While rummaging around the convention center looking for all the Android gaming goodies we went and had a meeting with MHL who we are sure most people are familiar with if you connect your phone to your TV for game playing. If not, we will go over what MHL is a little bit here but the really interesting thing is that they had the Green Throttle controller and game system (currently in beta) available for trying out.
For those of you that are unfamiliar with MHL, they are a company that makes some pretty unique cables that allows your phone to continuously charge while being plugged into your HDTV. So while you’re playing Android games on your phone, HDMI-out to your TV, your phone will also be charging. It’s a nifty little piece of tech that comes in a cable that you attach to your phone, and then you can run HDMI to your TV from that cable.
While at the MHL booth, we noticed that the Green Throttle controllers were sitting on their display stand. So with that, we were able to test out these controllers and take a look at the gaming system’s UI and even play a game using these controllers that was loaded through the Green Throttle UI. For those of you unfamiliar with Green Throttle, the company was created by one of the creators of Guitar Heroes and some mobile gaming industry veterans.
Their goal with Green Throttle is to turn any Android device into a full-fledged console system with the use of their controllers and gaming system, bringing features you would traditionally find in console games like split-screen multiplayer. The controllers connect to whatever device you are running through Bluetooth (cables in the pictures are security cables) and the gaming system is also installed on there. From there you open up the Green Throttle UI and pick the games you want to play and you’re off.
The controller themselves feel like most other controllers, with buttons laid out in a similar fashion to an Xbox360 controller. In fact the design of the controller is almost identical aside from the green and grey color theme to it. The function really nicely though as you would expect a full controller to perform. The controllers also control everything when in the central UI as well.
The interface for Green Throttle is pretty clean and not cluttered at all. Even though we were trying this in beta form, we didn’t notice any real bugs happening when testing it out which was nice. There is an arena area as well which we can assume is for playing against other people online. The Marketplace will be home to all the compatible Green Throttle games which are being made by Green Throttle themselves as well as other third party developers.
Overall, after playing a round on Snowboarding against our rep at the MHL booth, using two Green Throttle controllers with the game loaded through the UI, it was a rather enjoyable experience. We will save final judgement on when we review the product in full and it isn’t in beta form but for what we did get to test, it was pretty promising.
Developer Website: Green Throttle
