Back in March I sat down with Xavier Liard at GDC 2011 to discuss some titles on the way from his retro-centric studio, DotEmu. One of the titles on the list was the 1988 arcade shooter P-47: The Freedom Fighter, which also saw release on the Amiga, C64, and various other platforms. The game pits you against the air powers of the Axis alliance across eight levels, with a massive boss waiting at the end of each. Today, DotEmu released a demo video showing the game, which will be released under the title P47 The Phantom Fighter, running on the iPhone.
DotEmu is bringing P47 The Phantom Fighter to iOS by way of emulation of the original arcade machine hardware, for a particularly authentic experience. When it hits the App Store P47 will be the fourth release in DotEmu's ongoing Jaleco arcade series, which will ultimately consist of 17 games in all.
In addition to the coming Jaleco games, we're also anxiously awaiting the release of the iOS conversion of Another World, which is being developed by DotEmu and published by BulkyPix.
We'll let readers know when all of these land in the App Store. Stay tuned.
Fancy yourself a neo-Victorian inventor of sorts, a steampunk maker, maybe? Do you love to get your hands on all kinds of lovely brass bits and pieces? Heck, even if you just like to build cool stuff, you'll have fun playing with Ionocraft Racing [$1.99 / HD], a time-trial racer with a few problems but a lot of potential.
I'll admit, my first impression of the game wasn't good. With no A.I. competitors or multiplayer, I was just racing myself on a lap around the track. The vehicle handling seemed a little stiff, and I couldn't go very fast. But then I headed into the garage and found what looked to be a tinkerer's dream.
Don't get me wrong--I'd definitely prefer to take my ionocraft out against other racers and see how she handles. But once my focus changed from "let's get around this track as quickly as possible" to "I wonder if this kickin' booster will shave a few seconds off my best time?," I got hooked. Getting a good time in one of the game's 13 tracks is great, but I prefer the rewards: more parts for my beast of a vehicle, and currency with which to buy them.
Just a couple of weeks ago, CAVE released a new trailer for their upcoming iOS version of manic horizontal shooter Deathsmiles, along with an apology for the game missing its intended Spring release window. It turns out that they didn’t miss it by much though, as CAVE has officially announced that Deathsmiles will be releasing next Thursday July 7th.
In addition, just as they’ve done with their previous iOS releases Espgaluda II [$8.99/Lite], Dodonpachi Resurrection [$8.99/Lite], and Mushihimesama Bug Panic [$4.99/Lite], Deathsmiles will launch at a discounted price of $4.99 for the first 4 days before jumping up to its regular $8.99 price tag. Also like those games, the iOS version of Deathsmiles will feature an exclusive iPhone mode in addition to the regular arcade mode that features new gameplay elements and a brand new playable character.
If having to wait until July 7th to see Deathsmiles being played on an iOS device is just too much for you to handle, then you’ll be happy to know that on July 1st CAVE producer MasaKING will be playing the game live over UStream as an early preview. They will also be discussing aspects about creating the game, and although it will be entirely in Japanese, the video will be liveblogged in English so folks like me can still follow along. If this interests you, head on over to the CAVE World Live UStream channel on July 1st at 11am GMT (or 6am on the East Coast here in the US).
We’ll be diving into Deathsmiles and bringing you a full review in time for its launch on July 7th, and you can drop by the thread in our forums to pass the time with your fellow gamers while waiting for the release.
We've been sort of Kairosoft crazy ever since they released their phenomenal game company simulation Game Dev Story [$1.99/Lite] last year. Then, Kairosoft followed up that release here in the States with Hot Springs Story [$3.99/Lite], an even more refined simulation that let you manage and expand your own Japanese spa. Since then, Kairosoft has been releasing tons of differently themed simulations using their trademark character and style, but so far none of them have made it out of the Japanese App Store and into the US.
Back in April we took a look at one of those titles, which through our powers of mediocre translation we were calling Pocket School Story 2. It turns out that the game is actually called Pocket Academy [$3.99/Lite], and it has just gone live in the US App Store. Pocket Academy looks extremely similar to Hot Springs Story, except that you are creating a successful school from the ground up and managing all of the different aspects of it rather than a Japanese bath house.
We'll be putting Pocket Academy through its paces and come back with a full review soon, but since there are no doubt many of you who will buy a new Kairosoft game sight unseen (myself included) I figured that the decent thing to do would be to let you know of its availability and provide you with a link to the game. You can also check out the early impressions from gamers in our forums who have picked up the game, and we'll be back with more on Pocket Academy soon.
It's no secret that Rovio has been looking to turn Angry Birds into an ... even bigger worldwide phenomenon than it already is. They've already got an impressive online store loaded with swag, as well as a pre-order page where you can get in line to order everything from lunch boxes to Angry birds sandals of all things. Normally I'd say, "Who the hell buys this stuff?" But, I've seen a ridiculous amount of people wearing Angry Birds shirts, and my neighbors' dogs' favorite toys are their full array of plush Angry Birds toys. Oh, and it probably doesn't hurt that these days Angry Birds is available on every platform under the sun, and it wouldn't surprise me if sometime next year I'll be able to play Angry Birds on my microwave.
A recent post on the Rovio blog provides some clues for the next step of Angry Birds world domination. David Maisel has joined the Rovio team with the mysterious title of "Special Advisor." I'm imagining this as a Game of Thrones-esque hand of the king kind of situation. Anyway, one of David's many claims to fame is transforming Marvel Entertainment from a comic book company desperate to remain relevant in the digital age to self-producing and self-financing massive summer blockbusters, turning existing comic franchises into multi-million dollar movie series and getting an entirely new generation interested in reading comics again.
Will Maisel be able to duplicate that success? It's hard to say. Rovio has recently raised $42m in investments to expand, and part of those expansion plans included acquiring Kombo, which is a leading Finnish animation studio. It seems that they've got all or most of the pieces of the puzzle to start pumping out Angry Birds TV shows, movies, or whatever else.
Now, I know how easy it is to just scoff and dismiss this news (all while simultaneously posting a comment to this story about how much you hate or "don't get" Angry Birds) but consider this-- Angry Birds has single handedly turned a ridiculous amount of people onto gaming that otherwise never would have cared. Hell, I've seen this in my own family. My own father spent most of my life trying to get me to play less video games, and now courtesy of the iPad 2 I bought my parents plays "Pigs" (as he calls it) daily and has since branched out to similar casual games. I hear similar stories from friends all the time.
Love Angry Birds or hate it, it's fantastic to have something like this bringing this many more people into the world of gaming. If an Angry Birds movie is wildly successful, it will also serve to raise even more awareness to mobile gaming--
Let’s talk about Slice It! [$.99] for a second. Once the toast of the App Store, the hack and slash darling’s initial sales flame has expired. That’s how the App Store works, you know -- it loves you when you’re fast and lean, but then it distances itself once you get comfortable and put on a few pounds.
Fat and old as it might be, Com2US isn’t giving up on old owners and the potential of new ones of Slice It. The low-cost app has just received a new update that adds a brand-spanking new mode of play called “Slice It: Quick.” In a nutshell, it’s a one-minute blitz of furious slashing. Every time you hack a new piece successfully, you’ll gain three seconds. If you botch it, you’ll lose three.
Think of it like an endurance mode, except faster.
Of course, the update is free and, more importantly, it’s available now for the original app and the HD version of the iPad. Get on it, future psychopaths.
Take a nice long look at this teaser image, because it's all that we know right now:
(Click for this image in gloriously animated .gif form.)
This is courtesy of a tweet this morning, and it's really not that hard to speculate what Edge Extended might be about. It seems pretty obvious that Extended would be a continuation of Edge [$2.99], which is a fantastic puzzle-centric platformer. It would seem to me that they couldn't just simply release a new game that's the same as the old one with different levels, so it also wouldn't shock me to see some new gameplay elements included. What those are is anyone's guess.
As soon as more details leak out of Mobigame, we'll be on top of 'em.
Since NimbleBit'sTiny Tower [Free] launched last week, it has become their most successful game yet. As of this writing, the game has been downloaded 1,230,688 times and is seeing a surprisingly high 2.6% in-app purchase conversion rate which is nearly double that of their previous title, Pocket Frogs [Free]. Over 18 million sessions have been played with an average length of 9.3 minutes. In all, players have played just under 320 years of Tiny Tower.
Even though Tiny Tower has exceeded NimbleBit's expectations, not everything went as planned with its launch. Namely, an irritating crash bug that didn't appear in testing. This has since been fixed in an update that launched today, so if you've had crashing issues in Tiny Tower, download this update ASAP. Another update is also in the works that will apply some tweaks and address some other minor issues affecting a small number of players. Following that, it'll be full steam ahead on content updates to add things like additional floors, bitbook entries, and more.
The best thing about the iTunes family of storefronts is that it carries Sharon Stone’s moody and moving flick “Last Dance.” The second best thing, which is more relevant to our interests as a site on the Internet that deals with games, is the stunning amount of video game sales.
This week in particular has an awesome sale. Publisher Com2uS is slashing the prices of every single one of its offerings down to 99 cents. Get those wallets outs, dogs. It’s time to put those debit and credit cards to good use. Let’s take a look at the list:
That's a lot of solid games going on the cheap. If you'd like a suggestion, I'd say you should jump ALL OVER Tower Defense. It's an awesome game with tons of levels, hours of play, and fun challenges. The most recent update also patched in some balance tweaks, which means that you can finally finish "Vulcan," AKA the impossible-level-that-I-poured-four-hours-into pre-patch. Of course, you can't go wrong with most of these at this price point, either.
Earlier this month at WWDC, we checked out an assortment of upcoming titles from Crescent Moon Games and their various partners. One of those titles was Topia, an interesting looking sim-style world creation game. It is being developed in conjunction with Glenn Corpes, creator of iOS racer Ground Effect [$1.99] and a former Bullfrog employee who worked on Peter Molyneux’s classic strategy simulation Populous.
The Populous influence was apparent in that preview video, as in Topia you’re given a colorful planet whose ground elevation can be manipulated and shaped using the touch screen. Exactly what type of game Topia will ultimately end up being is still being fleshed out, but so far we know that there will be various creatures who end up inhabiting your planet in great numbers, and a focal point will be to herd certain creatures together by using ground manipulation.
The world in the build of Topia that we saw at WWDC had tons of interesting characters running around, but they seemed to lack any sort of intelligence. That aspect of the game is starting to shape up as you can see in the following video with commentary from Josh Presseisen of Crescent Moon.
As you can see, Topia can display an impressive number of creatures onscreen at once, and the terrain manipulation and herding mechanics are definitely looking more fleshed out. The game is also quite beautiful, and based on the pedigree behind both Crescent Moon’s and Glenn Corpes’ previous work I feel pretty confident that whatever Topia turns out to be in the end will be something pretty interesting. You can head into our forums for discussion of the game and we’ll keep our eyes on Topia as it continues to evolve during its development.
GameLab's D.A.R.K. [99¢] is game with a conflicting sense of self. It's trying to simultaneously be a tense, science fiction horror game and a dual stick shooter with RPG elements. It's a difficult line to toe and in a lot of ways, D.A.R.K. is leading with the right foot, even if it flounders a bit here and there.
The game centers on a space marine who kind of looks like one of the marines from Starcraft II, but with a mohawk, as he investigates the loss of contact with a ship called the USS Storm Bringer. As these things tend to go with science fiction narratives, he quickly learns that things aren't as they seem and he needs to blast his way through waves of zombies and robots to get to the ships black box to find out what happened.
If this is all sounding a little like Dead Space or Alien to you, you're right, but it's not necessarily a bad thing. It's a time honored sci-fi trope because it works. Unfortunately, D.A.R.K. never seems too sure what it's supposed to be doing, concentrating on the atmosphere in a slower-paced horror setting, or cranking up the action as a dual stick shooter. There are short moments spread throughout the hour long campaign that try to create a feeling of dread, but much of the game relies on standard shooter concepts where you enter a room, clear a room, go to the next room.
That's another thing too -- the game's description says, "Massive single-player campaign will have you playing for hours on end." That's simply not the case at the moment; the first episode included here will only take you around an hour to complete. Considering the game's low price it's not a big deal, but one might expect more content from the description. That said, starting a new game after finishing yields some different results, so it's worth rolling through twice. Judging by what's being said in the forums, a second episode, universal support and an arena mode are coming in future updates, so there should be more content on the way, as well as (hopefully) a resolve for the cliffhanger ending of the first episode.
D.A.R.K. does try to mix things up with a few RPG elements to spice up the dual stick mayhem as well. While it's not deep, it does get things mostly right. Weapons are upgraded automatically depending on how much you use them and you have a small set of stats you can upgrade as your level progresses. There are only four different upgrade paths, health regeneration, hit points, speed and power. I'm not sure what else one could be added here, but it would have been nice to have a little more character customization.
The main difference you'll see in D.A.R.K. compared to a lot of dual stick shooters is that it is trying to tell its story and it's doing so by pushing you through a series of rooms and offering the sense of exploration. In between the arena-style battles are short exploration bits, simple puzzles sections and the occasional big narrative moment. This is where D.A.R.K. is doing something new and it would be nice to see more of it in the second episode. The shooting bits are all well and fine, but there is a lot more opportunity for the exploration parts to really capture players and pull them into the story. The same goes for the audio design, which could use a little work, but considering the type of game it is, you'll likely have you'd hand covering the speaker when you're playing, so it might not be worth investing too much time in it.
The exploration pieces are certainly more geared to telling the story visually and D.A.R.K. can do so, even if it's not always pretty. The color palette is very much in the same realm as most science fiction and the style looks a lot like Starcraft if it was set on a ship. The game is incredibly dark too, which I guess shouldn't really be surprising -- but don't plan on being able to play it outside either way.
I rather like the idea of D.A.R.K. and with more content promised to be on the way, I have hopes it'll settle itself and decide exactly what type of game to be and how to do it. There is a lot of potential in the idea alone, so if GameLab can deliver the second episode and the arena mode before upping the price, they might have something truly interesting on their hands as long as they're not scared to make the puzzles a bit more challenging and the shooting parts a bit more sparse.
Back when Chaos Rings Ω [$11.99 / HD] first launched, Square Enix revealed a surprising schedule of updates to continually up the level cap, add more bosses, and even more loot to collect. These updates should keep rolling out over the course of the year, with level caps and bosses being released all the way through December.
When we reviewed the game, we really thought that Chaos Rings Ω was just more of the same for die-hard fans of the Chaos Rings series that wanted more. These updates don't change that, but it's still great to see a company like Square Enix providing so much post-launch support.
If you've juiced Ω for all its worth and have been sitting at the level cap waiting for more to do in the game, download this update as soon as you can.
Are you the kind of person who wears a Optimus Prime trucker hat and a full Transformers-themed wardrobe to accompany your various Transformers tattoos? Well, I've got some good news for you. To accompany the release of the movie this week, EA is launching the cleverly titled iOS game Transformers 3 [$4.99 / HD]. We got a quick look at it at E3, and it seems like EA has invented some kind of new compression algorithm to pack never-before-seen levels of fan service into the game. You can play as Optimus Prime and Bumblebee, and the game cleverly switches between a dual stick shooter and a driving game as you transform between forms. There's all kinds of weaponry to be unlocked and upgraded too.
Check out the trailer:
The way EA releases games is a little strange, so if you want to get this the second the game is available in your market, here's what you're going to have to do-- If you're in New Zealand and Australia, the game will already be available through the links below. Otherwise, similar to how games are released on Wednesday nights, it should be available in your region as soon as it's the 28th in your corner of the world.
For Americans, Transformers 3 should be released at 11:00 PM Eastern, but will be available through a different iTunes link. We'll find that link and get this post updated as close to its US release as we can. Also, needless to say, a review is on the way.
While we're discussing the Transformers movies, how do you guys think it will stack up against Harry Potter this summer? A friend of mine who closely tracks these kind of things is sureTransformers 3 will beat out the final Potter movie. I'm no expert, but I just don't know how Transformers could ever rack up more cash compared the last installment to the worldwide Harry Potter phenomenon!
Got a case of the Mondays? Well I've got the cure, right here: Death Rally [Free]. We gave the game five stars in our review, and I'd go as far as to say that Death Rally is easily among the best top-down racers available on the App Store if not the best. Seriously, don't miss it. I'll do some more convincing after you watch the trailer:
Death Rally has tons of things to unlock, tons of Game Center achievements to earn, and a constant stream of updates has kept this game remarkably fresh. There's even talks of a multiplayer mode on the way, so if nothing else, snag Death Rally to be ready for that.
After one of Capcom Mobile’s studios ripped off Splosion Man earlier this year, a disappointed Twisted Pixel did the digital equivalent of thinking aloud and floated the idea that it’d like to do its own App Store title. We’ve since received confirmation that it is.
In our most recent BONUS cast, we spoke with Twisted Pixel CEO Michael Wilford about his studio, Ms. Splosion Man, and The Gunstringer. We also grilled him on the App Store 'controversy' and his thoughts on the App Store. This latter section is where he revealed that the studio is going to soon start testing out the waters with its own iOS game.
From the conversation:
“We’ve never done a mobile game before. I think a lot of our IPs would translate pretty well to mobile. I think there’s a lot of fun stuff you can do with the character-driven IPs we’ve created. And the Capcom fiasco -- if you want to call it that -- lit a fire under our butts to give [iOS development] a try and see if we can make something there,” Wilford told us.
“We’re working on something. Nothing to announce yet. Hopefully, relatively soon we’ll having something to share with you guys.”
That’s awesome news, right? You can catch the entire conversation in its stream-able form just below this lump of text. Alternatively, can skip these posts and catch it via a subscription to our channels on the iTunes and Zune music stores respectively.
The TouchArcade Show is a weekly podcast dedicated to iOS. Each Friday, we discuss the week’s biggest games and news, as well as address listener feedback. Keep expecting more bonus shows like this, by the way. They’re pretty fun to do.
If you have anything you’d like to add, talk about, or if you’re just wondering about something, give us a holler. You can reach us via e-mail at podcast@toucharcade.com, on the Twitter or even on the Facebook.
The introduction and intermission music is from Comic Jumper, an Xbox Live Arcade game by Twisted Pixel that you can download right now. Additional music was provided by the super talented Jim Guthrie. The song is "Audio Pepsi" off the album A Thousand Songs. You can buy the entire album or stream all the songs at his Web site. Guthrie is also responsible for the Sword & Sworcery [$4.99] soundtrack.
Back in March I sat down with Xavier Liard at GDC 2011 to discuss some titles on the way from his retro-centric studio, DotEmu. One of the titles on the list was the 1988 arcade shooter P-47: The Freedom Fighter, which also saw release on the Amiga, C64, and various other platforms. The game pits you against the air powers of the Axis alliance across eight levels, with a massive boss waiting at the end of each. Today, DotEmu released a demo video showing the game, which will be released under the title P47 The Phantom Fighter, running on the iPhone.
GameLab's D.A.R.K. [
After one of 
