The iPhone and iPod touch come with very accurate accelerometers - the programs which are running can know when the device is being moved, and how much/how far/which direction it's being moved. Game developers have taken advantage of this capability to develop some games which just rely on the device being moved or shaken!

This is not a type of input that's been used before for games, as far as I know, and I think it has great assistive technology implications. Here are some games I could find which use shaking or moving as their main or only input type:

SPORE: Origins

Eat-or-be-Eaten in SPORE: Origins! Put your iPhone's motion-sensing accelerometer to the test by tilting, turning and twisting your creature through the primordial ooze. Feast on the weak and flee from the strong to survive 2 exciting modes and 35 challenging levels. Evolve from a single-cell weakling into a ruthless predator with the Creature Editor. Customize your texture, shape and body parts to improve your offense, defense, perception and movement. Rule the tidal pool with SPORE: Origins.

Super Monkey Ball

With each monkey inside of a transparent ball, you must tilt the device to roll the monkey past a range of obstacles such as gaps, slopes, narrow ledges and moving platforms. With a pinpoint control mechanism, players will simply tilt and turn the device to maneuver their monkey, accelerating and decelerating as they make their way through the colorfully animated world.

MotionX Poker

A flick of the wrist is all you need to get your dice rolling. And if you're using an iPhone, specifically, you'll feel the device buzz and vibrate as if the dice were rattling around inside. (You can turn this option off, if you don't want to waste your battery, but where's the fun in that?)

Dizzy Bee

Guide a friendly bee by tilting and turning the iPhone or iPod touch. Lead him through windmills, bumpy bumpers, avoid the baddies, rescue the fruits and bring them to safety.

Tilt Fighter

In Tilt Fighter, you tilt your iPhone / iPod Touch left and right to manuever your space ship past asteroids and through enemy fire. Then touch the screen using gestures such as taps and pinches to unleash your arsenal of weapons, such as your Laser Cannon and Anti-Matter Bombs.

If you go to the iTunes story and search for "accelerometer" you'll get a long list of games and other programs that use this type of input, but the list is not complete. It will only pick up programs that use that word in the description or title. Do you know any other games that use moving the iPhone/iPod Touch for input? Are they any good?

- Ricky Buchanan

A couple of weeks ago, I posted a tidbit on ScreenRecycler, an app that allows you to use another Mac's screen as a second display. In it, I theorized that ScreenRecycler could allow on-screen keyboard and scan panel users to play inaccessible fullscreen games by letting them display the game on their main Mac's screen and control it on another with their access software. Soon after, I downloaded the app and put my idea to the test, configuring my PowerBook as a virtual second screen for my iMac. Unfortunately, things didn't work out quite like I hoped - Although ScreenRecycler worked remarkably well with very good response time over ethernet, the virtual screen turned black with the two fullsscreen game demos I tried (Tomb Raider: Anniversary and LEGO Star Wars II), blocking access to KeyStrokes on-screen keyboard and making my experiment a bust.

However...

With both computers side by side, I made an interesting discovery. While fiddling with my PowerBook over Leopard's built-in screen sharing, I noticed that, although there is a "visual" delay in the screen sharing window, all clicks, key presses, and mouse movements occur immediately, even over WiFi. Quickly, I switched my trackball from the iMac to the PowerBook, started a screen sharing session, and opened the LEGO Star Wars II demo. From my PowerBook, using KeyStrokes, I was able to control the game perfectly on the iMac, noticing the same level of response as with my Bluetooth keyboard. Next, I tried the Tomb Raider: Anniversary demo, which, again, was very responsive, but proved difficult to play. As the mouse controls the camera in the game, every time I went to click a key on KeyStrokes the view would get messed up, making things very disorienting. When playing fullscreen games through this setup, both computers had to be within my field of vision, as the screen sharing window does not refresh fast enough to watch gameplay. Additionally, I found it helpful to move the screen sharing window off to the side to avoid distraction. Although this method is not as perfect as having KeyStrokes right over the game window, it opens up some exciting gaming opportunities. Check it out!

- Joe Barnick, AssistiveGaming.com

AssistiveWare today, at the ATIA tradeshow in Orlando, announced a new web site about gaming on Mac OS X: AssistiveGaming.com. This new site is created by and for Mac users with disabilities and provides information on how people with physical disabilities can enjoy the latest and greatest games on Mac OS X.

I have never been a "games person" - they don't interest me and I'm never any good at them. So it's probably a good thing that somebody else is covering games on OS X!

- Ricky Buchanan

(Via AssistiveWare News.)