OpenTyrian - That Awesome Vertical Shoot 'Em Up

For those of you who came from the good old DOS era like myself, you'll probably have heard of Tyrian - probably noted as the BEST vertical shoot 'em up game of the genre and it still is even now. Fast forward a couple of years, Pelyo - the genius behind the OpenTyrian port for Android - you can see from the screenshot above - it still looks just as awesome as you first played it many years ago.

In fact, I believe OpenTyrian is the BEST vertical shoot 'em up game for Android right now period. Even the likes of Sky Force or Sky Force reloaded from Infinite Dreams can't best this golden oldie. For those who have not played Tyrian you might be wondering - what's so great about this game? Firstly you get to play two major distinct modes - a Full Game mode and an Arcade mode.

In Full Game mode you get to customise and upgrade your ship to your fancy with different front guns, rear guns, shields, generators and side arms too. In Arcade mode on the other hand you pick up powerups that appear on screen to determine the type of weapons that gets equipped on your ship and picking up bubbles (if I recall correctly) to upgrade your weapons.

Besides these main features you obviously get to blast all sorts of different kinds of enemies and there's also bonus and secret levels to get to - you will definitely have plenty of fun! As you can see from the screenshot above, I managed to get OpenTyrian installed and working perfectly on my ASUS EEE Pad Transformer. What's not shown in the screenshot is that if you don't have a keyboard like my Transformer's keyboard dock, you'll get on-screen controls instead - so you can actually play this game on your phone if you fancy.

There are other configurable options too - you can use your accelerometer to play the game too if you like, again its all configurable once you launch OpenTyrian.

But the best way to play this game is still by using the keyboard and playing it on my EEE Pad Transformer with the keyboard dock is just awesome. You can customise the keys to your fancy or even enable auto-fire in the options menu so you don't have to keep pounding on the spacebar or your fire button to fire your primary weapon(s).

The best part of all - OpenTyrian is completely FREE so this is a game you MUST have in your Android device - so give it a try:

OpenTyrian (FREE) - Android Market

ASUS EEE Pad Transformer TF101 ICS Update Expected Around End Of Jan 2012 or Early Feb 2012

There were some initial rumours coming from ASUS Singapore that the original TF101 aka EEE Pad Transformer, would receive the ICS upgrade sometime today / tomorrow which got a lot of people happy including myself. But I was somewhat skeptical of this so I held back the announcement on the site until it is confirmed.

As expected, ASUS Singapore made a mistake and they issued the following statement instead:

[Correction] Dear all members, please kindly note that we have just received information from HQ that for TF101 update to ICS, as all has to be approved by Google, thus estimated availability to update to ICS will be around end of this month. Apologies for the error earlier. Thanks for your kind understanding.

This made a lot of people really upset of the original announcement but it is not surprising one bit as ASUS needs some time to properly prepare for the release. So to put it simply - you can probably expect the ICS update for the TF101 to come in anytime between end of this month or early February 2012. But don't get excited just yet - it might not come true again. We'll know within the next one or two weeks whether this date is accurate or otherwise. Stay tuned.

ASUS EEE Pad Transformer WIll Get ICS Shortly After Prime

The original ASUS EEE Pad Transformer TF101 is slated to get the Ice Cream Sandwich treatment sometime shortly after the new EEE Pad Transformer Prime TF201 gets its ICS upgrade according to ASUS. 

That means the expected release date is after January 12 and this is good news for those of you who own the original TF101 tablet like myself and we have been waiting very patiently for this new upgrade to arrive.

Lets hope this upgrade comes in before the end of the month (fingers crossed!). Here's some of the expected changes for the TF101 once it is upgraded to ICS:

• Android Ice Cream Sandwich 4.0.3
• 'Evolved' UI.
• Home screen sort apps folder feature.
• Lock screen actions.
• Improved spell checker.
• 'Open microphone' voice input.
• Dictation errors highlighted.
• Network data usage charts with customisable cut off and warning levels.
• Accessability tools for the visually impaired.
• Combined contacts app.
• Updated calendar app.
• 'Visual' voicemail.
• New transition effects.
• Picture edit feature in camera app.
• Faster camera image capture.
• Panorama camera capture.
• Face detection.
• Face recognition unlock feature.
• Redesigned picture gallery.
• Live video chat effects.
• Enhanced screenshot share feature.
• Enhanced browser page rendering.
• Saved page visual browser.
• Offline browsing mode.
• Improved email client.
• Email app support for EAS v14 certification.
• Wifi Direct support.
• Bluetooth Health Device Profile (HDP) support.