Does the name Timo Vihola ring a bell? If you're a card carrying member of the cult of Minigore [99¢ / HD] you're surely familiar, otherwise, he's the artist and co-creator responsible for the Minigore phenomenon as well as a game designer for the recently released Death Rally [$4.99]. In its day, Minigore had an absolutely ridiculous amount of tie-ins with playable characters from other similarly popular games, so it's not much of a surprise to find that John Gore himself is making an appearance in the below video showing off impending Death Rally update.
All of the features of this new update are detailed in our forums, but it basically amounts to a new car, two new weapons, a new challenge mode, as well as oodles of tweaks and bug fixes.
The update is currently "in review" and Timo is expecting it to drop at any moment. Also, the second update for the game is on the verge of being completed, and it sounds like it will be submitted as soon as this one is approved. Death Rally is a fantastic game, is universal, and is one of the few iPad 2 optimized titles out there. For more information check out our review. I've got nothing but good things to say about Death Rally, especially with developers committing to these kinds of update cycles. Actually, I do have one complaint. They included TUAW's Mike Schramm as a playable character with the game's launch, where's the TouchArcade love?!
Looking for something to do during the commercials commercials while you watch The 2011 Masters Tournament? Why not also play a game of golf yourself? In honor of the Masters, EA has dropped the price of Tiger Woods PGA Tour 12 [$4.99 / Lite]. Sure, it's only two bucks off but Tiger 12 only came out a few weeks ago.
We liked Tiger Woods PGA Tour 12 a lot in our review, and it's even easier to recommend now that it's priced on par with a Subway $5 foot long. Also, the closest to the pin challenges have turned out to be really cool. If that's all you're interested, you only need to download the lite version.
DarkWave Games, developers of Master of Alchemy [99¢/HD] on the App Store, have revealed their latest game titled Act of God: Hurricane. It’s similar to a vertically scrolling shooter with one major difference - there’s no shooting. Instead, your main character can turn himself into a destructive hurricane to defeat enemies. It’s a pretty interesting concept, and I had a chance to try out a work-in-progress build at GDC last month and was pretty impressed.
The story in Act of God: Hurricane involves you playing a soldier who, due to a military experiment gone bad, finds himself able to turn into a hurricane. You decide to turn against your former military and seek vengeance for turning you into a freak of nature (literally). Plus, they're just corrupt and bent on world domination, which doesn't sit so well with you. The game employs a comic book art style, with graphics inspired by classic arcade shmups and neat special effects for your hurricane which can be upgraded with additional abilities.
During my time with the game, I really enjoyed the non-shooting aspect of it. It feels like a melee-based shooter, where the focus is on dodging bullets and sneaking next to enemies to pound on them with your hurricane. I love shooters but have always been slightly annoyed at the auto-firing of practically every shooter on iOS, since originally games like this were all about pounding away at a fire button. The concept in Act of God: Hurricane solves this problem and is a nice alternate take on the genre. The controls are also extremely responsive, as they should be for a game like this. Check out the following video which shows a complete playthrough of one of the levels in Act of God: Hurricane.
Act of God: Hurricane is still in the midst of development, and DarkWave is really interested in collecting feedback about what people like or dislike about the game in order to shape its outcome. They’ve opened a thread in our upcoming games forum where they’ll be listening to any feedback and working towards implementing some ideas into the final product. Definitely drop by the forums and sound off with your opinion of the game, and we’ll keep our eye on Act of God: Hurricane and bring you more from the game as it nears release.
Remember earlier this week when PopCap revealed they were starting a spinoff studio called 4th & Battery, and that their first game Unpleasant Horse was on the verge of release? Well, according to a Twitter outburst by the new studio, the game has been rejected by Apple. Joystiq was lucky enough to snag some screenshots of the ordeal before the tweets vanished:
Weird, right? Either way, 4th & Battery has attempted to smooth things over with a followup tweet. No official statements (aside from these tweets, which I guess are sort of official) have been made by either PopCap or 4th & Battery.
What will come of Unpleasant Horse? Who knows, but you've got to admit watching drama on twitter is always fun.
Just a quick heads up that the iOS version of Sega's classic Dreamcast puzzle game ChuChu Rocket! [Free] has gone free for today. ChuChu Rocket! involves directing hoards of mice around various puzzle boards towards their escape rockets while avoiding dangerous cats and other hazards.
The action is quite frantic and many of the hundreds of included puzzles are fiendishly clever, and the reworked controls work great on the touch screen. Also, there's local and online multiplayer using Game Center for up to 4 players, which is appropriately full circle as the original Dreamcast title was one of the first to utilize online play.
Unfortunately this sale does not also apply to the iPad version, but ChuChu Rocket! is a must download for your iPhone or iPod touch while it's free. You can check out our original review of ChuChu Rocket! from when it released last October, though keep in mind it's received an update or two since then. As with any sale on the App Store prices are subject to change at any time, so make sure to jump on this opportunity as soon as possible before ChuChu Rocket! jumps back to its regular price of $2.99.
I wish there were more details available than the headline, but that's it. SoMoGa is responsible for the bringing the similarly fantastic old-school RPG Vay [$4.99] to the App Store, and we're expecting Lunar: Silver Star Touch to be of similar quality. We briefly chatted with SoMoGa at GDC, and the one tidbit that we can offer about Lunar is that it won't be a shoddy port by any means, this is a complete from the ground up touch-based port of the game, not a ROM wrapped in a mediocre emulator like Sega's offerings.
(Video of the PlayStation remake of the game.)
Originally released in North America for the Sega CD in 1993 and the PlayStation in 1998, Lunar was chock full of animated cut scenes, voice overs, and all the other fun stuff that they were packing on CD-ROM games at the time. We had a ton of fun playing Vay, and are totally stoked for the future release of Lunar. As soon as we get more details, you can be sure we'll post them.
Remember when we took a look at the Parrot AR.Drone last September? It seems like ages ago with how fast the App Store moves. Anyway, one of the things Parrot was pushing hardcore for the AR.Drone device was a yet-to-be-released two player augmented reality game where players would be able to engage in real-time augmented reality dogfights utilizing two iPhones and two AR.Drones. (Making it one of the most expensive two player games on the App Store.)
Details are vague right now, but Parrot is openly announcing the release date of AR.FLYINGACE as April 15th. In addition, they've also released the following teaser trailer of the game in action:
With third party app support for the AR.Drone being somewhat predictably lackluster, it's great to see Parrot finally releasing some games for the device. I'm not entirely sure that AR.FLYINGACE makes the AR.Drone any more compelling of a purchase since it requires having a buddy who also has an AR.Drone, but assuming you're in that kind of situation now, you've got something awesome to look forward to next week.
This is a little odd, as we've already posted about the latest update to Dungeon Raid [$2.99]. It's standard for us to post about substantial updates to games like Dungeon Raidwhich we loved in our review, but it wasn't immediately apparent just how much better the game got until we spent the following weeks playing it because so much of what was added involved playing the game lots. We thought "Oh hey, cool, an update to one of our favorite games," posted the changes, and went on about our day.
The biggest change to Dungeon Raid came from the unlockable classes and associated races. Playing as a standard adventurer in normal (or harder) difficulty can randomly result in a special skull dropping a trophy, which then unlocks one of the included classes. Similarly, playing as a class and collecting a trophy levels up that class. Since these drops are completely random, it takes playing quite a while to actually unlock (or level up) anything.
I can't think of a better headline than this one. I love Puzzle Quest 2 [$4.99]... and I love seamless online multiplayer via Game Center. I doubt I'm alone in that, so make sure you grab the latest PQ2 update as soon as you can find some fast WiFi today somewhere that you can stick around long enough to download all 576MB worth of goodness. If you're not into playing online and would prefer to play locally with a friend, Namco has you covered too. In addition to Game Center multiplayer, you can also play via both WiFi and Bluetooth.
Multiplayer can be played two ways: With a hero of your own that you have saved from the single player campaign, or using randomly generated heroes of whatever class you chose. If you chose random heroes, you can select low, medium, or high level characters and in both game modes you can set a turn timer anywhere from 5, 10, 20 seconds or none at all.
This morning, one of our favorite iOS social games got an update. Two-brother team Pixelocity released a version 1.5 update to their unique, turn-based racing game, Disc Drivin' [App Store]. This latest version features three new maps (Zoom Zoom, Hopper, and Canyon Jump) along with an updated user interface, an added FAQ, and various other fixes.
This asynchronous online multiplayer racing game has you taking turns flicking a small disc around a track against your competitors to see who can cross the finish line first. Powerups and hazards add a bit of a Mario Kart flair to the action, and the turn-based nature of the game works incredibly well for gaming on the go. We really enjoyed the game in our initial review from December, and things only got better when random online matchmaking was added to the mix in February.
Early last month Team Phobic launched their newest titleUndead Island, an action platforming game with a bad ass female ninja for a lead character, cleverly designed levels with tons of hidden areas to discover, and a robust physics system that made hacking up undead enemies a ton of fun. Due to a trademark issue, Undead Island has been renamed to Undead Ocean [99¢], which took effect with the update that just hit for the game. Also added in that update is the ability to swap the controls if you like and various other tweaks and bug fixes.
Early this morning Atari released perhaps the most significant single retro gaming application yet to appear in the App Store. Atari's Greatest Hits [link] is a free Universal application for the iPhone and iPad that comes bundled with their first game ever, the 1972 classic Pong. And, while the games-for-free situation ends there, the fun certainly doesn't -- not by a long shot.
By way of in-app purchases, Atari's Greatest Hits can deliver to your iOS device up to 99 more games from the historical studio's back catalog, a mix of both arcade and (then) cartridge-based VCS / 2600 releases that you just might've grown up with. These games can be had in four-title game packs available at $0.99 each, as well as in a 68MB lump download of the entire library for $14.99. (The path you take here will reveal to you just how much of a bull geek retro gamer you are, so choose wisely.)
One hundred vintage Atari games for fifteen bucks. It's quite a proposition. But, what are we talking about here?
The almost awkwardly long list of game packs and the titles within them can be seen in our earlier post about this release.
Last month we checked out the video for Mos Speedrun [$1.99], a new platformer from developer Physmos. Mos Speedrun looked unique with its emphasis on completing levels as quickly as possible, and for its use of the ghosts from previous failed attempts running along with you in the background. Today Mos Speedrun is finally available, and it’s every bit as much fun as we’d hoped it would be.
Mos Speedrun contains 20 levels, each with 4 distinct goals to attain. There’s simply completing the level, completing the level within the specified time goal, collecting every coin in the level, and searching out and collecting a hidden skull. The different goals are a great design decision, and give reason to play each level multiple times. You can leisurely explore a level collecting coins and looking for the hidden skull, but this also gives you a chance to familiarize yourself with its layout. Once you have a good feel for a level, you can easily go back on a different try and attempt the speed run with a better idea of what to expect.
You know Pocket God [$.99], right? On the smaller Apple handhelds, it’s a game defined by the updates it has and still receives on a frequent basis. That tradition is continuing on in the iPad version [$4.99], as the next update is poised to add yet another mini-game set on a brand new planet to explore, Mercury, “a highly technological world where the civilization is obsessed with all things fast.”
So, what’s the game? Great. Glad you asked. It’s called “Hover Jump,” and Bolt tells us it’s something like a take on Data East’s Bump and Jump. In Hover Jump, you’ll control a hover car-equipped pygmy tasked with navigating a “treacherous” road full of jumps and enemies. Jumping on enemies or over gaps eliminates threat, but the action also tasks your fuel. The not-so-subtle idea here is the push-and-pull of conservation versus action.
The update should be out very soon, if it isn't already. If it's not showing as an available update to you, check back later as the update finishes propagating across the world.
Retro gaming junkies, you may want to sit down for this. In a launch that's sending pixellated shockwaves across the App Store, Atari has just released Atari's Greatest Hits [NZ App Store], a Universal app that brings 100 (yes, one hundred) Atari games, along with the original cabinet and box art, to your iPhone and iPad.
[ UPDATE: This title is now available globally, and our full review can be found here. ]
The app is a free download that comes bundled with PONG, with the additional titles -- 18 classic arcade games, 92 Atari 2600 games -- available as in app purchases. The additional titles can be downloaded as 25 separate game packs at $0.99 each or at a price of $14.99 for all 100. Some titles have been enhanced to provide Bluetooth multiplayer modes.
This news is made even sweeter considering our earlier report that Atari and Ion have teamed up to bring forth the $99 iCade iPad-based retro game cabinet, which should be available shortly. We had only heard a few titles specifically mentioned, but the indication was that Atari would be publishing "a huge suite" of classic games with support for the device. We're gonna go ahead and call the 100 titles in Atari's Greatest Hits' "a huge suite," indeed.
Does the name Timo Vihola ring a bell? If you're a card carrying member of the cult of Minigore [99¢ / HD] you're surely familiar, otherwise, he's the artist and co-creator responsible for the Minigore phenomenon as well as a game designer for the recently released Death Rally [$4.99]. In its day, Minigore had an absolutely ridiculous amount of tie-ins with playable characters from other similarly popular games, so it's not much of a surprise to find that John Gore himself is making an appearance in the below video showing off impending Death Rally update.
Just a quick heads up that the iOS version of Sega's classic Dreamcast puzzle game ChuChu Rocket! [
This is a little odd, as we've 
This morning, one of our favorite iOS social games got an update. Two-brother team 
You know Pocket God [$
