It's Jarvis! On Your iPad!

This new app is little more than a gratuitous promotion to get you to buy Iron Man 3 on Blu-ray starting September 24th. To be honest, I really don't think it does all that much. But dude...it's Jarvis! On your iPad (and iPhone)! For free!

Jarvis: A Second Screen Experience is available in the iTunes App Store.

 

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Stan Lee Stars in New Spider-Man Storybook App

Your kids may not appreciate it, but you will.

Stan Lee narrates the new Disney/Marvel Spider-Man storybook app.

Seriously, that's like Walt Disney reading Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to you.

The app, available now for the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch, is based on The Amazing Spider-Man: An Origin Story, a children's book written by Rich Thomas and taken from the original comic book tale created by Lee and Steve Ditko.

'Cars 2' Fun and Games

I'm enjoying this three-day holiday weekend by immersing myself in some digital doodads from the world of Cars 2. What? I should be outside enjoying myself? Swimming? Barbecuing? Naaaa. I gotta get to level five on Cars 2: The Video Game.

Yes, I know there's a real world out there. I read about it on the Internet.

Cars 2: The Video Game is a fun and surprisingly challenging racing game available on the major gaming platforms (PS3, Xbox 360, Wii, Nintendo DS, PC and Mac). I'm playing the Wii version and getting a kick out of the more than 20 Cars characters I can race as and against. The backstory of the game is you're a new secret agent training at C.H.R.O.M.E. (Command Headquarters for Recon Operations and Motorized Espionage), the international spy school from which Cars 2 characters Finn McMissile and Holly Shiftwell sprang. Your object is to advance through the spy ranks by completing various driving tests, from standard racing to battle racing (with your own arsenal of in-car weapons) to hunter challenges where you seek and destroy enemy cars on a closed course. There are also survival races where you must evade the heat ray of the evil Professor Z while doing some nifty precision driving and protecting your vehicle. If this all sounds a bit violent for little ones, Disney (with developer Avalanche Software) tries to lessen the impact by assuring players that they're all part of one big simulation inside the "Holodome" at C.H.R.O.M.E. For me, this doesn't change the fact that the most fun about the game is blowing stuff up. It's Split/Second meets Mario Kart.

Master tricks like backwards and two-wheel driving and you can earn extra points and virtual badges (I've gotten quite good on two wheels; backwards driving, not so much). Finish in the top three of each event and you can move on to higher stages of the game, unlocking new tracks and vehicles as you go.

Cars 2: The Video Game is for 1-4 players, ages six and up. It's available now from Amazon and most video game retailers.

Cars 2: Agents of C.H.R.O.M.E. (for iPhone and iPod Touch) calls itself a side-scrolling racing game, but you're not really racing against anyone or anything, even time. What you are doing is collecting tokens while jumping over obstacles and navigating a series of ramps, platforms and skyhooks to earn points. There are eight levels in each of three Cars 2 environments (Oil Rig, Tokyo, London) that are fairly easy to work through and you can play as either Lightning McQueen, Mater, Holly Shiftwell or Finn McMissile (although your choice of character doesn't alter the gameplay). For 99 cents at the App Store, it's a mildly diverting bit of Cars 2 fun for ages four and up.

The Cars 2 Storybook Deluxe is the latest of Disney's digital books for the iPad. It's a condensed version of the movie's storyline, geared for kids, with attractive artwork and fun animation activated with a tap of the screen. Children and parents can follow along with the audio narration or turn it off and read at their own paces. You can record your own narration, but this is the one feature of the app that falls short. Since the microphone in the iPad (at least my first generation one) is not very powerful, your recorded voice is hard to hear over the story's music track, which cannot be muted. This pretty much defeats the purpose of recording your own voice. Note to developers: add an off switch or volume control to the music and we'll be good to go.

The Cars 2 Storybook Deluxe also comes with five digital coloring pages, five puzzles and two in-app games. It's currently selling for $5.99 in the App Store.

Happy 4th of July, everyone!

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New Disney Digicomics Reveal Secrets of 'Epic Mickey' Wasteland

"The fun of adventuring is finding out for yourself."

And so begins Disney's latest Digicomic app for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad, which offers some clever insight for gamers chomping at the bit for the new Epic Mickey game for the Wii console coming out on November 30.

The app contains character profiles and digital comic book stories about the Wasteland, the magical world created by Fantasia's sorcerer Yen Sid that contains all the lost and forgotten ideas in Disney history.  Wasteland is an off-kilter Magic Kingdom, presided over by Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, Disney's first cartoon star.

We discover Wasteland in the time prior to it being decimated by the actions of a certain overly-curious mouse. Here are some of the details, which may or may not factor into the actual game. (spoilers ahead):

• Oswald is a content resident of Wasteland, but he harbors a deep resentment towards Mickey Mouse, who had the amazing career Oswald believes he was entitled to.
• Oswald has 420 children, all named Oswald.
• Oswald's lady love is Ortensia, who looks an awful lot like Dot from Animaniacs.  No word if she's the baby mama of the 420 kids.
• Oswald's best buddies are Goofy and Donald Duck. Not the original characters, mind you, but Audio-Animatronic copies.
• Oswald's feet detach from his body and can be rubbed together for luck. His head and hands detach too. Not sure how lucky that is.
• Horace Horsecollar is a private investigator for the Neighsayer Detective Agency in Wasteland.
• Clarabelle Cow and the Mad Doctor run the Misadventurers Club, a tribute to Walt Disney World's now defunct Adventurers Club. Kungaloosh!
• Wasteland's Haunted Mansion equivalent is called Lonesome Manor. It's named for the 1937 Mickey Mouse cartoon Lonesome Ghosts.
• The It's a Small World clock tower in Wasteland gets annoyed having to play the same music over and over again (just like real life, we suspect).

The Disney Epic Mickey Digicomics app is free and includes one comic book story. Five additional comics can be purchased for $2.99.

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