Gundam Calling:

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I consider Hydro Thunder to be one of the last great arcade games I ever played.

Back in the late ’90s, arcades were already headed well on their way to extinction, or at least a pitiful existence not nearly as glorious as their reign in the ’80s.  As such, I never really cared for most of the arcade titles that were coming out at that time like Dance Dance Revolution, but racing games could always tend to grab my attention.

Hydro Thunder was no exception.  The frenetic, high-speed boat racing game was so fun that I had to rent it for my Nintendo 64 as often as possible.  In hindsight, I really should have saved money and just purchased the game.

Unfortunately, Hydro Thunder arrived at a time when most home consoles were still woefully underpowered compared to their arcade counterparts.  So while the PlayStation and Nintendo 64 versions of Hydro Thunder were decent enough and could certainly qualify as arcade ports, the definitive home version landed on the Dreamcast, and, well, we all know what happened to that thing.

Luckily, Hydro Thunder is headed for the Xbox Live Arcade care of Vector Unit, the developer that has grabbed the rights to the game from Midway’s cold, dead hands.  It has even grabbed an updated title: Hydro Thunder Hurricane.  Sounds fancy.

The title is already planned to retain the 4-player splitscreen mode previously seen only in the Nintendo 64 version (which suffered from horrendous framerate issues) and feature an 8-player online mode.  However, the developer has shared some new features for the downloadable title, such as online leaderboards and a Wave Race-like slalom event, which you can read below.

The title is planned for a vague summer 2010 release.

• Ring Master
A slalom-style event, Ring Master challenges players to race through a series of rings and compete for best time. Every track environment in HTH features three unique Ring Master layouts, which ramp up in difficulty from Novice to Pro to Expert. Novice courses feature larger gates, and are designed to introduce players to the basic mechanics of each level. Pro and Expert courses feature smaller rings, and the layouts are more challenging – they also introduce players to alternate routes and shortcuts in each level.

• Gauntlet
Time trial with an explosive twist: every course is peppered with exploding barrels. The barrels are generally placed off the primary racing line, on the outsides of corners and such, to encourage players to use the fastest racing line possible. However in spots they are also placed in the center of the track, requiring players to dodge between them or hop over them using the Boost Jump mechanic.

• Leaderboard Opponents
Single Player Race, Ring Master, and Gauntlet events all support asynchronous racing with your Xbox LIVE Friends through a feature we call “Leaderboard Opponents”. When you begin an event, we grab your next-best-Friend’s time and display split times at every checkpoint so you can compare your time to theirs as you’re racing. If you’re the best of all your friends, we pull times from the global Leaderboards.

I have zero musical skill, unless you count tapping plastic buttons on my Rock Band Stratocaster, which I don’t. I suspect I am not alone. Yet, despite my inability to create music with an instrument, I have a deep love of listening to music. This passion has, over the years, found me exploring various software programs in the hopes of uncovering some shred of dormant ability. I’ve tried just about every program, from the light and fluffy DJ MIX to the hardcore Propellerhead applications and a little of everything in between. I had varying degrees of success, enough to inform me that I have an ear for music but not much else.

Then, Looptastic HD for iPad entered my life. The clouds parted. Rainbows danced. Kids frolicked with passive tigers. Finally, here was a piece of software that spoke my language by not speaking a language. It presents itself as a simple interface, begging for tactile interaction. You start moving sliders around and within seconds you’re making music, ready to put a “DJ” in front of your name.

Simple, Yet Deep

I can’t review Looptastic HD from the perspective of a professional. I can’t fully appreciate what a pro’s needs may or may not be with a musical application of this sort, so I’m not even going to bother. I assume since Keyboard magazine is impressed, that should be good enough for the experts. Instead, I can only discuss Looptastic HD from the perspective of a frustrated, yet eternally curious lover of electronic music who wishes he could create tunes. From that angle, Looptastic HD is a complete success.

I’ve been around for over 40 years now, which means I grew up when Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream were pretty much the only options one had when listening to electronic music. I remember getting the Computer World album by Kraftwerk when it was first released in 1981 and listening to it over and over and over like a mental patient. Now, all these years later, the power to create rich and textured music is now, literally, in the palm of my hands.

When you first begin a session of Looptastic HD, you are presented with a list of available Loops Sets. You can download a ton more, for free, by simply clicking on the embedded Loop Store, wherein new loops are downloaded seamlessly. By the time I had downloaded everything possible, I had 92 different loops sets with each set holding 6 or more samples. All of the loop sets are labeled with its appropriate genre, including Ambient, Breakbeat, Breaks, Drum & Bass, Dubs, Hip Hop, Minimal, Prog, Reggae and Trance.

Clicking on a set of loops from the initial screen brings you to the main interface. Samples are automatically loaded and ready to be manipulated. All of the available loop sets remain visible and selectable at anytime, meaning you can easily combine loop sets, no matter the style, without limitation, on-the-fly and in real-time. So, if you want the drum loop from a particular Trance set and a vocal track from a Reggae set, there is nothing to stop you.

Swiping a sample up to the editor places it in position. How high you place the sample determines its relative volume. You can stick samples in one of three locations, including the right-channel, left-channel, and middle channel. This allows you to use the left-right fader to easily mask sounds on either the right or left side, while the middle channel remains unaffected.

An effects panel allows for real-time integration and includes the following: Low Pass Filter, High Pass Filter, Band Pass Filter, Notch Filter, Gate, Bitcrusher, Flanger, Glitchy Repeater and Delay.

Looptastic HD allows you to save your custom loop sets for later use, as well as record your masterpiece for export to PC or MAC as a 16-bit stereo AIFF file. If the mammoth selection of available loops isn’t enough to satiate your hunger, then you’ll be pleased to know Looptastic HD allows for the importing of custom loops via all applications that support Sonoma Wireworks AudioPaste.

Looptastic HD is a Killer App

From my layman’s perspective, Looptastic HD seems to have all the bases covered, catering to both hardcore musicians/DJs and casual geeks like myself. It has a truly wonderful interface that makes full use of the iPad’s capabilities. Sound quality is excellent, especially when running the audio through a home theater system. Sound Trend is more than generous in its offering of hundreds of free loops, and their continued commitment to the product in the form of future updates is solid.

I’ve tried tons of these programs over the years and Looptastic HD is easily the best I’ve seen. It’s a complete steal at $9.99, especially if you take a gander at the prices of equivalent software resting in the aisles of Best Buy.  Best of all, no matter your skill level, there is something here for everyone.

Final Score: 5/5

Looptastic HD for iPad ($9.99)

You’ve just spent a boatload of money on Apple’s new iPad and now the time has come to show it off to friends and family. They expect to be impressed and wowed, so you had better deliver a quality presentation that really shows off its various strengths. What follows are 12 excellent apps covering a wide-range of areas, from games to utilities, that should do an excellent job in justifying your new technological wonder.

Warpgate HD

If you’re old enough to remember the glory days of space-trading sims like Elite and Privateer, then you’ll feel right at home with Warpgate HD. This is a beautifully realized, very polished real-time space exploration, combat and trading game offering a mammoth universe, tons of combat, excellent graphics, great sounds and oodles of missions. Warpgate will show off the processing-power of your iPad as well as its brilliant use of touch-controls to navigate the streamlined interface.

Warpgate HD is $7.99 on iTunes.

Pocket Legends

I’ve probably put more time into Pocket Legends than any other game currently available for the iPad. This is an excellent game that will remind many of Diablo, featuring 3D graphics that are lush with details, fast-paced gameplay and seamless multiplayer. If you thought you’d never see an MMO on the iPad, then Pocket Legends explodes that theory and promises a great future for the genre. Pocket Legends is free to download and play, though you won’t be able to progress past level 13 unless you pay $1.99 for an expansion pack.

Pocket Legends is Free on iTunes

Words With Friends

Words With Friends won’t impress from a technical standpoint, but it will illustrate one of the many strong-points of the iPad, namely turn-based multiplayer games that you can pick up and play at any moment. Words With Friends is basically Scrabble with a different name, but the game is essentially the same. However, one big selling point that Words with Friends has over its competitor, EA’s Scrabble, is that you can have 20 concurrent games running at any time. Once you dive into the world of Words with Friends you will become hopelessly addicted.

Words With Friends is $2.99 on iTunes

Brushes/Sketchbook Pro/ArtStudio

One area where the iPad really shines and has no equal is the wonderful library of artistic applications. There are several choices available, depending on your needs and existing skills.

Brushes is a great place to start, though compared to its competitors, you’ll find it lacking in many features. However, Brushes allows for high-resolution export, which is a critical consideration for many artists.

Sketchbook Pro has the most features of all the art programs, tons of brushes and a very effective interface. If you need more options than Brushes, you simply can’t go wrong with Sketchbook Pro.

ArtStudio is another excellent app, the cheapest on offer at only 99-cents, which is a total steal. ArtStudio falls somewhere between Brushes and Sketchbook Pro in terms of features, has a great minimal interface and is a worthy option. You can’t beat the price.

Brushes is $9.99 on iTunes

Sketchbook Pro is $7.99 on iTunes

ArtStudio is $0.99 on iTunes

Pandora

Pandora is a well-known music streaming service that offers tons of free tracks based on your tastes. The interface is slick, easy to navigate and a pleasure to use. Steaming is fast and responsive. You also can’t beat the price, since its free!

Pandora is Free on iTunes

Air Video

Air Video is a revelation! This little app will stream any and all video formats on your PC or MAC to your iPad, converting video on the fly for seamless transmission. I threw some pretty obscure formats at this thing and it worked wonders. It worked better than PS3 Media Server, better than TVersity and better than the Xbox 360 as a media streamer. All you do is download a free program for either PC or MAC that runs a server on your system. Once you have the app running on your iPad, the two hook up as if by magic. Very little setup required. This thing just flat-out works.

Air Video is $2.99 on iTunes.

A free version is available for testing.

Twitterific

There is no shortage of Twitter-apps for the iPad, some free, some expensive, some useless. Since my Twitter needs are on the slight side, I have opted to use Twitterific since it is free and, more importantly, effective at what it does. A crisp display reveals all incoming tweets and users can create custom lists and searches.

Twitterific is Free on iTunes

Star Walk

This app isn’t for everyone, but it sure is impressive and a real showcase for the capabilities of the iPad. Star Walk is a portable telescope of sorts. The real magic happens when you hold the iPad up to the night sky and it automatically reveals the names and pertinent information, including diagrams of the constellations. As you move the iPad across the sky, Star Walk automatically follows your movement. Never again will you not know what something is called in the night sky. It’s an amazing piece of software.

Star Walk is $4.99 on iTunes

Good Reader

Need to read Adobe PDF files on your iPad? Look no further than Good Reader. This fast app is easy to use, allowing you to sync documents between iTunes and your iPad with ease. Files move around quickly and, more importantly, Good Reader is super-fast at displaying large PDF documents.

Good Reader is $0.99 on iTunes

IMDB/Netflix

If you’re a movie and/or television buff than IMDB is a must download. IMDB, known as the Internet Movie Database, has really delivered a beautifully designed app that puts an impressive amount of information at your fingertips, including the latest box-office results, what’s opening this weekend, movie trailers and television schedules.

If you have a Netflix subscription and want to stream movies to your iPad, then this app is a no-brainer. I have to say, the iPad version is the best yet, faster than the PS3, Wii and Xbox 360 at streaming.

IMDB is Free on iTunes

Netflix is Free on iTunes

X-Plane

A flight-simulator on your iPad? Believe it. X-Plane is probably the most impressive game I have yet seen on the iPad. Amazingly fast and detailed graphics, excellent physics, tons of flyable planes and oodles of varied regions to fly them over. Brilliant interface, responsive controls, great pick-up-and-play sensibility. Even if you don’t like flight-sims, you’d be hard-pressed to not be blown away by X-Plane.

X-Plane is $9.99 on iTunes

Marvel/Comic Zeal 4

If you’re into comics then you can’t go wrong with Marvels free reader app. It features a built-in store so you can easily snag new comics, though you’ll find far more back issues for sale than current works. Marvel is offering several recent comics for free, so you can at least check out this impressive comic reader without investing any money.

If Marvel isn’t your thing and/or you already have a library of digital comics in CBR or other popular formats, then Comic Zeal 4 is your best bet. Adding comic to your library is very easy via iTunes and once you have comics on your iPad, Comic Zeal will then compress the files further to help minimize space. Once the comics are imported, you can read them at your leisure on the iPad. Heck, Comic Zeal even puts a series of comics together in a cool little comic bin.

Marvel Comic Reader is Free on iTunes

Comic Zeal 4 is $7.99 on iTunes