Father’s Day Giveaway #2: Namco’s Alpine Racer for the iPhone

When we were dating, Tech Savvy Daddy and I would sometimes head to Jillian’s on Lansdowne Street to get our game on. We’d arm ourselves with pocket full of tokens and head straight for the racing games for the challenge of reaching the finish line on a motorcycle, Indy car, or on a snowboard.

As a skier, snowboarder, and a fan of downhill racing games, Namco’s Alpine Racer for the iPhone ($1.99) puts the fun of the slopes in your hands. This game takes advantage of the iPhones accelerometer that enables you to tilt characters Rina and Shogo Saga as they race to the finish line in either the Story Mode (where they are attempting to make their way through qualifying events) or Time Attack for a beat the clock experience.

Alpine Racer is the first game that I’ve put on my iPhone that uses the accelerometer to play. Most of the time when I’m using my iPhone, I’m making calls, checking e-mail, and other functions not related to gaming so it took me a couple of trips down the slopes, and a lot of painful encounters with snow fences, trees, and ginormous snowmen, to get used to using the tilt function to navigate the course. I’ve learned that guiding Rina or Shogo down the course only takes slight tilts of my iPhone to get them around the curves and to the finish line. I’ve also discovered that in the Time Attack, I can race against a ghost version of myself to try to beat my best time.

Alpine Racer makes me feel as if I could be on the slopes of our favorite ski/snowboard destinations in Tahoe, Colorado, or New England because of the amazing graphics. I love that I get the sense of being on the slopes and the thrill of downhill racing without the pricey lift ticket or airfare. I also like that just as with Namco’s version of Pac Man, the game can be paused and restarted to continue play at a later time.

I think Alpine Racer is easy enough for anyone to learn although I haven’t put it in the hands of Captain Computer or Little Miss Techie for fear that they would get the hang of it too quickly and leave me without the use of my iPhone forever!

Download the lite version of Alpine Racer to give it a try on your iPhone and enter to win 1 of 2 full version downloads generously provided by Namco. To win, leave a comment letting me know your all time favorite arcade game. I’ll choose 2 lucky readers who will be e-mailed a download code for the full version next Sunday!

Be sure to leave your e-mail address in the body of your comment and feel free to Tweet this for an extra entry: Check out @TechSavvyMama great Father’s Day giveaways! http://tr.im/nf93 & http://tr.im/nHWl

To enter my other Father’s Day giveaways for the music loving dad, click here! Other current giveaways can be found in the upper right corner of my site.

Thanks to Namco for providing me with a free download of Alpine Racer for this review!