A few weeks ago, Big Bucket Software unveiled an amazing update to their excellent iPhone/iPad game, The Incident. Version 1.2 allowed you to use your iPhone as a wireless controller to control the action on the larger-screen iPad. The first time I used the feature, I was giddy. It reminded me of being 7 years old and playing Nintendo for the first time (the retro-style 8-bit graphics help as well). And with the upcoming version 1.3, The Incident is taking the next leap: to your TV.
While there has been a lot of talk about the new Apple TV being Apple’s gateway to gaming (and other apps) in the living room, the fact is that you can already hook up your iPad to your TV. The problem is that this is only meant for media (movies, music, etc) right now. And even if you could run apps, there is no good way to control them remotely. The Incident fixes that because they’ve already nailed this interaction between iPhone (or iPod touch) and iPad. It’s amazingly simple to sync up, and it’s precise to use. This is going to be awesome running on the TV.
It’s still not entirely clear how they’re going to get the app to run on your television. The blog post by developer Matt Comi on the matter just states that you’ll have to plug your iPad into your TV without any details. Meanwhile, fellow developer Neven Mrgan talks about how he widened the graphics of this release to scale to the 16×9 aspect ratio of HD TVs.
The team promises that this update will be coming very soon. For now, you can try out the 1.2 version with iPad/iPhone controls here. The game is well worth the $1.99 price.
Below find a quick video of how it works currently with the iPad and iPhone.
Update: Chopper 2 is another app that has this functionality.
Update 2: And here’s what The Incident will look like when played on a TV: