Popular Apps

Temple Run

By: Martha Smith

LAKE PLACID- Every few months a new App for your iphone/ipod seems to come out and take over the free time of students here at National Sports Academy. The latest favorite App is Temple Run. 

Temple Run App

The idea of the game is nothing original but there is something about the App that is addicting.  Speaking from experience after throwing the game on my bed in frustration as I run into another tree I immediately pick it up again, trying to reach a new high score.

The execution of the game is simple, a little man runs, while monkeys chase him, and one must keep him on the pathway by swiping left or right when a turn is needed, and avoid obstacles such as trees and missing parts of path by jumping and sliding (swiping forward and backwards). 

Temple Run Beginning

The object of the game is just as simple, basically you want to get the highest score possible, and also collect coins, so that you can “buy” cheats, like coin magnets or a 750 meter boost, making it easier to reach an even higher score.

The Temple Run rage has been happening for a few weeks, and while some feel the thrill of the game going down others are still just as amused by the game.  Senior Emily Laurenzi says that, “I liked it, but now I’m tired of it” because the game “got boring.”

Meanwhile Senior Maggie Cross continues to be amused by the simple game claiming that “it’s addicting” and she continues to play because “I have to beat people.”  Cross added, “who wouldn’t want to slide under trees and fire.”

Junior Carina Randazzo is a Temple Run fanatic, when asked how she feels about the game Randazzo quickly replied with, “I ‘freaking’ love it” because “it’s just fun, and gives me something to do in study-hall.”  She is not to thrilled about her high score saying, “it’s not very high, only 1,662,771.”

Score Screen

The conversation with Randazzo continued, her one complaint about the game was “when I swipe it and it makes me jump off the freaking cliff” she quickly added in that “Temple Run is a good way to cause yourself to have heart attacks and aneurisms… I am constantly screaming at the game.”  Her warning to the general public being “grandmas… don’t play, males over the age of fifty… don’t play, emotionally unstable… don’t play.”

A majority of the girls on the girls’ floor at NSA play the game, of the seventeen asked eleven said that they play Temple Run.  Although the girls have their fair share of high scores, at NSA the record holder seems to be Alex Kwok whose high score is eleven million.

Temple Run is having a long stretch as a popular App here at NSA and the popularity does not seem to be fading.  It is likely to stay a top past time for students when they are not participating in their respective sports.