There are three* video games I know anything about, and all of them I played obsessively through my college years. One of those games is Streetfighter II, Capcom’s amazingly popular (and awesome) one-on-one beat’em-up. So when Streetfighter IV turned up on the App Store yesterday, I downloaded it to my iPod Touch and pretty much lost the rest of the day. Here’s a quick first look at the iPhone version of the world’s most famous fighting game.

Streetfighter IV is much more similar to the 1991 game than to the 3D SF4 you’ll find on bigger consoles (reviewed by our own Chris Kohler over at Game|Life). If you’re familiar with Guile’s charging attacks or Ryu’s Hadoken (fireball) and Hurricane Kick, you’ll be immediately at home: The moves are pulled off the same way. You also get some new, more powerful tricks, but not so many of the complex pyrotechnics of the Streetfighters between then and now.

If you liked the original, you’ll love this. But how does it play without any real buttons? Surprisingly well. There is an on-screen joystick for moving and jumping, and four on-screen buttons: punch, kick, special move and charge. You can do your special moves the old way, with joystick gestures combined with buttons, or you can wuss-out by just hitting the special move button. This will be annoying for those who had to learn the hard way, but you can switch off the auto-settings in the preferences.

There [...]]]> http://gadgetmania.com/2010/03/fingers-on-with-streetfighter-iv-for-iphone/

There are three* video games I know anything about, and all of them I played obsessively through my college years. One of those games is Streetfighter II, Capcom’s amazingly popular (and awesome) one-on-one beat’em-up. So when Streetfighter IV turned up on the App Store yesterday, I downloaded it to my iPod Touch and pretty much lost the rest of the day. Here’s a quick first look at the iPhone version of the world’s most famous fighting game.

Streetfighter IV is much more similar to the 1991 game than to the 3D SF4 you’ll find on bigger consoles (reviewed by our own Chris Kohler over at Game|Life). If you’re familiar with Guile’s charging attacks or Ryu’s Hadoken (fireball) and Hurricane Kick, you’ll be immediately at home: The moves are pulled off the same way. You also get some new, more powerful tricks, but not so many of the complex pyrotechnics of the Streetfighters between then and now.

If you liked the original, you’ll love this. But how does it play without any real buttons? Surprisingly well. There is an on-screen joystick for moving and jumping, and four on-screen buttons: punch, kick, special move and charge. You can do your special moves the old way, with joystick gestures combined with buttons, or you can wuss-out by just hitting the special move button. This will be annoying for those who had to learn the hard way, but you can switch off the auto-settings in the preferences.

There [...]]]> http://gadgetmania.com/2010/03/fingers-on-with-streetfighter-iv-for-iphone/

The Apple Store was down for a short spell this morning, and it has popped back up with a pre-order page for the iPad. If you want to get your shiny new Wi-Fi Apple tablet delivered on April 3rd, you can buy it now. If you are holding out for the 3G version, you can still pre-order, but you’ll be kept waiting until the infuriatingly vague “late April”. Despite the international Apple Stores also going offline today, there is still no news of worldwide pricing.

You can also order Apple’s iPad accessories. The book-like case is $40, the iPad Keyboard Dock is $70, the regular dock is $30 and the spare mains charger is $30. In the box with the iPad you get this charger and a dock cable, but no headphones at all. Two-year Applecare for the iPad is another $100.

We wonder, with the ability to pre-order, if there will be anyone to join us in line at the real Apple Store when the Gadget Lab crew goes to buy its iPad on the morning of the 3rd.

iPad Order page [Apple]

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The folks at Geeky Gadgets have got ahold of some screenshots from Sony’s upcoming mirrorless Alpha camera. It appears that the innovation isn’t all on the outside: this camera will have a touch screen and a smart new interface to go with it.

Mirrorless cameras are becoming popular because they put big sensors in small bodies with interchangeable lenses, and Sony’s concept added typical Sony Style. But looks are nothing without a good product, and these screen shots show that Sony has decided to abstract the interface, forgetting about apertures and shutter speeds and instead focussing on their effects.

For instance, we know that opening up the lens shortens depth-of-field and throws the background out of focus, making the subject pop. Sony lets you control this by touching a button and sliding an on-screen control for “Bkground Defocus”. The menu screens are big and colorful, too, instead of the cryptic text lists we’re used to.

In fact, going by these leaked shots it looks as if there won’t be many buttons at all on this camera. Even the mode setting dial is a big on-screen graphic (shaped just like a dial!)

We love where the camera market is going, with relative newcomers forgetting about the old film ways of doing things and instead concentrating on taking better pictures more easily. More shots below, or click over to Geeky Gadgets to see them all.

Sony Ultra Compact DSLR Camera Concept Menu And LCD Screenshots [Geeky Gadgets]

http://gadgetmania.com/2010/03/leaked-shots-show-sony-mirrorless-touch-camera-interface/

The Cloak Bag is a camera bag that lets you take pictures whilst your camera is still inside. It also doesn’t look anything like a normal camera bag, making it doubly secure if you’re a vulnerable traveler on vacation.

Like all the best niche products, the shoot-through bag was born of specific need. After two near misses in Buenos Aires, co-inventor Robert Merrill was afraid to take his DSLR out for fear of theft, so when he got back to Florida, he went to work. The Cloak Bag is designed to keep the camera protected and out of site, yet you can quickly flip it open and shoot with the camera still inside. A strap replaces your actual camera strap, and then the case itself hooks onto it with Velcro and a screw in the tripod-mount. The bottom of the bag zips open and folds inside when you want to shoot. In this mode, it looks like any other shoulder bag.

To shoot, you flip open the top (held in place with magnets) and your fingers slot inside through a gap to reach the dials and shutter release. If you need to zoom of focus manually, there is another zipper to gain access to the lens from the side.

Even if not fearing pickpockets and scam-artists, I like that you can have the camera ready to go but still protected from bumps (just don’t forget [...]]]> http://gadgetmania.com/2010/03/cloak-bag-shoot-with-the-camera-still-inside/

Even though Microsoft’s big MIX event is still days away, the Windows Phone 7 Series development platform is already pretty well defined. It’s also clear that Microsoft wants to keep things tidy for developers by requiring all WP7 phones to meet a certain base-level spec. Now, thanks to a post from Microsoft’s Shawn Hargreaves, we know the display resolution for the first batch of Microsoft’s next generation phones: 480 x 800 (WVGA) pixels at launch, with a future update that will introduce a 320 x 480 (HVGA) native resolution. Dedicated hardware will ensure image scaling across all those pixels without taxing the GPU. That allows game developers, for example, to write to a lower resolution (requiring less horsepower) and then scale up as required while remaining compatible to a variety of screen resolutions.

Now, for those playing along at home, the HD2 getting ready to launch on T-Mobile in the USA is also WVGA and it features a 1GHz Snapdragon processor from Qualcomm, Microsoft’s WP7 silicon partner. So we can assume (but not guarantee) that it meets the image scaling hardware requirements described by Hargreaves. Man, if only the HD2 had three-buttons.

[Thanks, Cytrix]

First Microsoft Windows Phone 7 Series devices to boast 480 x 800 pixel displays, HD2 owners sigh originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 12 Mar 2010 04:37:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple’s recent purge of sex-tinged iPhone apps, combined with its lesser-known ban of “cookie-cutter” apps, signifies the company’s new focus on quality, rather than quantity, in its App Store.

Last month, Apple removed about 5,000 apps with “overtly sexual content” from its App Store. And this week Apple told Mobile Roadie, a company that provides templates for clients to build iPhone apps, that the App Store would no longer accept “cookie-cutter” apps — apps made with app-generating services that do little more than reproduce websites or pull RSS feeds from the internet.

“This is a hot issue as more focus is being placed on app platforms to ensure they’re providing a quality user experience and content,” said Michael Schneider, CEO of Mobile Roadie. He stressed that his company was not a maker of “cookie-cutter” apps because its templates were highly customizable.

“I’m not going to comment on specific competitors, but I believe as a result of the recent changes at Apple many of them will be out of business,” Schneider later wrote in a blog post. “The ones that are left are going to have to step it up, which is a good thing for the App Store, for our business, and for consumers.”

Since the App Store’s early days, Apple has boasted about the number of apps served through the store and highlighted its rapid growth. The App Store launched with 800 third-party apps in July 2008, and by November 2009 it surpassed 100,000 apps. As [...]]]> http://gadgetmania.com/2010/03/with-more-than-enough-apps-apple-pushes-for-quality/

Back in January 2009, as Vodafone was preparing to close a £20 million ($30 million) deal to buy Swedish mapmaker Wayfinder, it was seen as a bold move from a carrier intent on entering the apparently lucrative market for location based services. Fast forward to the present day — past the bit where free Google Maps Navigation destroyed TomTom and Garmin share prices, and past the introduction of free turn-by-turn navigation to Nokia’s Ovi Maps — and you’ll find Wayfinder gently sobbing into a handkerchief as it permanently closes up its doors. Vodafone’s Anna Cloke gives us the reason for it with devastating concision:

So there we have it, the paid navigation services deathwatch has its first fatality, and it’s the unfortunate nature of the beast that plenty of others will be following suit, unable to resist the destructive effects of the free and ubiquitous services now on offer.

[Thanks, Chris]

Vodafone’s Wayfinder is first victim of free smartphone navigation services originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 12 Mar 2010 05:18:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Android for Windows phones — simple concept, simple enough installation, but awesome results. The good people behind the XDAndroid project have been working hard to allow you to get your Google juices flowing nice and freely on your WinMo device and the latest build looks to have all but completed the task. Demonstrated on a Touch Pro2 — a phone that recently got itself Ubuntu-ized — the Android installation experiences no difficulty in making calls, sending SMS or email missives, or browsing the web. There are still limitations, mind you, with GPS, Bluetooth and “other key functions” not yet available, but for the most part you’re looking at the full Android experience on devices that weren’t initially meant for it. Check it out on video after the break or hit the source link for detailed instructions on how to load this up on your own phone.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Update: Seems the Touch Pro2’s keyboardless cousin has no intention of getting left out of the party — m8cool has a little exposé on HTC’s Touch Diamond2 dual-booting WinMo with Android. Thanks, stagueve!

Continue reading HTC Touch Pro2 gets a new lease of Android life, loves it (video)

HTC Touch Pro2 gets a new lease of Android life, loves it (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 11 Mar 2010 04:56:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Novothink rolls out Solar Surge iPhone / iPod touch charging case originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 11 Mar 2010 13:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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