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First Looks: Jackpot Slots and Pinball Magic

By Aloysius Low - 9 Dec 2010

First Looks: Jackpot Slots and Pinball Magic iPhone Accessory

Enter the Appcessories

While there are plenty of games for your iPhone in the Apple App Store, playing with the touchscreen can be less than ideal sometimes. Where's the fun without a physical controller you may ask, and well, today, we're taking a look at two "Appcessories", a Jackpot Slots dock and a Pinball Magic dock that add the aforementioned physical controls for your iPhone from New Potato Technologies.

Appcessories you ask? Yes, it's just what it sounds like. You get the device, hook it up to your iPhone 3G/3GS/4 and download the app from the App Store, after which you can then use the accessory to interact with the app. The app doesn't actually work properly without the required accessory attached, which is something to keep in mind if you decide not to bring them around with you.

Jackpot Slots

The first device we're looking at is the Jackpot Slot dock, which allows you to experience a 'Vegas' experience via the handle that you pull to start the jackpot app spinning. As a dock, it also supports iTunes syncing and charging, which at least gives you some bang for your buck. That's because the jackpot game itself is actually quite boring, and while there's a promise of real world prizes when you win 50,000 credits, those prizes cannot be redeemed in this part of the world (only valid for those living in the USA). And with no real incentive, there's no thrill in chalking up the credits.

Pinball Magic

Our second appcessory, the Pinball Magic dock, is strangely the more intriguing device, but it lacks the ability to charge and sync your phone when docked. What it does however, is basically turn your phone into a mini pinball machine once you have it docked and the app installed. You get the levers at the side, a spring loaded pinball launcher and flashing lights at the top. It's certainly playable, but the device seems more like a gimmick than anything, and it's not even as practical as the Jackpot Slots dock. The website does state that third-party support for other pinball apps are coming, but till then, you're stuck with what you get.

Accessorize your Apps

While certainly interesting products, both the Jackpot Slots and Pinball Magic feel very gimmicky, which they are. The prices too also are a little on the expensive side. At $79.90, you could probably buy plenty of jackpot and pinball games in the App Store instead. Here's to hoping that New Potatao may add other apps that can make use of the appcessories, because if not, spending so much on a one trick pony like the Pinball Magic seems a little wasteful to us.

On the bright side, at least you can still use the Jackpot Slots appcessory as a dock when you get bored of pulling down the handle (which you will, soon enough).

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