Lightsaber Unleashed

I never got a chance to play with Ryan Youngman’s iSaber before George Lucas squashed his little Star Wars iPhone tribute. It sucks that they pushed him out of the App Store, but at least they were kind enough to put together a worthy replacement.

TheMacBox’s version of Lightsaber Unleashed is exactly what you’d expect it to be, plus a few “brand” upgrades that were no doubt ordered by George’s marketing goons.

Open the app and tap the lightsaber, you get the trademark Jedi weapon with the accelerometer-driven humming and clashing noises. Tap a button for some dramatic Star Wars music to set the mood for your iPhone battle, and tap another button to go fullscreen. It’s all nice and well-done, and except for the music it’s probably identical to what iSaber was.

The upgrades come in the form of tie-ins with LucasArts’ “The Force Unleashed” game that’s just been released on pretty much every game platform in existence, iPhone included (duh!). Tapping the character icon will give you a choice of dueling as any one of these Force Unleashed characters: Darth Vader, General Rahm Kota, The Apprentice, Shaak Ti, and Maris Brood. Unfortunately The Apprentice is some Jedi guy, not Donald Trump.

I confess that I don’t know jack about The Force Unleashed so I’m assuming that, along with Vader, The Apprentice and Brood are also bad guys because all of their lightsabers are red. Shaak Ti’s is blue and Kota’s is green, so… good guys get the pretty colors? Anyway, on the choose-your-character screen you can also hit info buttons that give you both a bio and a picture of the character. Nice touches, but make no mistake… it’s all in the name of marketing.

If you have this app and haven’t tapped around the stars surrounding the lightsaber yet, give it a try and you’ll get a little surprise - there are two stars in particular that you want to touch. Whee!! It’s an Easter Egg. Happy hunting.

Naturally LucasArts is really, really hoping this free lightsaber will make you want to buy the iPhone version of The Force Unleashed for $9.99 (they try to sell it to you when you open the app) but even despite the marketing ploy Lightsaber Unleashed is cool and should satisfy hardcore Star Wars Geeks everywhere.