Chris Hamady

My wife and I took the children recently to Sam's Club to pick up a few items. No sooner had we gotten in the front door when we were confronted with a large display for the ION AUDIO iCade. This thing is a BlueTooth joystick/arcade cabinet controller for the Apple iPad. My children and I really wanted to buy and experience it so we made a deal with my wife in order to get it! ;)

The short story: it really does a fantastic job of replicating the feel and atmosphere of a 1980s arcade game machine. My children and my wife played the iCade for hours the first day we had it, and now I've finally been able to get my hands on it. Here's a link if you want to check it out.

http://www.ionaudio.com/products/details/icade

You'll see from this photo and this photo that the iCade comes unassembled. Putting it together should have been an easy task that included using an allen wrench and a number of allen-headed machine screws to screw the different pieces together. The nut portion of the fastener was embedded in the wooden iCade pieces. I had a serious issue connecting one of the machine screws to one of the embedded nuts. It literally took me 15 minutes of working diligently to get those pieces together.

Once the iCade was fully assembled, the lid lifts up off of the iCade and one slides the iPad into the assembled body of the game system. Here is a photo of what the iCade looks like fully assembled with the iPad inserted into it.

The first thing I noticed about it was that the joystick and the buttons had a very authentic feel and response like the old-school controls of the 80s arcade systems. The gameplay was very similiar if not nearly identical to the way I remember them from decades ago. Speaking of games, there is one serious negative with the iCade: No PacMan!!!!

The iCade instructions tell the purchaser to go to the App store and download Atari's Greatest Hits. Within that free download, one has the ability for in-app purchases of games. I purchased a single game for 99 cents intially. After seeing how fun and well the iCade worked, we opted to purchase the entire Atari set of 100 games for $14.99. The complete set includes famous titles such as Milipede, Centipede, Pong, Asteroids, Tempest, Missle Command, and many others.

Now for the bad news. Pac Man is not an Atari game. It is made by Namco. The iCade website had detailed instructions for developers to customize their games to include the ability to correctly function with the iCade's controls. I took a chance and purchased Pac Man for iPad. No love....it does not have iCade capabilities.

Next, I emailed both Namco and ION AUDIO asking them to expedite the process of getting Pac Man on the iCade.

Here is my email to them (only showing version sent to Namco):

"I just purchased Pac Man for iPad. Please add iCade (http://www.ionaudio.com/products/details/icade ) support for their bluetooth controller. Your game really lacks the 80s fun I used to have without it. I'm about to write reviews of iCade and Pac Man and publish them... Will you commit to supporting the iCade in the future so that I can publish that info?
Thank you.
Chris"

ION AUDIO's response:

"Hi Chris,
Thank you for your interest in Ion Audio!
The application you are referring to is not currently supported on the iCade. We would all love more games to be supported though!

In order to have it supported, the App developer would need to contact us so that we could work together to create the settings so that the app will work correctly with the iCade. If you would like this to happen, please contact the developer of the specific Pac-Man app you purchased and let them know. We would love to have more games work with the iCade!

Best Regards,
Gregory Holmes"

Namco's response:

"Hello Chris,

Thank you for contacting Namco Bandai Games America Inc. Customer Support.

We are considering supporting this device in our future game releases where it makes sense. Please note that our retro arcade titles, such as PAC-MAN, are handled by our Japanese office. We have passed along our interest to support this device for the retro arcade games but the decision will be theirs to make. We can't promise you anything at this point but we are at least looking into supporting the iCADE.

Thanks again for taking the time to reach out to us. We hope you continue to enjoy our games.

Regards,
Namco Bandai Games America Inc. Customer Support"

Pac Man for iPad is a fun game, although the on-screen joystick is a bit wonky to control. It really does not come close to the fun that could be experienced if Namco would use the available developer information found at ION AUDIO's website and customize Pac Man for the iCade. I'm hoping that Namco takes advantage of this opportunity to both enhance their game, as well as create an avenue to sell more copies of it. I am grateful that Namco took the time to forward my request on to the division that handles Pac Man. Thank you to both ION AUDIO and Namco for their prompt responses to my emails.

Other than this one negative (not ION AUDIO's fault), the ION AUDIO iCade is a fun, well designed, and fully functional old-school arcade system. If I had to rate it I would give it an 8 out of 10 star rating.

CH

UPDATE- I'm changing my rating to 10 out of 10. Pac-Man is now an iCade-supported application!!! See Pac-Man Now Supports the iCade.