Joined: 24 Jul 2003 Posts: 2854 Location: Santa Monica, CA
Posted: Tue Feb 02, 2010 1:37 am Post subject:
OMFG: An anime lesbian kissing game for the iPhone!
I'm not even joking. On the Manga/Anime thread, I mentioned a great lesbian anime series that was simulcasting on the Crunchyroll website, called Sasameki Koto (described here). It's a great series, and I've really been enjoying it.
But then, today, I discovered that there's a free iPhone kissing game for it, called "sasamekisscomi"; the website is here, and it has a link to get the free app on iTunes (or you can look it up yourself by name). It's based on a charming scene early in the series, where one of the girls practices for her first kiss, with the other girl wearing an Ultraman mask so that it's not "really" her first kiss. (And it really is charming; this series is quite clean and suitable for all ages.)
So you kiss the image of the girl in the mask, and the app rates your kiss and unlocks images from the manga depending on how well you do. It's a silly little app, but in a good way, and it's free.
Gods, I love the Japanese!
_________________
Not a shred of evidence exists in favor of the idea that life is serious.
- Brendan Gill
Joined: 24 Jul 2003 Posts: 2854 Location: Santa Monica, CA
Posted: Sun Apr 04, 2010 4:21 pm Post subject:
Ok, so I got a chance to fondle -- er, I mean, test drive the iPad yesterday. Generally, I'm pretty impressed. It worked well, the interfaces were nice, the graphics gorgeous. The crowds around me at the Apple store tables seemed pretty impressed; about the only complaint that I overheard was that the software keyboard wasn't great for serious typing -- which is true, but which practice or Apple's bluetooth keyboard would fix -- and a couple of people were talking about it like it was the second coming. Here's a really good review of it, from MacWorld, and it matches what I saw of it:
I had two gripes with it, myself. The first is pretty minor: it was heavier than the Kindle -- hardly surprising -- and so you'd have to find some kind of compromise for holding it for extended periods of reading. Of course, the same is true of a hardcover book, so I'm not really complaining, but it was something I noticed.
The second is that I was really looking forward to using their Excel-equivalent app, Number, to help me edit the Diamond Comics release list that I post every week. I currently use Excel (at work) or OpenOffice Calc (at home) to copy the text, paste it into the spreadsheet, delete the outer columns, do a couple of Find/Replace operations, and then copy and paste the result into the forum post. When I'm traveling on a Monday, and if don't have my laptop, my iPhone won't do all that, and I was hoping the iPad would. But I couldn't get that to happen as I stood there playing with it, so that was a disappointment. (Maybe I can figure out a different way, like a different iPad app; or maybe I'll just break down and write my own iPad app that does it. It's just a pain to write my own for such a little feature, and I was hoping the iPad's spreadsheet app would give it to me.)
But, those points aside... They've made a solid product. As expected, if you've got a high-powered smart phone and a laptop, this device might be superfluous for you. But with thousands of apps in the App Store, and many being adapted to the iPad, and improved, as we speak, there may be enough cool, useful things there to make it worth it. Like the Marvel Comics app, or Netflix, or the MLB At Bat 2010 for iPad, or ... :-D
_________________
Not a shred of evidence exists in favor of the idea that life is serious.
- Brendan Gill
Joined: 24 Jul 2003 Posts: 2854 Location: Santa Monica, CA
Posted: Wed Apr 07, 2010 7:07 pm Post subject:
No you don't need the subscription. Their web-based digital comics service is like a library card -- you pay a monthly fee, and you can read all you like, but you don't own anything. This app is like a comics store: you buy issues and they download to your iPhone or iPad and you own them. I think it's actually built around the ComiXology comics app, customized for Marvel.
BTW, it works on the iPhone, too. I'm waiting on the 3G iPad before I buy the device, but I've downloaded the app to my iPhone, and "bought" a couple of the free comics -- they have 6 free issues, including what I think is the first of Hickman's run on FF. It's a great issue, writing and art, and once I get the iPad, I'll think I'll buy more of the series.
_________________
Not a shred of evidence exists in favor of the idea that life is serious.
- Brendan Gill
Joined: 24 Jul 2003 Posts: 2854 Location: Santa Monica, CA
Posted: Sun May 02, 2010 3:46 pm Post subject:
So, I bought my iPad on Friday, and played with it most of yesterday (since I had most of the day to kill). I wasn't 100% convinced of its awesomeness before hand, but I think I might be, now. While it does a lot of things well, most have been mentioned in the exhaustive coverage that we've had online, so I'll just mention a few things that stood out for me...
Comics reading is downright beautiful, the dialog is readable even in two page spreads, the colors are awesome... I used the Marvel app, the iVerse app (yay Atomic Robo!), even the Kindle app with manga, it all looked great. (And I met another comics fan at my coffee shop this morning, thanks to an iPad conversation.)
And, speaking of the Kindle app, it's way better on the iPad. I'll hang onto my actual Kindle for a bit, just in case, but getting colors, and proper book covers (Pride & Prejudice & Zombies was missing its awesome cover entirely from the Kindle device version, but I've got it in glorious color now), is great, and it supports sepia paper tones and white-on-black text to make reading better.
The browser is great; I thought it was impressive on an iPhone, but that's still a tiny display. The iPad display is almost as large as I use my laptop browser, so I'm losing nothing. And it was particularly handy yesterday, when I was haunting the HeavyInk FCBD page, refreshing every 12 minutes until I snagged the 3 comics I wanted (yay Atomic Robo!).
While I love the device, so far, it does have a couple of downsides that I'm noticing.
While the screen is great in many ways, it's not perfect. It's glossy as hell, making it harder to see dark scenes in movies, through your own reflection staring at it. It's a superconducting magnet for fingerprints; the iPhone is too, but I rarely notice it on the iPhone, whereas the 9-inch wide expanse of the iPad makes them more obvious. And the screen is invisible when I'm wearing my blue-blocker sunglasses. Seriously. I pulled it out at lunch yesterday and thought it was broken until I lifted my shades and discovered that everything was working normally (but in the 5th dimension). Weird.
It's a little heavy. I'd noticed that before, in the Apple Store, but it's making me a little paranoid that the weight will make it get scratched every time I put it down on something rough. I guess that problem will be solved when I get a case for it...
I'll post more if I notice anything else especially notable, but I'm liking this more than I expected to, which I'm very relieved at. And it's a good thing, as HP and Microsoft have both canceled their tablet devices, so we won't be seeing a serious competitor soon.
Joined: 23 May 2007 Posts: 778 Location: Austin, Texas
Posted: Wed May 26, 2010 1:25 pm Post subject:
The comic books available for the iPad are the same ones available for the Marvel App in the iPhone right? Or does the iPad somehow get the new comic books????
That would be a total game changer for me and I would buy one.
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