Way back in 1981 Microsoft founder Bill Gates co-wrote a top down scrolling (of sorts) game with Neil Konzen called DONKEY.BAS. It was written partly to show off the power of the  new PC-DOS operating system Microsoft had been contracted to develop for the new IBM PCs. It was actually called Donkey but was written in BASIC hence the .BAS file extension. The original game is widely credited as being the first ever IBM PC game written.

The game explained

You are ‘controlling’ a car near the bottom of the screen, with a road that scrolls from top to bottom with donkeys randomly generated appearing within it’s lanes every few seconds or so. The aim of the game is to switch lanes by tapping the screen whenever a donkey appears on your side of the road. Every time you make it past a donkey you move incrementally towards the top of the screen so reducing the time you have to react. After eleven donkeys you score one point and are taken back to the bottom of the screen, where the process begins all over. If you should hit a donkey, the donkey’s get the point and you start over.

Description from the developers:

You’re cruising in your new supercar on a little-used, dead-straight rural road when suddenly a zombified donkey attacks you. It charges at you, dead-set on destroying you. Can you escape the donkey?

DONKEY.BAS is a challenging retro arcade racer. To be successful, you need to react fast with your finger. There’s no room for mistakes.

For the first time on iPhone and iPad, relive the classic racing game that started it all.

• Cool 8-bit graphics and sounds
• Great grandma of all racing games
• Simple one-tap game control
• Game Center enabled
• Win all 14 achievements if you can

Conclusion

iPad version of DONKEY.BAS

We see the point of the game as a tribute to the first ever PC-DOS game ever made. We even had a some fun playing it for a while, having heard about the original game and wanting to see it in action. It is Game Center enabled so you have access to leaderboards etc. and the game has a nerdy-retro coolness that cant really be explained but unfortunately we don’t think it would appeal to anyone who doesnt ‘get’ what it represents – the very first attempt at gaming on the IBM PC.

Pricing is fair at £0.69p and if you had an original IBM PC with Donkey or are interested in the history of Microsoft/early IBM PCs you are going to love reliving the simplistic gameplay that this offers. Anyone else I’m afraid is going to get bored real quick.

Pros

• Does what it says on the tin – delivers original DONKEY.BAS action on ipad/iphone

Cons

• People who weren’t there wont ‘get’ it
• Very simplistic, almost too simplistic for todays iPhone generation

I have been waiting until I received my pre-ordered iCade from Firebox before writing this review for one good reason. Atari’s Greatest Hits app does not play well with the on-screen controls. In fact I don’t think I’ve played any retro game app on my iPad that has had on-screen controls that work. Atari’s offering was especially bad and I have found most if not all of the games unplayable with unresponsive controls killing me off way before I should have been.

iCade should hopefully remedy that. We will see shortly…

Unpacking the iCade

As usual Firebox were better than average and I received my pre-ordered iCade on 22nd July (website stating that shipping would start on 28th). The printed iCade box was well protected in a larger plain packing box and came totally undamaged which was a good start.

Upon opening you find the instructions, a bag of bits, 2 AA batteries, a bag of Cola Bottle sweets (for eating while assembling I assume) and a flat-packed iCade. You have to assemble the iCade yourself but there are only 6 screws and 2 pins to use and assembly took under 5 minutes. The instructions were adequate and an appropriate size allen key is supplied. Oh, and the Cola Bottles were nice too.

First Impressions

Assembling something yourself in this way gives you a better idea of just how sturdy something is and I must say that if anything this thing is over-engineered. It really is like a mini arcade machine material-wise with the main body being made of essentially the same thing; plastic faced wood composite with a panel of realistic feeling set of switched buttons and a switched arcade style joystick. 2 AA size batteries (supplied) are inserted below the main control panel. There is also an AC Adapter jack situsted at the rear of the unit although it is not supplied with an AC Adapter (a seperate purchase from ION). A large ‘flip up’ panel on top of the unit lifts up to reveal instructions (if you really need them) and to make lowering your iPad into its ‘cradle’ easier. The ‘cradle’ also has a hole big enough to fit a standard iPad connector so it can sit in the iCade whilst charging if need be. A thing to be noted here is that the cradle is NOT a dock. The iPad has no physical connection to the iCade other than one caused by gravity and connection is made via a Bluetooth connection. This also leaves you able to place your iPad in a landscape orientation for certain games, although to do this the iPad sits ‘outside’ the unit in a groove just behind the stick and buttons which sort of spoils the arcade machine look of it all in my opinion. A nice touch is the fake ‘coin slot’ on the front of the unit which lights up when the unit is operating and gives it a really authentic look when the lights are dimmed.

Making a connection

Detailed instructions are included on how to connect your iPad to your iCade but I will run through the relatively simple process for you here too. Go to settings on your iPad and under ‘General’ switch Bluetooth ON and make sure it is discoverable. Hold down the bottom 4 buttons and the top white button on the iCade until the ‘coin slot’ on the front of the unit starts to flash. You will then be prompted by your iPad to enter a series of numbers on your iCade to ‘pair’ your devices. Don’t worry, the buttons and joystick directions have been allocated a number each and these are listed on the instructions under the top panel of the iCade unit. Once done you will not have to do this pairing again.

Time to play

Playing the formerly unplayable Atari’s Greatest Hits app was a bit of a revelation. Gone are the awkward unresponsive on-screen controls replaced by a great feeling arcade-style joystick and 8 arcade-style buttons. I’m glad they opted to go for a full set of 8 making the unit compatible with future multi-button games should any be released. I’m looking at you Capcom… Street Fighter would be amazing. The instructions include a handy control legend sheet which details the button layout for each game and I was also glad to see that when the iCade is being used the on-screen controls disappear, ensuring they don’t spoil the mini-arcade machine effect. One thing I was dissapointed to find was that to get to a game you had to use the touch screen. I would have liked to have seen full iCade integration and to be able to choose games by using joystick and buttons to select.

Most of the Atari games on offer here are from the VCS/2600 era and to be honest there are quite a few duds. I mean… anyone for a game of Hangman, Math Grand Prix or Brain Games? … no, thought not. Because these offerings are purely Atari’s own,  you don’t get any of the great games that we all know and love by other software giants of the era like Activision, Parker Bros or CBS (to name a few). Hopefully we will see these in the future. That’s not to say there aren’t any good 2600 games on offer here. The like of Yars Revenge, Gravitar, Super-Breakout and many more are all here and play well, even if only for a short while.

The real gems (and the games most will be purchasing for) are the coin-op games. Atari’s coin-ops were not just pioneering but are arguably some of the best games ever to stand in an arcade and this collection doesn’t disappoint. From the inaugural Pong through to Crystal Castles these are all faithfully reproduced on-screen and most of them (thankfully) play perfectly with the iCade taking over from on-screen controls.

I say most because some of the trackball games and games like Pong or Breakout just cannot be replicated with a joystick. Missile Command is a good example of this, it was unplayable with an on-screen trackball before and with a joystick it’s even worse if anything. That said, Crystal Castles, Centipede and Millipede all play well with a joystick despite the originals utilising trackballs.

Conclusion

I don’t think that Atari’s Greatest Hits is an app worth purchasing without the iCade. And iCade is not worth purchasing only for use with Atari’s Greatest Hits. Whilst it is great fun for a while, the 2600 games just don’t have any longevity, the arcade games are too few and the app is too expensive (£10.49 for the full set of games). For the money paid, I would have liked to have seen some top Atari 7800 and maybe some Atari 5200 games thrown in too. I encountered a few minor problems along the way, the biggest being that after exiting the Atari app, the virtual keyboard no longer popped up when needed. To get it back again I had to switch bluetooth off. A minor bug, but annoying all the same. If you are willing to jailbreak your iPad an iCade is well worth purchasing for use with iMame4All which gives you access to thousands of arcade games, but for the majority who won’t be voiding their Apple Warranty on their shiny new iPad I can only say wait until other apps are released before parting with your cash.

Pros

• Build Quality
• iCade gives near-arcade experience
• iCade compatible with iMame4All (via Jailbreak)
• Works with iPad and iPad 2

Cons

• ‘Virtual Keyboard’ problems when connected via BT
• Some Atari games really need a Trackball
• Atari 2600 games are hit-and-miss
• iCade needs more software support

Links:

Atari’s Greatest Hits at the iTunes App Store

OK, this review is probably a little too late in coming, but having just purchased a GP2X Wiz handheld and knowing how many of you out there are wondering just how good this fabled machine really is at emulating your favourite retro consoles, I felt I had to let you know my findings.

The Purchase

I purchased my GP2X Wiz from PlayAsia, as I have always been impressed by their service and prices. My Wiz and the official leather case cost me £121 including P+P and was sent from Hong Kong. Many UK suppliers are still selling this at £150 for just the handheld unit alone.

Opening the box

PlayAsia (Hong Kong) lived up to my expectations as usual and delivered within 5 working days. First impressions were that Gamepark have upped the quality of the packaging on their latest offering. Inside the box was the GP2X Wiz unit itself in a plastic bag, a mini-cd, a proprietary lead for connecting to PC USB and a ‘Quick Start’ guide. I was expecting to be supplied with a screen protector for the touch screen and maybe a spare stylus but was to be disappointed.

The Hardware

Initial thoughts on the Wiz: light and flimsy, cheap feeling. Looks great though. I can’t say I was impressed at all by the feel of the machine, the D-Pad and buttons rattle when the unit is moved around and it feels to light to be a ‘quality’ handheld. I’m not sure how much punishment this would take when pounding the buttons playing Track and Field in Mame4All.

To the left of the screen is the D-Pad. D-Pad is an improvement on previous models but still doesn’t feel as good as a DS or PSP. There doesn’t seem to be any pivot point and it feels too spongy. Below the D-Pad is the ‘Menu’ button. To the right of the screen you have four buttons. The buttons (A, B, Y and X) are spaced to mimic the D-Pad and give the unit a nice aesthetic symmetry but I question the logic in having the buttons so close together. Time will tell if this makes certain games unplayable or not. Below the buttons is the ‘Select’ button.

The top of the unit contains the shoulder buttons (bumpers), which feel ‘rattly’ and not really properly positioned in relation to the D-Pad and buttons to make games that require them all to be comfortable to play. In the centre top of the unit is the all important SD card slot.

Either side of the screen are the speaker holes (speakers look tiny) and at the bottom of the unit there are 2 volume buttons, a proprietary connector slot (why not just a standard mini USB?) and the headphone socket.

Using the GP2X Wiz

Turning the unit on requires sliding a self-returning switch on the side of the unit, it is recessed so cannot be turned on or off accidentally. The switch can also be set to a ‘hold’ position which locks out all the other buttons on the unit.

The Wiz uses a cut down version of the Linux operating system and therefore takes some time to start up unlike other handhelds with cartridge software (about 25 seconds).

Once booted you are faced with an icon driven menu but what strikes you most is the quality and brightness of the screen. The Wiz utilises an OLED screen and the benefits are immediately apparent. You can view this screen from almost any angle and the image is as bright and as sharp as you could ever wish for.

Annoyingly, the volume resets itself every time you reboot the machine, a small niggle you might think, but after the 20th time of having to adjust it gets very trying. With that said, the sound itself is surprisingly loud and clear for such tiny speakers.

GamePark consoles have massive Open Source development community and emulation of other games machines is where that development seems to be concentrated.

All of our favourite emulators have been ported to or written for the Wiz, ZX Spectrum, C64, MegaDrive (Genesis), SNES, Neo Geo and its here that I will start.

I had already browsed the web for developer sites and forums and for the purposes of testing picked up a few emulators (which will be the main reason gamers purchase this machine after all!), although homebrew titles and flash games will no doubt be a massive part of this little machines future.

Note: As we all know its illegal to use ROMs if you don’t own the original chips/software itself (or something like that, I’m not getting into it here) so just to let the fun police know I didn’t use any ROMs I didn’t own myself during testing.

I tested various emulators including PicoDrive (Megadrive/Genesis), GP2Xpectrum (ZX Spectrum) and Mame4All (Arcade) and all worked perfectly, just copy the emulators and ROMs onto your SD card and away you go. The only problem was the inexplicable ‘screen tearing’ which occurs in certain fast-moving games. This manifests itself as a diagonal split across the screen making the display look like 2 displays running next to each other both with slightly different refresh rates. Hopefully a software fix will appear for this shortly.

Unfortunately some emulators, notably the NeoGeo and SNES struggle to keep framerate anything like the originals on certain games, again hopefully this will be fixed via software rewrites in the near future.

The built in games are fun, if not a little basic, the highlight of these was Animatch, which got me hooked quickly and I just couldn’t stop playing it. A clone of Zoo Keeper for sure, but such a brilliant use of the touch-screen and a background tune combining perfectly…  possibly the most hummable (is that a word?) tune I have ever heard in my many years of videogaming…

There are also several ‘brain training’ type games which are simple but good fun and quite addictive in their own way.

Video playback via the built in media player was a bit disappointing, with my movie files noticable ‘stuttering’ and hopefully this will be something that can be remedied by utilising a third-party player, there is certainly plenty of development going on so we can be hopeful.

Music playback was fine but I doubt that many will use this as an alternative to their diminutive iPod anyway.

RGC Verdict

A slight improvement on what went before (GP32) but not good enough really… we are still struggling to emulate 32-bit consoles which I thought we would have had licked with the GP2X Wiz.

With the much anticipated (and delayed) Pandora on the cards and the Dingoo A-320, which boasts similar performance for half the price for sale right now, and no great improvement over the GP32 (except for the lovely screen) it’s hard to recommend this machine to anyone with any conviction.

Time will tell if enhancements, fixes and the amazingly talented Open Source community will come to its rescue and make this machine the machine it could have been.

[starreviewmulti id=0 tpl=20]