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Quake III engine Space Trader: Moon Madness buying its way onto the iPhone

Buy low, sell in orbit

Quake III engine Space Trader: Moon Madness buying its way onto the iPhone

Lots of different developers quickly saw the potential to port powerful, 3D gaming engines - like the one at the core of Quake III - to the iPhone, and several went as far as to actually do it.

By id Software pretty much scuppered any plans to release a Quake or Doom port to the iPhone when it announced it had plans to release those games itself.

Hermit Works was one such developer, but it hasn’t let that work go to waste. Using the Quake III engine it managed to get up and running on the iPhone, Hermit Works has been feverishly putting together a spin off from its satirical PC game, Space Trader: Merchant Marine, called Space Trader: Moon Madness.

This fully 3D game takes capitalism to new heights. Well, into orbit, actually. This sci-fi game encourages you to gather as much wealth as possible by trading your wares around the galaxy, buying and selling all kinds of commodities from medical supplies to food and precious metals.

Space Trader: Moon Madness employs a unique control system that looks like it could really catch on in 3D iPhone games. Two virtual analogue touch pads are located in the thumb positions of a landscape oriented screen, and allow you to move and look around the place in a similar fashion to a DualShock controller.

The video below doesn’t give much of the gameplay away, but it does show you the beautifully smooth 3D engine at work, along with this excellent new control system.

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Spanner Spencer
Spanner Spencer
Yes. Spanner's his real name, and he's already heard that joke you just thought of. Although Spanner's not very good, he's quite fast, and that seems to be enough to keep him in a regular supply of free games and away from the depressing world of real work.