Firemint has informed TouchArcade that Flight Control has hit over 2 million in sales over the past 10 months with an average daily sales of 6000. Peak sales were over 30,000/day in late March and reached over 20,000 on Christmas Day 2009.

We listed Flight Control as one of the best games of 2009 in our year roundup.

We spoke with Firemint's Alexandra Peters who reminded us that the game started as a "holiday project" last year. Firemint's CEO Rob Murray came up with the idea for Flight Control after having read multiple times that air traffic control was an incredibly stressful job but one that people absolutely loved. Peters told us, "The combination struck him as really compelling and he started prototyping. By that time we had come back from holidays, and Rob brought the game in to the studio. "

Rob Murray writes, “Flight Control has been an incredible success for us, and we owe that to the way people around the world have embraced it. Flight Control and Real Racing made 2009 a huge year for us, and we’re looking forward to revealing some brand new games for 2010 very soon.”

On future titles, Peters recently hinted on our forums that we'd see more than one new Firemint title soon, though she admits that Flight Control and Real Racing are going to be a tough act to follow. Peters explains, "You might recall that the launch of Real Racing was delayed because Rob decided it needed some more work, and we're continuing on with that same obsession with getting our games right. We've thrown out heaps of prototypes that just weren't fun enough, but we've got a few games in various stages of production now that we think are winners. We're looking forward to announcing our roadmap soon, with some details of our lineup for this year."

App Store Link: Flight Control, $0.99

The Spore series started as a PC game by Will Wright and has since spawned several other games and a line of t-shirts, posters, and other swag. Plans for the future include expansion packs for the original Spore, a Spore card game, and even a Spore movie by the director of Ice Age. But where do the iPhone games fit in to all of this?

The first Spore game released on the App Store, Spore Origins [$1.99 / Free], arrived in early September of '08. At the time, it was an amazing game compared to the other games available in the infancy of the App Store, especially with how few "name brand" game franchises there were available at the time. Sadly, the game has not aged well, and the enhancements made in the sequel, Spore Creatures [$6.99], don't bring much to the table.

Much like the original, the goal in Spore Creatures is to eat everything lower on the food chain than you are to collect DNA which is then used to evolve, improving existing abilities and granting new ones to your creature. You control your creature (this time on land) by tilting, and the heart of the game mostly involves tilting your phone to steer your creature in to anything that moves.

Spore Creatures attempts to add some much-needed depth to the game by adding different obstacles in the game world that require certain creature upgrades to overcome. For instance, one of the first things blocking your progress to the next area of the game is a rock which can only be moved once you've added legs to your creature, giving it the power to move the rock out of the way. Farther in to the game you will come across boss monsters, and other creatures that you can socialize with.

The one thing that is a lot of fun in Spore Creatures is the actual creature editor itself. With 45 unique body parts, body shape, and colors to be tweaked the iTunes description claims that there are billions of possible combinations. Making silly looking creatures is much more fun than tilting your phone to have them randomly bump in to things, and I really hope that EA brings something similar to the Spore Creature Creator to the iPhone some day.

Spore Origins was released at a time when a ton of people were completely engrossed in Spore mania. Now that the Spore franchise is getting stale, I doubt the sequel will have the same allure. Quite simply, there are both better tilting games and better adventure games on the App Store right now, and unless you're in love with the crazy creatures of the Spore universe, there aren't many reasons to spend much time with Spore Creatures.

App Store Link: Spore Creatures, $6.99

TouchArcade Rating:

This weekend, Revolution Software released an iPhone version of Broken Sword: The Director's Cut. The game franchise dates back to 1996 but the most recent release is a remake of the original title and was released on the Nintendo DS and Wii in 2009.

Broken Sword: The Director's Cut is a loving update to the adventure which introduced George Stobbard, Nico Collard and the conspiracy of the Knights Templar in an epic narrative spanning the globe. A massive smash on its original release, the Director's Cut includes a significant amount of content not featured in the home computer version, adding approximately 20 per cent to the total play time.

The game is a traditional point and click adventure game but has been updated to adopt the wonderful iPhone interface also found in Beneath the Steel Sky. The iPhone version also contains new cut scenes and animations.

The game has been getting positive reactions in our forums, and we've been really enjoying it. Our full review will follow shortly.

App Store Link: Broken Sword: Director's Cut, $6.99

Isaac Newton's Gravity [App Store] is Namco's latest foray in to the casual puzzle aisle in the App Store. Originally released as Professor Heinz Wolff's Gravity for the PC in late 2008 then a simultaneous Wii and DS release in early 2009, Professor Wolff (A real scientist who even had a brief appearance on the Ali G show and his own British television series.) was apparently given the boot for Sir Isaac Newton himself. Aside from this scientific swapperoo and half as many levels, very little seems to have changed aside from obvious interface modifications to adapt the game to the touchscreen.

The game involves solving physics puzzles by arranging blocks and other objects on each of the 50 levels to hit a switch. Pressing the play button on the top right of the screen causes a ball to shoot out and if you positioned everything right, hit the various objects you strategically arranged to fall over, knock in to each other, or otherwise cause some kind of chain reaction that involves something mashing the goal switch.

As it stands right now, Isaac Newton's Gravity is a fairly basic physics game with better than average graphics and controls which can get a little finicky at times. The real magic is apparently coming in the 1.1 update. According to Jon Kromrey, the GM of the Apple games division over at Namco, the 1.1 update will be hitting the streets sometime in February or March which will allow players to share custom made levels they create online instead of the current implementation which only allows players to create custom levels then share them via Bluetooth.

In the meanwhile, if you enjoy these types of games, Gravity will keep you scratching your head for quite a while, especially if you have someone local to trade levels with.

App Store Link: Isaac Newton's Gravity, $3.99

TouchArcade Rating:

iPhone developer Ryan Mitchell has just released Necromancer Rising [App Store], a large-scale, first-person RPG with an air of the macabre that should appeal to fans of dark and dank dungeon crawlers.

Necromancer Rising places you in the unenviable position of the last surviving Battle Priest of the king's army with a wife and child that were recently slaughtered and buried, and -- as if that wasn't enough -- robbed from their graves by the minions of the evil Necromancer, tunneling in caverns below. Your goal is to regain your former strength and visit grave vengeance upon the aforementioned Necromancer in the name of your beloved family.

The game features a highly detailed stats and equip system; your person features 16 equipment locations for weapons and armor allowing for a great many battle configurations. The author indicates that the game includes tens of thousands of items as well as 50,000 different weapons, in all. (All items are freely available to those who spend the time to find them, but for those who don't mind paying for a bit of a short-cut, certain particularly useful items are also available as in-app purchases.) There are 50 different levels to explore (with 49 end-bosses) and each is dynamically generated upon entrance, so no level is ever the twice the same.

See the developer's trailer video for a look at the game in play.

As yet, I've spent but a brief while with the title and find that what it lacks in polish in some areas (menu system, look controls, etc.), it makes up for with a pleasantly ghoulish atmosphere thanks to the creepy level and creature design, as well as the superb, moaning sound effects and evocative background score. The whole thing has a nice sort of campy Evil Dead feel to it that lends it a particular sort of charm that I find myself enjoying.

Our forum members have had a lot to say about this one. Hitch enjoyed it, while noting the lack of polish in some areas.

This is a hardcore RPG. If you're a casual gamer, I'd probably pass as of now. It has good graphics, sounds, and gameplay elements/length, but a crappy menu system and messy controls keep the game from living up to it's potential. Great game, but hard to work with.

8/10- Must have for PATIENT RPG fans, but needs quite a few updates to make it a must have for everyone.

SharpCarlos is enjoying it as well.

Overall, it's scratching my dungeon crawl itch. There's random loot in varying levels of quality with random affixes (just found a helmet that increases my intelligence). It runs smoothly on my 3GS. And it SEEMS like there's a lot of game here. The dungeon is 50 levels deep, and if there continues to be several quests per level, it'll take quite a while to burn through them.

Have a look at the game trailer (this early version of the bundled tutorial video might be helpful as well) to aid in your decision.

App Store Link: Necromancer Rising, $6.99

Jason Citron and Danielle Cassley of Aurora Feint Inc. are, for a short time, offering their normally $4.99 multiplayer puzzle PRG Aurora Feint II: Arena Daemons [App Store] as a free download.

For those not familiar with the original Aurora Feint, it was one of the first games to appear on the iPhone back in July and won a huge following due to its polish and complexity (not to mention also being free). The developers are following up the success of the original with a new pay version that builds on the existing world and adds head-to-head competition into the mix.

Aurora Feint II: Arena Daemons, as it is called, contains all the components of the original game which revolve around a typical color-matching game but set in a role playing environment. Players can earn crystals while "mining" and subsequently level up and purchase additional tools to add to your abilities.

The game offers multiplayer support, but rather than "synchronous" head to head competitions, the developers are proud of the unique "asynchronous" system they have developed that seems well suited for casual gaming. This means that you can sit down and play against opponents who aren't actually online at the same time as you are.

Whether or not you've played the original, now is the time to give Aurora Feint II: Arena Daemons a try.

App Store Link: Aurora Feint II: Arena Daemons, Free (limited time) - No Longer Free.

TouchArcade forum member Ozzytheking has been on a roll lately discovering cheats inside of Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars [App Store]. Each of these cheats are entered by moving the magnetic letters around on the mission replay board to spell out the various cheats. These mission replay boards can be found inside of any safe house.

Entering any of these codes will change your weapon load out:

LOADOA - Grenade, nightstick, pistol, minigun, assault rifle, micro SMG, and stubby shotgun.
LOADOB - Molotov, tazer, dual pistols, flamethrower, carbine, SMG, and dual-barrel shotgun.
LOADOC - Mine, chainsaw, revolver, flamethrower, carbine, SMG, and dual-barrel shotgun.
LOADOD - Flashbang, bat, pistol, RPG, carbine, micro SMB and stubby shotgun.

Entering these codes have other effects:

CASHIN - Grants $10,000 extra cash.
LIFEUP - Refills your life to full.
SHELLY - Refills your armor to full.
TRIPPY - Unknown
COPIN - Raises your wanted level by 1 star.
COPOUT - Lowers your wanted level by 1 star.

A cheat is successfully entered when the letters return to their original position and a message is displayed at the bottom of the screen. Other cheats are actively being searched for in this thread on our forums and for more information on Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars, check out our review.

App Store Link: Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars, $9.99

At this April's 360 iDev conference in San Jose, California, TouchArcade will be sponsoring the overnight Game Jam -- an event which locks sleep deprived iPhone developers in a room overnight to see what they can come up with. This time, though, there will be refreshments!

We followed the action closely at last year's event which was organized by Noel Llopis. Last year's event ultimately did result in two shipping games: Hippo High Dive by Imangi and Gravity Sling. It also featured a fiddle performance by Galcon creator Phil Hassey.

Now, we're not sure we'll see the next Doodle Jump come out of the event, but anything's possible. It should be an intense and fun event for small indie developers to bond while consuming junk food and Red Bull and posting on the TouchArcade forums. So really not much different than the average day for most, but all the while trying to come up with the next great game.

360 iDev takes place between April 11-14, 2010 in San Jose, California and is for iPhone developers. Speakers include geoDefense's David Whatley and many more.

App Store Links: Hippo High Dive, Free (Temporarily) - Gravity Sling, Free (+ DLC)

iPhone developers Storm Basic have been working on their action 3D hack 'n slash fantasy game since late last year. We first heard of the game back in November when they posted their first teaser video which showed an impressive 3D gaming engine based on the Alpha build.

Storm Basic has since sent us some more details about the game. Tehra Dark Warrior was conceived as a classic action hack 'n slash and adventure in which the heroine Tehra will progress through the game while increasing her combat skills, magical power and being able to become a "more brutal evil version, with extraordinary power". Features include:

• Tehra has two sides as a character: a human and a devil one.
• Player magic and combat skills evolution.
• Online community, powered by AGON. Check your position at the worldwide leaderboards! Geolocation is supported!
• Defeat enemies and complete levels to win Awards and unlock Challenges.
• Hours of gameplay.
• NextGen 3D graphics, with use of OpenGL|ES 2.0 shaders for special effects as Bloom, Shockwaves, etc. (if hardware supports it, such as iPhone 3GS version).

The original teaser video from November (based on an Alpha build) is included here:

Storm Basic, however, will be providing an updated trailer video to us shortly, so we can see how the game has progressed since then. The game is expected to be released in the 2nd week of February.

According to my city dwelling friends, my suburban lifestyle filled with SUV's and chain restaurants often leaves me woefully unaware of things that take place outside of Costco-- I admit, this is one of those situations. Tall Bike Joust [App Store], a game which apparently has been in development for five years, was released this evening and brings the sport of tall bike jousting to the iPhone and iPod touch.

When I first saw this game I thought it was yet another ragdoll punishment game with a crazy premise, but after some research (and some help from forum moderator and bike expert VeganTnT) I've come to realize it is anything but. Modern tall bikes are usually home made and built from spare parts by taking two (or more) bike frames and welding them together. After some other modifications to move the seat, handlebars, and drive train around you've got yourself a tall bike.

Bikers couldn't just stop there though. Somewhere along the way the Black Label Bike Club came up with the idea of instead of just simply riding these tall bikes, why not arm two cyclists with lances and send them barreling towards each other in attempt to score points by knocking the other rider off? And with that, tall bike jousting was born.

The sport translates as well as I imagine it possibly could to the iPhone-- With each joust you and your opponent start at opposite ends of the arena, you peddle as fast as you can by dragging your right and left side of the thumbs down the sides of the screen in an alternating motion. Tilting the phone aims your lance, and as you get within striking distance tapping the screen causes your rider to strike.

After winning matches you earn attribute points to make your cyclist more powerful, and you're even awarded different items you can equip for stat boosts as well as different components that you can combine in to upgrades for your bike. Jousts take place in six different post-apolcalyptic locations, each with different environmental hazards to deal with.

For such a strange game based on such an odd sport, an awful lot of effort went in to the development process. Ryan Doyle, who holds the title of "official tall bike jousting champion of the world" did some of the illustration for the game as well as all the motion capture for the movements of the cyclists. They even use real music, featuring tracks from Matt and Kim, Japanther, and Altaer, and there's even a behind the scenes video.

Tall Bike Joust is a game that will likely have massive appeal amongst avid cyclists and people who are interested in custom bike fabrication. If you fall outside of those groups, the game might not do much for you aside from make you aware of the existence of tall bike jousting-- Knowledge that could lead to spending entirely too much time watching people knock each other off tall bikes on YouTube if you're anything like me.

App Store Link: Tall Bike Joust, $2.99

TouchArcade Rating:

Three lite versions of games we enjoyed were all released recently. If you don't yet own these games, you really should at least give the lite a spin.

Labyrinth 2 Lite (Full: $4.99) - Quite possibly the best ball rolling game on the iPhone, we really enjoyed Labyrinth 2 in our review.

Like the original game, the goal of Labyrinth 2 is to get the silver ball from the starting point to the goal while navigating walls and avoiding the holes. In the first version, that was pretty much all there was to it. Labyrinth 2, however, adds a number of new elements that graduate the game from simple wooden toy simulator to arcade game.

These elements include cannons, bumpers, doors/switches, magnets, fans, resizers, merry-go-round, duplicators, lasers and more. Navigating the levels still require careful tilt control to avoid falling to your death, but are also more puzzle/goal driven as you must also figure out how to make it to the exit. Levels are timed as before so beating your individual high scores remains the motivator to play a level again. This time, however, they've added a ghost ball representation of your best time for you to directly compete against.

---

Heavy Mach 2 Lite (Full: $2.99) - A great sequel of the original Heavy Mach that we liked in our review, Heavy Mach 2 shifts the perspective to an overhead view and adds all kinds of new goodies.

Gameplay in Heavy Mach 2 consists of taking various missions that seem to either have you killing things or collecting things, going out in to the battlefield to fight with your tank and returning with your spoils. As you earn credits and experience by defeating other tanks and completing missions, you can eventually buy tons of weaponry and different upgrades to your tank as you level up.

---

Call of Duty: World at War: Zombies Lite (Full: $9.99) - The zombie survival mode from Call of Duty: World at War compacted on to the iPhone. We thought the game was really cool when we got our first look at it.

The game begins with you in a house with boarded up windows. Waves of zombies slowly start attacking and you need to defend against their attacks. Windows are repaired with the press of a button, though having your attention split across the different entrances is a challenge. The ramp up is rather slow, but soon you'll have trouble surviving the oncoming hoard of zombies. As you kill zombies, you earn coins which can be used to buy better weapons which are found throughout the structure.

While the haul this week is nowhere near as grand as it was during the holidays when everything was going free, we found two games that are both worth downloading, each free for a limited time.

Alien Glyphs - A fun pattern matching game that we enjoyed in our review that has seen several updates since the including adding both WiFi and bluetooth multiplayer.

The game begins with a board of symbols. At set intervals, a new symbol slides into the top of the screen and your job is to match it with one of the symbols found on the board. Tap off a symbol and the top symbol is eliminated. Another symbol takes its place and so on. If you take too long to match up the symbol, however, the timer will run out and another symbol will appear. Take even longer and the row of symbols will fill eventually up and you lose a life. Three levels of difficulty (Easy, Medium, and Hard) should provide plenty of challenge.

Alien Glyphs tries to spice it up with Power-Ups, Power-Downs, that can be triggered or deactivated by matching quickly enough. However, I found myself too busy looking for matches to really register their presence. The game also offers multiple different skins for the glyphs if the neon red isn't to your liking.

---

Buster Red - A vertical shooter that is spiced up with a combo system and OpenFeint leaderboards. The game tracks the number of enemy deaths you're able to string together as well as overall score to submit online.

Similar to quite a few vertical shooters on the platform, you steer your ship around with your finger, which can obstruct your view at times. Still, Buster Red is pretty awesome for a free game and you don't have to play it for long before your screen is chock full of laser beams, bullets, and bosses.

Glu Mobile announced tonight that they are bringing TRANSFORMERS G1: Awakening to the iPhone platform. TRANSFORMERS G1: Awakening is a turn based strategy game that first appeared on mobile handsets in 2008.

Based on the original story of Transformers, use the strengths of each Autobot to defeat the Decepticons in turn-based strategic battles. Capture sources of Energon power to reactivate, repair or upgrade your Transformers. Featuring up to 23 playable characters and a skirmish mode to play friends as Autobots or Deceptions, there is more to Transformers G1: Awakening than meets the eye.

The mobile version of the game was well reviewed by PocketGamer.co.uk and found to be challenging and enjoyable:

Essentially, Transformers G1: Awakening is resource management meets chess. While Optimus Prime (leader of your pack, the Autobots) appears to be a bit of an 'all-rounder', some of the rest of his gang are more specific in terms of their abilities, relying on either speed or restoring the health of team-mates.

We don't have much other information about the iPhone version aside from the screenshot above and the fact that it's coming "soon".

Meanwhile, check out the mobile trailer:

As a big fan of time trial games, I took immediate interest in Comet Racer [App Store], the newest release from Donut Games. Comet Racer has you piloting a small craft through the mazelike interiors of comets in a mission to complete each of its 25 different levels in as few seconds as possible. With a unique global leaderboard system and a great physics engine, this is a game that fans of other recently released time trial games like Hook Champ or Jet Car Stunts will enjoy.

Each level in Comet Racer opens with the unveiling of your ship on a launch pad, and an old-school traffic light slides in from the left to give a three second launch countdown. Using a thruster button on the right side of the screen and the two left/right directional buttons on the left, controlling your ships around hairpin turns and through slim corridors is an easily-acquired skill. Crashing into a wall will cost you one of your "lives" (displayed in the form of tiny spaceships at the top left corner of the screen) and cause a significant drop in speed, making it more difficult to finish the level under the given qualification time.

I normally don't like games that require players to unlock all of its levels by beating every level in order (as this can cause players to get stuck on one particular level and become frustrated) but I feel that it's not a real issue in Comet Racer since players will rarely have much difficulty finishing levels. The game is tuned so that levels aren't difficult to complete, but so that it's challenging for players to attain a three-star ranking (the highest possible ranking).

Comet Racer uses a fairly unique leaderboard system that I particularly enjoyed. Instead of setting a separate leaderboard for each level, the game combines all your track times into one total score, where each hundredth of a second that you beat the qualification time by is worth 1 point. For example, if a certain track has a qualification time of 20 seconds, and you finish it in 19.50 seconds, you'll be awarded with 50 points. Naturally, it'll only be possible to max out your potential score once you've unlocked all the tracks, but the real focus of the game is going back through and improving just marginally on your times in each level. To aid with this visually, the game even keeps a "ghost" version of your best time in each level that you can race against later.

As you unlock more levels, you'll begin to encounter more and more unique obstacles and pickups that give some needed variety to the tracks. You'll encounter boost pads, temporary shields, dangrous tracking missles, and walls that must be opened by running over nearby switches. One of my few complaints with the game is that the missiles almost never pose any sort of threat, and will usually be avoided with ease. Even if you fail to avoid the missiles, shield pickups are so common that the useless missiles will bounce right off of you.

I love the way the global leaderboards for this game work, and I will soon start up a major effort to make my way to the top of the boards. Comet Racer is easy to get into and fun to try to master. It's one of those games that can draw you in for hours at a time for the simple chance to improve your high score, and yet it can be picked up and put down in two minutes, a quality shared by the best of iPhone games.

App Store Link: Comet Racer, 99¢

TouchArcade Rating:

The Apple rumor mill has been going absolutely wild with speculation lately on what could be in store for us at Apple's event on the 27th where some form of Apple tablet is expected to be revealed. From a gaming perspective, there have been several hints that App Store gamers could be in for a treat, with the Wallstreet Journal reporting that Apple has been working with EA to show off the gaming capabilities of the rumored tablet device.

Considering the mysterious delay in the release of Mirror's Edge, a game we got a preview of last month, with this recent news it may not be that far fetched to expect to see it as part of a demonstration of the tablet's array of games. Other developers have also been asked by Apple to produce versions of their games that are resolution independent, allowing them to seamlessly scale up to the presumably higher resolution display.

To make things even more interesting, Kotaku and several other general gaming sites have also been invited to the event, along with representatives from quite a few popular iPhone game studios. Of course trying to discern what Apple is up to by reading between the lines of rumors and event invitations is open to all forms of interpretation, but it seems the stars are aligning to a serious gaming announcement on the 27th.

We will have live keynote coverage of the event, and if the Apple tablet does turn out to be a gaming device, you can expect to see reviews of any noteworthy tablet games to supplement our existing iPod touch and iPhone game focus.