As we reported yesterday, TAITO has been readying an update to their excellent retro rebirth shooter Space Invaders Infinity Gene. If this prospect had you excited to breathe some new life into one of the finest shooters available for the iPhone, then you should be pleased to know that the 3.0 update has already gone live on the App Store. It adds some new content for free with the more enticing stuff being available as downloadable content.

The update includes a couple of new features for all previous owners of the game. A new ship called the Option ship will unlock in the usual manner of filling up your evolution bar through play. The other new feature is the ability to rotate the device sideways and play Infinity Gene like a side-scrolling shooter. Your ship is shown from a side view in this orientation and the enemies are rotated 90º so they look appropriate to the ground. The device can be rotated to this view easily at any time while playing, although it only rotates in one direction and not every level allows for this feature. It doesn't necessarily impact the gameplay too much, but it's a fun novelty.

Far more interesting is the addition of 3 new ships available as DLC that are based on previous arcade shooters. There's the Darius inspired ship Silver Hawk, a Night Striker ship named Inter Gray, and a Metal Black ship named Black Fly. Each one has unique attacks and abilities, and fits in well with the other ships that were previously in the game. Along with each DLC ship pack you'll get two brand new stages that are also inspired from each of their respective arcade classics, with new boss fights and retro music rather than the normal techno heavy soundtrack. As an added bonus, by purchasing just one of the DLC packs you'll receive an additional new ship called the Boomerang, and if you purchase all three packs you'll get yet another new ship called the R-Gray2, which is from the game RayStorm.

All together this new update adds some really cool content, but at $1.99 per DLC pack I'm not too sure how many people will be interested. Personally I always thought Space Invaders Infinity Gene was underpriced at $5 to begin with, since it really is such a stellar experience, and so have no problem throwing even more money at TAITO for their efforts. Others simply won't feel the same, and I understand that. At the very least this 3.0 update does offer some new stuff to players completely for free, and you can always choose to stagger the purchasing of the DLC over time, so either way we definitely recommend downloading this latest update.

Back at GDC we sat down with the guys from 99 Games who showed us an early build of The Jim and Frank Mysteries - The Blood River Files [99¢] which has since been picked up by Chillingo and arrived on the App Store. If you've played a Professor Layton game on the Nintendo DS before, The Jim and Frank Mysteries is a shockingly competent Layton lookalike with the professor and his sidekick Luke replaced by Jim and Frank, a team of teenage boys sent off on a quest by their grandfather as part of an odd 15th birthday celebration ritual.

Gameplay is identical to that of the Layton games in that Jim and Frank set out on a strange adventure, moving from screen to screen, talking to the various inhabitants of the game world, and solving 60 unique puzzles. Instead of the "hint coins" found in Professor Layton, Jim and Frank have "eurekas" which are similarly hidden in the game world and are collected by tapping on them. These eurekas are used as an in-game currency of sorts, which explains why Jim and Frank's adventure only costs a buck.

If you get stuck on a puzzle, you're able to unlock hints which will only cost you one of your eurekas for the first hint, and an additional eureka for the second. If you're still stumped, you can skip a puzzle entirely at the cost of many more eurekas. Of the two puzzles I've tried to skip, the first one would cost 15 with 20 required to skip the second. Aside from finding them in the game world, eurekas are currently available as an in-app purchase with 30 for 99¢, 75 for $1.99, and 120 for $2.99. Of course, if you're good at puzzle games, these are entirely optional and you could complete the entire game without burning a single eureka.

The included puzzles are your standard array of math and logic puzzles which you've undoubtedly encountered before somewhere, either in various childhood brain teaser books, similar video games, and other places. Old standbys such as figuring out how to separate liquid to a certain amount using three differently sized containers, sliding puzzles of all types, mazes, map puzzles, and others are all there. I've yet to come across a puzzle type that felt unique to this game, but as a veteran of the Layton series, that doesn't come as much of a surprise.

Mixed amongst the puzzles are several different mini games. For instance, the first one begins when you come across a creepy old man in the middle of the woods who needs help chopping wood. Naturally, this team of teenage boys fulfill the old man's desires and begin chopping away in a reaction-based mini game where you tap the screen to chop as a log scrolls from right to left. These mini games are fairly simple, but serve to offer an even wider variety to the things Jim and Frank will need to do on their adventure.

Jim and Frank includes some limited voice overs, which take over during important parts of the game. The whole beginning of your adventure is narrated, and as far as iPhone game voice work is concerned, it really isn't half bad. The story is silly as you would expect, with dialog that often left me raising an eyebrow. When we talked to 99 Games back at GDC, they seemed excited for the Jim and Frank Mysteries to continue past this first installment, so with any luck there will be many more mysteries for the teenage duo to unravel in the future.

Regardless of how you feel about the incredible similarities between The Jim and Frank Mysteries and Professor Layton games, we'll likely never see Layton on the iPhone, so a highly "inspired" game is just as good in my book. The amount of content included in Jim and Frank borders on ridiculous at its current launch price of a dollar. With hours and hours of gameplay (99 Games claims over 20), 60 puzzles, 8 mini games, and a cast of nearly 30 characters, this isn't a game you should miss.

Sure, it would be easy to get wound up over the in app purchases to buy eurekas, but these are entirely optional especially since it wouldn't surprise me if the Jim and Frank thread on our forums quickly turned in to a great place to go for when you get stuck in game.

We've posted about Warblade [Free] a number of times before, both mentioning the game's immense development history beginning with the Amiga and announcing the lite version, but today's Warblade post is the best yet as for a limited time the full version of the game has dropped from 99¢ to free.

Warblade is basically the classic arcade game Galaga on steroids. In the game, you fight wave after wave of enemy, who seemingly spew endless amounts of power-ups, allowing you to fire a barrage of bullets back at them. Coins are also dropped by downed baddies which are used in between levels to buy additional power ups for your ship.

With OpenFeint for online leaderboards and achievements, a number of different control options, two different game modes, and everything else Warblade has to offer, this is a game you don't want to miss while it's free.

It seems that even though Apple rejected Yoot Saito's first attempt at an App Store game for being "unpleasant", Saito is ready for another go, but this time for the iPad. According to sketchy information from his blog in poorly machine translated Japanese, it appears The Tower iPad is coming soon.

Yoot Saito is Japanese game designer known for innovative game design. His first major game was SimTower and it's sequel Yoot Tower/The Tower II which was later remade for Gameboy Advance, and the Nintendo DS. Wikipedia describes the original SimTower:

SimTower: The Vertical Empire is a construction and management simulation computer game developed by OPeNBooK Co., Ltd. and published by Maxis for the Microsoft Windows and Mac OS 7 operating systems. It was released in November 1994 in the United States. The game allows players to build and manage a tower and decide what facilities to place in it, in order to ultimately build a five-star tower. Random events take place during play, such as terrorist acts that the player must respond to immediately.

Here's a video for The Tower DS (in Japanese):

And that's all we know so far. We'll keep an eye out for it, and hopefully we'll see an international (not just Japan) release.

Now, we're not saying Audiosurf is definitely coming to the iPhone... but it seems some of the new changes in iOS 4 make it possible. Engadget reported on a DJ scratching app that takes advantage of some of the new APIs in iOS 4 that allow Apps to directly import the audio files from your iPod library. In the past, the best that you could do is simply play and pause your existing iPod music from within a game -- but not actually do any processing to it.

This led to some awkward workarounds. BeatRider, for example, required you to upload your MP3s to their website and then download the data back to your iPhone within the app. Well, no longer!

PC version of Audiosurf

This means we should be able to see rhythm games that allows you to directly import your music and manipulate it for your gaming entertainment. Bring it on.

With the Major League All-Star Game right around the corner, America's pastime is getting into full swing. This marks a perfect time for developer Com2uS to release their follow up to last year's popular 9 Innings: Pro Baseball with the aptly titled 9 Innings: Pro Baseball 2011. This year's version features mostly the same simplistic play mechanics, but adds a great deal of authenticity by way of a Major League Ball Players Association license. While this isn't an MLB license (so no actual MLB logos, team names, or ballparks), it's a real boon for the baseball aficionado to be able to play the game with accurate player stats and real player photos. Another huge addition to this year's version is a card collecting mechanic that almost acts like a sub-game of it's own.

The first thing to note about this year's version of 9 Innings is that it utilizes the touch interface much better, whereas last year almost all the game navigation was handled through the use of the virtual controls. It feels more like it's made for this device rather than being shoehorned into working on it. This makes things like navigating the menus and choosing pitch location much more intuitive. You'll start off by choosing a team, and all the same teams from MLB are represented here in a generic form. The team colors and logos are a close enough representation that you don't really miss that they're not the actual MLB franchises.

Once a team is chosen you're given 25 player cards to represent your team's roster. The roster's are according to 2009, so there are a few players here and there that aren't on the correct team, but for the most part you're getting the actual players from that MLB team. The card dynamic is really neat, with each card carrying the real life stats of that player. Certain players will have special attributes as well, like hitting especially well against left handed pitchers or having an extra keen eye at the plate. Points are earned by playing games, with certain special achievements earning additional points, like striking out 3 batters in a row or hitting back to back home runs. These points can then be spent on upgrading each player's card and in turn increasing their overall stats.

A card shop is available to purchase extra packs of cards using these in-game points or even as in-app purchase by spending real life money, if you so wish. These new cards can then be used to swap out players from your team and mix up your roster. There's even cards for the team's manager and for cheerleaders. It's odd, as baseball doesn't have cheerleaders, but they can be looked at as a team's mascot. These cards can add special attributes to your team or players to give you an added boost in the stats department. The card collecting and player leveling adds a nice RPG-ish wrinkle to the game, and is even more fun for people who are into baseball stats, although you in no way have to be a baseball buff to enjoy the game.

Gameplay wise 9 Innings 2011 hasn't changed too much from last year's iteration. Hitting the ball requires just simply timing the pitch and pressing anywhere on the screen to swing, with icons for power hitting and bunting available as well. Pitching has you choosing a pitch type from the player's repertoire and then sliding a small baseball icon to the part of the strike zone you want it to go. When the pitch placement is set, a circle will enclose that position in the strike zone ,and the closer the circle is to that point when you tap the screen the more accurate your pitch will be. This mechanic becomes harder as your pitcher fatigues during the course of the game.

Defense is handled almost exclusively by the game for you, with minor options like deciding which base to throw to after fielding a hit and attempting pick off plays under your own control. A small portion of the offensive strategy is up to you as well, like deciding to advance runners or not, but by and large the game is mostly about batting and pitching, and while slightly basic it ends up being incredibly easy to play and fun.

Everything combined, 9 Innings 2011 makes for a fun, casual game of baseball with an added element of depth due to the player card system and leveling dynamic. It has much better graphics than last year's version, less basic and with more detail, but strangely the entire game is played in portrait view rather than the landscape view of the last game. The dev has stated in our forums that landscape mode will be coming in an update, which should be a welcome addition and provide a more comfortable way to play. It would also be nice to have some sort of roster update to get the statistics and players more current, although this doesn't really hurt the overall experience much.

With entertaining gameplay, a multi-season franchise mode, an excellent homerun derby mode, and endless possibilities for card collection and customization, 9 Innings: Pro Baseball 2011 is the strongest entry in the baseball game genre to date, and is recommended for both baseball fans and regular gamers alike.

TouchArcade Rating:

Back at E3 I sat down with the guys from TrueAxis to check out their upcoming game Space Tripper and get the low down on some upcoming Jet Car Stunts DLC. As you may recall, just before E3 was WWDC, during which Apple release the gold master for the then upcoming iOS 4 upgrade. Not long after, it was released, leaving TrueAxis now not only scrambling to finish the DLC pack, but also add in all the iOS 4 refinements they wanted to. After "some headaches," as they described it, the upcoming Jet Car Stunts update is currently in Apple's hands waiting for review.

This update is bringing an additional 26 levels available for a DLC purchase of $1.99, as well as the levels from the lite version being added to the full version for free. The previous impossible difficulty levels are now playable in casual mode. Best of all, Jet Car Stunts has been updated to not only have full screen anti-aliasing on both the 3rd generation iPod touch and iPhone 3GS, but also full Retina Display support on the iPhone 4.

If this is the first you've heard of Jet Car Stunts, you simply must check out our review. It's a platformer that's been cleverly disguised as a 3D racing game where you must use your jet car to overcome insane obstacles, jumps, loops, and other stunts. The visual style is delightfully retro, with extremely simple 3D models set on top of an endless sky. The game runs at an astronomical framerate, and is one of the few games we've awarded 5 stars since the inception of our ranking system.

You really can't go wrong with Jet Car Stunts, and with the addition of the upcoming DLC pack and other enhancements, this great game is getting even better.

I'm not entirely sure if this is something you'd even classify as a "game", but if there's one thing gamers like it's earning experience points, filling up bars, and just generally leveling up regardless of when, where, or why. The Epic Win app seeks to close the divide between actually doing things in the real world, and this intense desire to level up anything you can in any way possible in the virtual world.

The trailer does a better job explaining it than I could possibly could:

Epic Win has some serious video game design pedigree behind it, both with Rexbox who worked on Little Big Planet for the PSP and PS3 as well as Studio FungFung who is best known for MiniSquadron [$2.99 / Free]. I'm not entirely sure if earning experience points in an iPhone game is enough motivation to get anyone to do anything, and it does seem awfully easy to cheat in the game... But, without truly knowing just how epic the Epic Win app is, all we can do is speculate.

It seems the new fad on the App Store ever since developers got wind of the freemium model potentially succeeding is social games. Ngmoco has already carved a niche out for itself in the free world with its array of games like We Rule [Free], Zombie Farm [Free] by Playforge puts players to the task of growing a legion of undead, and of course, Zynga's social juggernaut which recently arrived, Farmville [Free] can hardly be overlooked. All of these games basically play the same, with some form of currency purchasable via micropayments, tasks you complete after a certain time interval, and tons of customization to keep you coming back for more.

Newcomer Astro Ape Studios has decided to throw their hat in to the social ring with Office Heroes, looking to capitalize on the hundreds of millions of people who waste their lives away playing social games every day. What makes Office Heroes slightly more clever than your average social game is that you waste your life away in game while wasting your life away out of game, while playing the game. (What a meta mouthful.)

Instead of tending a virtual field or kingdom, you have an incredibly customizable avatar who lives inside of a small office. Rather than tilling fields and planting corn, you buy your little dude a new computer and play solitaire, get him a coffee maker and fix a cup of joe, and other menial tasks with everyday items. As you level up you get access to even more menial tasks, and eventually a larger office to decorate with things like wallpaper, various types of flooring, pool tables, arcade machines, flatscreen TV's, and even a jacuzzi.

With gameplay that closely follows the typical social game template, Astro Ape is banking on the (admittedly sky high) novelty factor of its game to attract new players and keep them coming back for more. It's hard to say if they're going to be able to lure in the sizable player base required to make a game like this a success, but if my Facebook News Feed is any indication, people who like social games are always looking for a new game to sink their teeth (and time) in to.

Office Heroes was recently submitted to Apple for approval, and they're expecting to see it on the App Store in the next couple weeks.

As much as I'd love to be reporting that both Trism [$2.99 / Free] and Giana Sisters [$4.99] are now available for the iPad, both developers were hit by unexpected App Store hiccups recently. Bad Monkee, creators of the classic platformer port Giana Sisters announced via Twitter this afternoon that the wrong version of Giana Sisters HD was uploaded, approved, and briefly available for sale before it was pulled down. If you were excited for the iPad game after our announcement last week, you should only need to wait a few more days before you're collecting crystals and smooshing bad guys on the iPad.

Demiforce's Trism was hit with a much nastier bug in Trism 1.5 which landed on the App Store recently. If you were excited to see the little universal plus in the bottom corner of the Trism icon, I'd hold off on buying the game until a fix is released. With 1.5, when you launch the game on the iPad, instead of having the option to run in 1x or 2x mode, it attempts to run fullscreen but only displays the triangle-laden game board in the top right corner. This display bug is actually kind of interesting, as when you move the rows of triangles around they will extend the whole length of the iPad screen, and all the in-game text sits to the right of the play area until it's needed in the game.

If you're a Trism fan that has been enjoying the game on your iPad, hold off on updating until a fix is released, which according to Demiforce has already been submitted to Apple and they've requested an expedited review. We've seen critical expedited updates hit the App Store in 24 hours or less, so a fix may be coming very soon.

Resolution Interactive recently gave us a peek at their upcoming aquatic racing game, Aqua Moto Racing 2. This sequel to the original Aqua Moto Racing [$1.99] improves the game in nearly every way imaginable, and after going back and playing the first entry in the series, it's really hard to believe that this game is even running on the same platform in comparison.

The game plays much like the classic Nintendo 64 game WaveRace 64 (and other similar racing games), with buoys that you must either pass on the right or the left, with a healthy helping of ramps strewn about to get massive amounts of air off of. We really liked Aqua Moto Racing in our review when it was released last year, so it shouldn't come as much of a surprise that the sequel is even more fun, especially now that our main complaint from said review has been completely rectified.

Aqua Moto was (and still is) a great game, which did an excellent job providing nearly everything you'd want out of a wave-runner arcade game, except movement in the water. Every track in Aqua Moto was remarkably calm, but not anymore. Aqua Moto 2 introduces an entirely new dynamic water system, which not only looks great in motion, but also makes the game both more fun and challenging as a sudden wave as you're trying to come around a corner can either result in getting wicked air, or going off course entirely.

The stunt system is cool too, as with a flick of your phone over a jump the game goes in to slow motion and allows you to select a variety of different tricks for your racer to perform. You can see how this all goes together in the following gameplay video:

This is still an early development build, so it's hard to really get a good idea of what the full game is going to be like yet since so little is included in the preview version. The few tracks I were able to play were a ton of fun, I just really hope that the developers do something to improve the sound of the engine, as the short loop of sound they're currently using really sticks out once you notice it. Resolution Interactive isn't getting any more specific than "Summer 2010" for the release date of Aqua Moto Racing 2, but once the game finally hits the App Store, expect a full review.

Scheduled for release on the 15th of this month for $2.99, Star Wars: The Battle of Hoth is a tower defense game set in the Star Wars universe where players defend against the Imperial forces while on the ice planet Hoth. Straight out of Empire Strikes Back, the game includes all kinds of units that will be instantly familiar to Star Wars fans from the massive AT-AT to Rebel Snowspeeders.

Gameplay looks fairly standard for a tower defense game, and aside from all kinds of Star Wars units, it also sports some cut scenes from the movie. Needless to say, as a huge closet Star Wars nerd, I cannot wait for this game to get released.

Sad Cat Software, the makers of the frantic tank shooter Project Phoenix just released their followup title: Ultraviolet Dawn.

Ultraviolet Dawn is described as a hybrid space-shooter/trading game which puts the player into an open Universe with over a thousand stars to explore. The entire map is generated when you start the game and it's up to you to trade, fight, upgrade, or follow missions. The game is controlled via dual stick controls.

The game universe is said to be open world with thousands of stars. You can choose to trade goods, hunt pirates, deal in illegal goods or even be a pirate. The game seems to come with a heavy upgrade system that lets you build up your ship's weapons and even buy new ships.

And if that all doesn't sound amazing enough.... it's also free for the first 24 hours of launch, so grab it while you can.

App Store Link: Ultraviolet Dawn, Free (24 hours)

During E3, we met with Taito who revealed a number of their future App Store plans. One of them was a major update to Space Invaders Infinity Gene which adds a new side-scrolling play mode and a new playable ship:

Space Invaders Infinity Gene is getting a huge update, with both free and paid components. Everyone who owns the game will get access to a new ship, and the ability to turn the game sideways to shift the perspective in to a horizontal shooter. In-app purchases will be available to unlock different themes for the game.

A new trailer shows off the new side-scrolling view:

Also included will be DLC theme packs Darius, Metal Black, and Night Striker. Check the video for a peek.

Last week we previewed developer Nine Pound Studios post-apocalyptic open world RPG Xenome: Episode 1, and the game has since been released worldwide. We've had a chance to give the game a spin, and while it's hard not to be impressed with the scope of the game, there was still a lot left to be desired. Xenome is an ambitious game, claiming 5 square miles of in game territory to explore with nary a load screen to be seen. And while this technically does hold true, it's at the expense of a poor framerate and occasional stutters while the terrain is being drawn.

In fact, due to the immense scale of the game, it's only currently playable on iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, or 32 and 64GB 3^rd gen iPod touches. An update is in the works to make it playable on 2^nd generation iPod touches, but anything older than that will likely not be able to run Xenome. For those that are able to play, the gameplay wasn't particularly enthralling to me. Your character can equip different armors and weapons, and generally level up in traditional RPG fashion, though the combat seemed a bit tedious. There does seem to be a decent storyline to the game, but the presentation of this story amounts to walls of text. The draw distance is phenomenal but the landscape in general is somewhat barren.

This isn't to say that there aren't some good aspects about Xenome, and it's certainly offering a game unlike anything currently available for the iPhone. The developer's roadmap for the franchise is that Episode 1 and 2 of Xenome will be stand alone single player affairs, with Episode 3 being a full blown MMORPG, all set in this same game world. In that regard, Xenome: Episode 1 feels a bit like a working demo for what they have planned down the road.

The developers are actively discussing the game and further player impressions (both positive and negative) are being collected in our forums.

(Only works on iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS or 32/64GB 3rd Generation iPod Touch)