AppBlaster: augmented reality iPhone gaming
It might be just a fancy piece of plastic, but the AppBlaster makes for some fun augmented reality gaming with your iPhone.
There's a free game on the iTunes App Store called Alien Attack. If you've grabbed it and paid little attention, you'd be forgiven for thinking it's some weird augmented reality game with incredibly awkward controls.
That's because it's made to be used with the AppBlaster. Made by a company called AppToyz, it's a plastic gun with a mount suited to iPhone 4/4S, or iPod Touch. Add your iPhone and use the integrated capacitive triggers to play.
There are three games in the App Store that work with the AppBlaster. Alien Attack, a clay target shooter called Pull, and a shooting gallery game called Tin Can Alley.
And though it's hard to know for sure, we get the feeling a bit of hardware modding could let you adjust the trigger positions to suit other one- or two-button games.
It's priced at $49 at Kmart, which seems a bit over the top for such a specific iPhone accessory. But the three games already on the market are quite fun and have some good variety. If AppToyz keeps the games coming to support this hardware then this has "fun for the whole family" written all over it.