By Charles Iyoho, News Messenger

When Robb McMahan's not attending class at Texas State Technical College-Marshall or working as a web facilitator at The Marshall News Messenger, the Tennessee native diverts his focus to another project: creating 3-D games for download for Apple iPhone users.

Since attending a game development course in Salt Lake City two months ago, McMahan has kept busy with his demanding hobby.

TSTC student Robb McMahan shows off a game he created for the Apple iPhone Thursday in the offices of The Marshall News Messenger in downtown Marshall.

McMahan recently developed "SpaceWalk 3-D," an outerspace game from the viewpoint of an astronaut trying to reach his space shuttle in time before it's too late. At 12:41 a.m. Thursday morning, McMahan received an e-mail from Apple Inc., saying the game had been reviewed and considered acceptable for download by Apple iPhone users. The review process lasted close to a week, he said.

The game's currently on sale at the Apple iStore and cost $1.99. Music for the game, which also was composed by McMahan, is on sale at the iTunes music store. The name of the soundtrack is called "SpaceWalk," McMahan said.

"You have two different views. You got your third person view and a first person view," said McMahan, while demonstrating the game's features in his office Thursday. "You tilt the phone around and that's how you can see around."

Developing the program was no small feat. Between balancing a full-time job and a full academic schedule at TSTC, McMahan spent "countless" hours working on the program for slightly over a month. He developed the game's applications using a gaming program called the "unity engine."

"It took a little over 30 days of pretty much programming it," said McMahan. "I would do it in the evenings until the wee hours of the night."

McMahan, a software engineering major at TSTC, is in the process of creating another game for the iPhone. He said this one will take users to the viewpoint of an underwater scuba diver, trying to search for treasure while shifting through a shipwreck and fending off sharks. He has yet to come up with a name for the game.

McMahan will likely graduate from TSTC in December, but his education will not end there. He recently was accepted into the University of Advancing Technology - based in Arizona - and will begin his studies next January.

"It all comes down to what people think of the game. It depends on the reviews," said McMahan. "The reviews can kill you or it can help you," but "if people see it's got a good review, they might want to go download it."

According to Apple Inc., more than 30 million iPhones and iPod Touches were sold in the past year and there have been 800 million downloads of iPhone applications in the past eight months. The iPhone application is for sale in 80 countries around the world, giving it a potential clientele of 30 million people.