Konami recently released Frogger [App Store] for the iPhone through the iTunes App Store.

Frogger for the iPhone is an adaptation of Konami's 1981 arcade original featuring updated graphics, an updated soundtrack, and a choice of touchscreen or accelerometer controls–or both combined.

Like the original, the goal of the game is to direct five frogs, one by one, from the starting point at the bottom of the screen to their homes at the top before the timer runs out.  It's a treaturous journey.  The lower half of the screen consists of a busy roadway with five lanes of speeding traffic.  The upper half contains a rushing river filled with logs, turtles, alligators and other such hazards.  The challenge is getting the frog home safely without getting flattened, drowned (this was always puzzling…), or eaten.  It sounds simple, but can be rather frustrating challenging.

The iPhone version offers both accelerometer and two types of touchscreen controls.  Moving your frog with the accelerometer involves "jerking" the iPhone in the intended direction of travel.  Touchscreen control works with either a tap in the intended direction relative to the frog's current position or a swipe (anywhere on the screen) in the desired direction, akin to the "swipe" control mode of Ms. PAC-MAN for the iPhone.  Both control systems are active simultaneously by default, but either can be turned off in the game options.  After spending time with all control methods, the swipe technique seems the most precise.  The iPhone's vibrate feature is also utilized by the game.

Frogger for the iPhone is…well…Frogger–not much more, not much less.  If you're a Frogger fan, then you'll enjoy this outing. If not, you may find a better value in some of the other $9.99 games.

As Pocket Gamer reports, Konami is enthusiastic about the iPhone as a gaming platform and will be bringing more content in the near future.

"We see the iPhone platform as an opportunity to showcase the legendary Konami brands in a truly unique fashion," he says. "We look forward to releasing more of our popular titles for the iPhone soon."

One thing to note: The official line from Konami is that right now Frogger is iPhone-only (not iPod touch compatible), despite iLounge reporting that they successfully installed it on an iPod touch.  Konami indicates it will be releasing a verison compatible with the iPod touch soon.  (Thanks chrisb3)

With little fanfare renowned game studio THQ has released the iPhone version of de Blob [App Store].  Scheduled for September release on the Nintendo Wii and DS, the iPhone version of this rather unique title comes as a bit of a surprise.

THQ (Toy Headquarters) is a massive worldwide game developer with a library of hundreds of titles and over $1 billion in revenue in 2007. Until now, they had made no announcements of iPhone support. THQ publishes games for multiple platforms including the Playstation 3, Nintendo Wii and Xbox 360.

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Too fond of your jailbroken iPhone or iPod touch to go "iPhone 2.0" on the 11th?  Not looking forward to your friends with updated iPhones waving Super Monkey Ball in your face?  Well, beat them to the punch–right now–with Neverball for the jailbroken iPhone and iPod touch.

Developer Lazrhog who brought us the port of Kenta Cho's excellent Noiz2sa has been busy porting the Super Monkey Ball-inspired Neverball to the iPod touch.  He recently released v1.0 to the public; it can be accessed from Installer.app.

From Wikipedia:

The main gameplay of Neverball is based on moving a ball using gravity by tilting the game world, not directly controlling the ball (it is somewhat similar to the game Labyrinth without the holes in the middle). The mouse (or a similar pointing device), keyboard, or joystick tilt the level to help guide the ball to a goal, via an obstacle course, with a set time limit. Moving platforms and other crazy objects get in the way, making levels progressively harder. To unlock the goal on each level, the player must collect a required amount of coins. Coins come in three different colors: yellow, red and blue. Yellow coins are worth 1, red are worth 5 and blue are worth 10 coins or points. Collecting 100 coins gains an extra life.

Neverball is free software under the GNU General Public License and is also avaialble for Mac OS X, Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, and the Sega Dreamcast.

Neverball is not currently slated for release through the iTunes App Store because the developer does not own a Macintosh and, as such, cannot utilize the iPhone SDK for development.  He is currently trying to raise enough money through donations on his product pages to secure a Mac and release his titles for iPhone 2.0 devices.  Looking at the quality of his ports, we hope Lazrhog reaches his goal, and fast!

It's not a particularly new jailbreak iPhone game, but it's the one that's been driving me crazy (in the good way) on my daily commute of late.  The title I speak of is Block Puzzle from Soneso.

Block Puzzle is, as one might expect, a puzzle game in which the player must slide a large red block through the exit by sliding it and other blocks of various colors and sizes around the playfield. There are 10 levels, each with a different combination of block sizes.  A gameplay timer effects the score, and as incentive to get times as low as possible, the game is tied to an online, web-based hi-score page allowing players around the world to see how they rank.  A nice touch.

It sounds like a rather basic game–and it is, but somehow it seems to just "get it right." If you've got a jailbroken iPhone, you won't want to miss it.

Block Puzzle and Soneso's other iPhone games and apps can be acquired through their Installer.app repository: http://www.soneso.com/iphone.

Darxun Games has recently released their first iPhone game, a port of their 3D mobile Mech-style shooter, Cybersaurus.

Cyber-Dinosaurs!
Our planet was their home for millions of years. Now they want it back!
The ultimate mix between a 3D shooter and an adventure game.
Explore 6 stunning planets (11 maps fully 3D) with outstanding backgrounds!
Navigate through the solar systems using the interactive 3D map and destroy the robosaurs!

Features:

• 11 full 3D levels, 6 different planets and environments
• 3D engine with "astonishing" lighting system
• 3D audio engine
• Full 3D animations
• Different characters–every enemy has different AI
• Adventure gameplay style

The game features a combination of accelerometer and on-screen button controls for negotiating the landscape, selecting weapons, and firing.  While movement in the 3D world is currently fluid, Darxun points out that an update due in approximately two weeks will utilize the iPhone's 3D hardware acceleration and improve the game's framerate and render quality. (Cybersaurus is currently using a software-based rendering engine.)

Cybersaurus can be installed on any jailbroken iPhone or iPod touch via Installer.app and can be found at Darxun's repository: http://iphone3dgames.com. Users can try out the game in demo form with the option to unlock the full title for $9.99 USD.

We're all anxiously awaiting the launch of the iTunes App Store in early July.  That said, there're plenty of great jailbreak iPhone games out there.  The one I've been most enjoying of late is Passionfools' title CubicMan (video link).  A remake of the Flash game Bloxorz, CubicMan presents the user with an isometric game grid and the challenge of manipulating a rectangular object in such a way as to stand it up on a designated grid square, thereby moving to the next level.

The game is great fun and makes good use of the iPhone's accelerometer for screen orientation and multitouch display for pinch-and-zoom playfield manipulation.

CubicMan can be had via Installer.app from the ModMyiFone repository for users of a jailbroken iPhone or iPod touch.  We hope to see this available through the iTunes App Store at launch.

The iPhone and iPod touch are about to receive an injection of retro gaming goodness thanks to iPhone developer ZodTTD. He is in the process of developing temper4iphone which is an iPhone port of Temper, an NEC TurboGrafx-16 and TurboGrafx-CD emulator written by Exophase for the GP2X.

A fourth-generation game console that debuted in the late '80s, the TurboGrafx-16 (known as the PC Engine in Japan) was arguably the most powerful 8-bit game console. Featuring particularly advanced graphics hardware for the time, the TurboGrafx-16 ran some of the most accurate arcade conversions of the day and is very highly regarded by retro gaming enthusiasts. Some of the best games available for the Nintendo Wii's Virtual Console are TurboGrafx-16 titles. Youtube movie:

As the above video demonstrates, the emulator is already running smoothly and with working audio.  The ability to play the many great TurboGrafx-16 titles on the iPhone, whenever the mood strikes, is something any retro game-loving iPhone user should be excited about.

temper4iphone is currently in beta.  Stay tuned for more information about this project as it nears release status.

Last month we covered a web-based 3D Rubik's Cube game for the iPhone and iPod touch.  If you have a jailbroken device and enjoyed that title, you will want to have a look at iCube.

iCube is a "native" iPhone app that can be installed via Installer.app (just addhttp://repo.ispazio.net to your sources list and the game will show up in the Games category).  Being a native app, users will find it to be more responsive than the aforementioned Rubik's Cube game.  Depending on preference settings, iCube can be played with cubes anywhere from 2×2x2 to 5×5x5 blocks in size.  There is also a race-against-the-clock mode to add a bit of urgency to the gameplay.

[ via Phones Reviews ]

Simiotica, a Ukrainian iPhone development group, has announced the release of their iPhone and iPod touch game aMaze! via Installer.app.  aMaze! is an accelerometer-based adaptation of the classic game Labyrinth, similar to Labyrinth for the iPhone which we covered earlier this month.

Like the classic wood and steel Labyrinth, aMaze! challenges the player to maneuver a playfield filled with holes and other obstacles in order to reach a set goal location.  Some levels require the player to pick up bonus stars along the way, adding variation to the standard Labyrinth formula.  The game features over 70 levels, most of which can be completed in under 90 seconds, making it a rather ideal pick-up / put-down time killer.

Simiotica CMO Alex Dubov indicates that, while an Installer.app title right now, aMaze! will appear in the iTunes App Store when it goes online.

Large multi-touch screen, OpenGL ES and OpenAL support, built-in accelerometers make iPhone most powerful mobile gaming device on the market. We have developed aMaze to meet expectation of the iPhone owners for games with innovative gameplay not yet possible with other devices. While awaiting the launch of the official App Store, we make it available through the Installer.App to let iPhone entusiasts enjoy it as early as possible

A 10 level demo version of aMaze! can be downloaded for free, while 70 additional levels can be unlocked for a $9 USD registration fee.

The latest in 3D iPhone gaming comes from developer Marco Giorgini. He has released a pre-alpha version of Kingdom Lores, a 3D fantasy adventure game based on an OpenGL ES rendering engine of his own design.

The game presents an over-the-shoulder view of the player's avatar in the 3D game world.  On-screen controls are used to negotiate the terrain, do battle with enemies, collect treasure, etc.  Both portrait and landscape orientations are supported and on-screen indicators keep the player aware of current health levels, selected weapons, etc.

The author indicates that Kingom Lores is and will remain a free game but he is uncertain as to whether it will appear in the iTunes App Store due to the fact that he has no Mac and, as such, no access to the iPhone SDK (the game is being developed using Win Toolchain on the PC).

The game is not currently available through Installer but can be downloaded here and manually installed via FTP/OpenSSH on any jailbroken iPhone or iPod touch.

A video of the game in action can be seen here (3:30 into the video).