Anyway…

Rapid Review: Cute but manicured graphics, simple but fun gameplay, and unique enough – for as popular as Peggle is, few indie games or flash games see fit to mimic the style. Sushi Cat doesn’t offer much challenge, falling into that category of “Games you’re guaranteed to beat so long as you keep trying”, but it’s slick, fun, and stands out as a flash game.

Full Lowdown:

The Experience: Just drop Sushi Cat from the top of the screen, doing your best to get as much sushi before hitting bottom. The Sushi Cat is flexible and bouncy, so it can be a bit challenging to figure out what his bounce path is going to be – especially on later levels with mobile obstacles. Glowing sushi offer powerups, such as an extra life, point multiplier, or otherwise. Simple and easy to learn gameplay. I’d say “hard to master”, but really, the game doesn’t try to offer a serious challenge. It’s clearly meant to turn heads and be simple fun.

The Quirks: I’ve mentioned twice how flash games in pachinko or peggle style are surprisingly rare, but Sushi Cat has another thing going for it: The bouncy, jelly-like nature of the cat. Little things like that fascinate me, and I can only wonder how hard or easy it is to program that sort of interaction. It seems like a gimmick one could build a more depthful game around, but as it stands it’s just plain fun to watch. Especially in later levels where the moving parts can squish the Sushi Cat down flat, then send him springing off in some other direction. The little animated story (with more unlocked as you advance) is also downright adorable, despite being brief.

The Tips: Earlier levels are pretty straightforward affairs to clear, but eventually getting every sushi in the level becomes more of a challenge. Try to get as many sushi in a single pass (and land in the lit-up slot at the bottom) for the best points, and keep in mind the Sushi Cat becomes larger with each additional sushi it picks up – the cat you drop from the top of the level likely won’t be the cat you have at the bottom, especially if you aim well.

This one is playable over at Armor Games, so give it a shot and drop a comment here if get a kick out of it.

I question their judgement.

Why Consumers Buy Products -vs– What Consumers Will Buy

Let’s go back to 2007. The cell phone market is already well established – Nokia, Samsung, Motorola and others are busy churning out these products in vast variety. Further, the market isn’t limited to specialists – normal everyday citizens, young and old, are becoming far more likely to be a cell phone owner/user. The competition is almost exclusively centered around hardware features: The inclusion and quality of camera, of mp3 player, of GPS, etc. A lot of these cell phones have third party software capabilities via Java and otherwise, but the demand is minimal at best. Most cell phone users don’t make use of features more complicated than changing a ringtone, texting a message, taking a picture or setting an hour/calendar alarm.

Mid-2007, the iPhone launches. In mid-2008, Apple’s App Store for the iPhone opens. And as of January 2010, Apple has announced that over three billion apps have been downloaded from the Apple Store.

Why this happened is a discussion itself, but here’s the pertinent detail: A feature that next to no consumers were asking for in 2007 – a feature practically no one had in mind when they bought or used their cell phone - has become, in a very short space of time, tremendously popular. So popular that it’s become a frontline PR tool in the iPhone versus Android war. Now, as recently as 2008, someone could have said “People who buy or want cell phones couldn’t care less about running applications on their cell phone”. They’d have been right. But if they would have added, “And that’s why playing up that option on the iPhone is a bad move”, they would have been dead wrong.

Lesson: What consumers seek from a product today is not a perfect predictor of what will encourage them to buy that product tomorrow. And the reason people buy portable PCs now is not the best indicator of whether or not they’ll buy an iPad in the future. There’s a good chance Apple isn’t trying to meet any existing market demand, but create a new one.

iPad Developers: There’s Already an Army of Them

Outside of the console gaming market, people seem to forget about the importance of software developer support for hardware. It’s understandable in a way – as far as PCs go, Windows is effectively the only game in town, so it’s not like the question comes up often in the laptop or desktop arena. On cell phones, while platforms like Blackberry are busy playing catchup with the iPhone in terms of developer access, the iPhone is the only game in town as well. This helps explain why the very subject of iPad software development isn’t coming up in conversation.

But that’s quite an elephant to overlook. The overwhelming success of the iPhone app store didn’t just help cement Apple’s growing hold on the cell phone market – it’s raised up a sizable army of independent iPhone developers and programmers. Apple isn’t just bringing almost every iPhone app with it to the iPad – it’s bringing every iPhone developer for the iPhone along for the ride. This means Apple’s “There’s an App For That” slogan applies to the iPad before it even launches. There will be no lack of either software or talent for the iPad.

To really understand why this matters, ask yourself this: How much better are the iPad’s chances of success when it won’t just launch without any worries of software support, but with roughly 50000 apps ready to launch with it – as of June 2009? How much better is it when a good number of these apps are free, or are semi-exclusive to the iPhone/iPad itself?

Size Matters: Everything is a Bigger iPhone

There is one popular criticism of the iPad that carries some weight: The complaint that, when you get right down to it, the iPad is just a bigger iPhone. And you have to admit, there’s something to that. It runs the iPhone OS. It runs almost all of the iPhone apps. It has the same touch interface. It looks very similar, in that “black rectangle” way. All this while lacking the camera and cell phone capabilities of the iPhone, while being larger and heavier.

Ouch. Sounds pretty damning when you put it like that. And if that’s the way most of the public views the iPad, that’s going to be a hurdle for Apple to jump.

But how much of a hurdle is it really? The iPhone, when you get right down to it, is just a tiny, less powerful tablet PC – a product which, as was noted earlier, doesn’t have the best market performance so far. Yet the iPhone is an undeniable broad-market success, while so far the tablet PC market’s only success is in niche categories (like with medical professionals). Why is there such a difference in their market performance?

For one reason, it’s because once you have enough of a difference in degree you also have a difference in kind. The iPad is going to come with vastly different system specs than the iPhone has, and will lead to a broader field of uses. It’s why Apple is pushing for 99 cent TV episode purchases in advance of the iPad launch – because the 10 hour battery life and larger screen makes the iPad vastly better for video viewing compared to the iPhone’s “merely serviceable” utility. It’s why the iPad is being considered as a Kindle-killer, despite the fact that the iPhone was every bit as technically capable of reading pdfs and e-books as the iPad is going to be.

Watch Them Closely

There’s more to discuss than this. There’s the question of how much it hurts (or helps) Apple to leave Flash out of the picture, or how much of a competitor to the Kindle the iPad really is given the comparison of battery life, or the question of how Apple will ultimately handle the desire for greater multitasking. But these three reasons should give you an idea of why I’m betting on the iPad to succeed, and why my faith in the media and market analysts is low.

Infectonator! World Dominator. A neat entry into the flash and indie game niche, focusing on the progressive spread of a terrorist zombie plague.

Rapid Review: More gadget and toy than game, so long as you keep playing you’re guaranteed to win. But this flash game is a lot of fun to watch in action. Drop your plague and (eventually) more monstrous zombie creations into increasingly dense urban areas and see how close you get to utterly killing or zombifying a whole town. Also, the reporter chick is cute.

Full Lowdown:

The Experience: Crisp, polished, and easy to learn. But with unlimited retries and constantly accruing funds, there’s little real challenge here. But you know what? That doesn’t matter. It’s a joy to make that climb to worldwide plague-spreader. Unless you end up loving the show of a progressively spreading zombie-plague, chances are you’ll play this once to completion and file it away as a neat memory. Then again, if you haven’t played it once yet, here’s your chance.

The Quirks: That classic 8-bit graphic style makes an appearance here, but it’s supremely executed. The overworld map, the upgrade interface, the cities themselves – all looking spiffy. Too often it seems like the 8-bit style is relied on because it’s an easy, timeless way to get a project done (and I can respect that), but the guys behind Infectonator: World Dominator clearly put some serious effort into their graphics – and it shows. A cute touch is the diversity of citizen comments as you move from country to country, so be sure to keep an eye on what the little 8-bit people are screaming as you zombie-mulch them.

The Tips: To get out of the computer interface, you want to press the power on/off button on the lower right side of the computer screen. It’s the toughest part of the game to figure out. Almost as tough is figuring out how to unlock special zombies: You need to take down a special “heroic” citizen to pull this off, and they may not show up for a while. Finally, don’t underestimate the power of any particular zombie stat – everything adds to the effectiveness of the plague, and there’s usually little point in focusing on one stat over the others if your goal is to wipe out a town.

Give it a shot, and drop a note in the comments section if you’ve got any input of your own on this game.