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Black Friday Deal: PXN Speedy Discounted to $49

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It’s a re-post from last year, but it’s still wonderful. Andrew Cunningham over at Ars Technica spends some time revisiting Mac OS 9. If you’re curious about how everyone’s favorite late-’90s operating system fares in the present day, grab a coffee and dig in.

I grew up using the old Mac OS, and it’ll always have a place in my heart. And it still has the best ever versions of Prince of Persia 2 and Wolfenstein 3D.

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[afterpad]

TteSports Contour is $15 Cheaper

The controller deals just keep on coming. The TteSports Contour, previously priced at $79, is currently down to $65.

I wrote an extensive review of the Contour a few months ago. There is much about this controller that I disliked, but it DOES have the best iPhone grip of any MFi controller. If having a great grip is important to you, now would be a great time to pick up the Contour.

Buy Now

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[afterpad]

SteelSeries Nimbus MFi Controller is Available Now

It isn't just the Apple TV that's available for preorder today; the long-awaited SteelSeries Nimbus is also available for preorder right now, at the surprisingly low price of $49!

I had issues with SteelSeries' previous controllers. The original Stratus was a bit of a mess. The Stratus XL was much better, but suffered from a couple of fatal design flaws that kept me from recommending it in my review. However, the delta of improvement between these products was huge, and it was obvious SteelSeries was trying to do better.

Assuming SteelSeries learned their lessons from the Stratus controllers, the Nimbus could potentially be an amazing product. The d-pad looks great, the build quality appears to be premium, the price is certainly reasonable. I'm optimistic about this one, despite the previous devices.

The Nimbus is on sale now, and will work with all MFi-controller-compatible iPhones and iPads in addition to the new Apple TV. Similarly, all existing MFi controllers will work with the new Apple TV.

Buy the SteelSeries Nimbus

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[afterpad]

This narrative on TouchArcade from a major free-to-play developer is about as horrifying as you’d fear.

Read it. Then delete your Facebook account and uninstall anything that ever asked you to “like” it. Shit like this is why I advocate ad blocking. Which you should totally do now that iOS 9 is out.

I disagree with one thing, and only one thing: asking gamers to support premium apps isn’t enough. Gamers are up against an army of truly terrible people who are spending millions of dollars learning how to exploit their weakness. APPLE is the one who should be protecting users. Apple should ban apps that do this garbage from the store. Apple should publicly shame developers. Apple should threaten to ban the Facebook app unless it makes policy changes in how it farms data.

We need an advocate at the top.

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'Worms 4' is Here, but Unplayably Bugged

As previously revealed, Worms 4, the latest entry in Team17’s long-running Worms series, is here.

Superficially, it seems like a good release. The framerate appears to finally be unlocked from 30fps, and sometimes reaches a smooth 60fps on modern devices. The $4.99 price tag is reasonable.

Sadly, that’s where the good news ends for MFi controller fans. While it is possible to use MFi controllers in-game, menus are completely unsupported. Worse, the (pointless) roulette game the game forces you to play after every round is unusable with controllers, but also doesn’t allow you to use touch input as long as a controller is connected.

That counts as a game-breaking bug. In order to advance to the next round, you must disconnect your controller, tap the screen to bypass a stupid minigame that shouldn’t have been there in the first place, then reconnect your controller.

As far as I’m concerned, that’s unplayable. I’m not adding this to my MFi game database at this time. Hopefully soon.

If you insist on buying this now, it’s $4.99, and it seems to be a decent game for touch gamers. But if you’re looking for something to play with an MFi controller, you’re going to want to wait until this gets patched, or stick with Worms 3.

Download: Worms 3

Download: Worms 4

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[afterpad]

New Release: Addicting Train Puzzler 'Tiny Trackz'

Great news for puzzle game fans: veteran iOS developer Strange Flavour just released their newest game, Tiny Trackz.

The puzzles here are straightforwardly presented, and will be familiar to anyone who’s played the Professor Layton series: You have various train cars, each needs to be rearranged into a precise order, and you have a limited amount of track space with which to shuffle your cars around. You have to carefully slide your train cars around, making careful use of the available space, and reassemble them in the prescribed order.

Puzzle game fans don’t have a lot of options when it comes to MFi controller supported games. It’s a genre that lends itself particularly well to the touch screen, so we don’t see a lot of games like this outfitted with controller support. The good news is, controller support works great here – the game plays great on a big TV screen over AirPlay, and is perhaps the only puzzle game on iOS to do so. Kudos to developer Strange Flavour for filing this relatively empty niche.

Tiny Trackz is available right now for a one-time purchase price of $2.99. There are no freemium components of any kind – developer Strange Flavour experimented with trying to make ethical free-to-play games using a system they called Play Nice, but have decided to entirely abandon this model in exchange for fairly priced premium games that will never go on sale or go free. So if a fairly priced, polished, premium puzzle game with full MFi controller support sounds good to you, give Tiny Trackz a download now!

Download: Tiny Tracks

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[jeffreygran]