pile. You go until everyone is out of cards and then count up your score. The goal is to get the fewest number of points.

Since this is a Knizia game, the fact that the scoring round has a bit of a twist isn’t a surprise. Whoever collected the most cards of one of the colors gets to discard all of those cards. This is really what makes the game worth playing, since it gives you a chance to score low even if you get stuck with a bunch of cards early in the game. Also, there are interesting decisions to make about filling a cauldron with lots of low-point cards or one or two big cards, depending on what you have in your hand and what you’re trying to collect. Each card you end up with after any discarding scores you one point, except the poison potion cards. These are deadly to your score as they are each worth two points at the end of the round. You play a number of rounds equal to the number of players in the game (between three and six IRL and four and six on your iPhone) and that’s that.

The App

Playing the game with physical cards around a table, you get to see how many cards a player has collected, but not how many points in each color he or she has. The iPhone version does show your opponents’ point totals, and therefore makes it that much easier to push your luck and try and take the majority of one color or to stick a particular opponent with a poison card. If you like to say “take that!” to a real person, you’ll need to search out the real card version. The app is single-player only. Pass ʻn’ Play would’ve been nice, and this brings us to our first in a whole list of improvements that we would like to see.

The level of addition needed to play Poison isn’t exactly difficult. For most people, it’ll actually be quite easy. Still, considering that digital versions of board game apps have the potential to add interesting flourishes, the lack of running totals next to each cauldron/pile feels like neglect.

They are hard to see, but there are two important buttons near the bottom of the game screen, above your hand of cards. On the left is the quit/back to menu button. On the right is an info button that toggles between showing you the number of points an opponent has (like this and at right) and the name and total score of that opponent (like this). Why not show both at once? We can see it getting crowded when playing the six-player version, so we’ll cut Griptonite a bit of slack on this item.

One thing that’s a lot less forgivable is that that you can’t listen to music while playing the game. Yon can mute the game’s music, but iTunes won’t fill the void if you do. Is there something incredibly difficult about coding the app to allow iTunes to keep playing when the game is running that’s preventing Griptonite from implementing this option? If so, why can other developers figure it out? Players have been complaining about this since the app was released last fall and it still hasn’t been updated.

Another annoyance is that there is no way to change the AI’s ability level. The standard AI plays well enough to make the game interesting, but a beginner level for the first game or two would be a nice touch. Also, some players have complained that it appears the AI opponents know what cards you’re holding (which would be cheating in the real world) and play accordingly. Not fun, especially if you’re into the whole winning thing.

Even with all of these shortcomings, Poison is a fun little app. It doesn’t beat playing around a table with friends, but what should we expect from a three dollar mini app?

TUAWReview: Reiner Knizia’s Poison a fun way to kill (a few minutes) originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 19 Feb 2010 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Freeware, iPhone, iPod touch, App Review

I really love to find cool, free apps, and I have a good one for you. 3D Sun, developed in collaboration with NASA scientists, will alert you to solar flares and storms which can disrupt communications on earth and trigger spectacular northern lights.

Activating the push feature provides instant notification of major solar activity.. Clicking on the app will give you detailed information, as well as a current picture of the surface of the sun provided by the NASA ‘Stereo‘ satellites. You can rotate the view of the sun with your fingers, and pinch in and out to zoom. The 2 satellites don’t have a 360 degree view, so there will be a dark sliver where the cameras can’t see. Using this app is a lot safer than trying to see these phenomena with the naked eye or even using some of the not-so-safe solar filters that are around.

In addition to the ‘live’ view of the sun, you can view recent pictures of the sun in different bands of the spectrum, and you’ll get a look at the rather fascinating magnetic field lines that are above the surface of our friendly orb.

The app also features a collection of stills and movies showing solar events and events triggered by the sun.

The app is just out, so grab it if you are interested. I’d also remind our scientifically prone readers of the terrific NASA app that Steve Sande reviewed in October. 3D Sun has scads of images, videos, launch information and more, and it’s another freebie.

These apps run on the iPhone and the iPod touch.

I think you should go for launch on both of these. A-OK?

Check the gallery for more screen shots:

TUAWKeep your eyes on the Sun safely with free 3D Sun app originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 18 Feb 2010 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Nearly one year after arriving on iPhones and iPod touch, Amazon’s Kindle app has arrived on BlackBerry. As you might expect, it synchronizes your books, bookmarks, notes, and last pages read with an actual Kindle, or the iPhone or desktop Kindle software. If you’re rocking one of the compatible Bold, Curve, Storm, or Tour models (listed at Amazon’s page), you can grab it by heading to amazon.com/kindlebb from your mobile browser. [via CNET]