One game that we neglected on its initial release was Undead Attack Pinball — an interesting combination of a defense game and pinball.
The goal of the game is to avoid damage and ultimate destruction of your gate at the bottom of the board from hoards of zombies. You can take out these zombies through the use of the pinball itself and collect money for upgrades.
While hardcore pinball fanatics may find these gameplay changes a bit gimmicky, I find the inclusion of these in-game goals (smashing Zombies, in this case) holds my interest much more than compared to traditional pinball games. The initial version of Undead Attack! generated criticisms for the quirky ball physics, but the game has since been updated to address this issue.
The developers also recently released a Lite version so you can give the game a try yourself. The latest update of the full version released today also adds a Halloween theme and provides some additional bug fixes.
The game has also seen a price drop from $2.99 to $0.99 in celebration of Halloween, so give it a shot.
The App Store seems to go in cycles with releases and upgrades coming in waves. Tonight a number of long awaited game updates have appeared, including Duke Nukem.
Here's a partial list:
Duke Nukem 3D ($2.99) – The long awaited control system update is now available. This fixes the issue with the analog controls. The controls are fully adjustable and many find them to be too sensitive on the default settings, so be sure to adjust these until you find a liking. The controls are still perhaps not ideal, but are much improved.
Samurai: Way of the Warrior ($2.99) – Stability and performance improvements and…. "minor game balancing" including that of level 3.
Archon ($2.99) – New 1 player campaign mode called "Conquest" which is said to add hours of individual play.
Wild West Pinball ($0.99 – New missions, music, tilt, and fixed camera option.
The Deep Pinball ($0.99) – OS 2.x compatibility, and fixed camera option
Gameprom's Wild West Pinball [App Store] and The Deep Pinball [App Store] both have significant updates that are currently sitting in Apple's App Store approval queue.
It seems like one of the most requested features that we've seen from our readers about these games is the ability to lock your camera. If this was an issue for you in either of these games, as soon as these updates drop you will be able to pinch the screen to zoom out and lock the camera to see the whole table. If you get tired of this viewpoint, the opposite pinching gesture makes the camera pan back in to how it's usually displayed.
The Deep update also adds the ability to toggle both the in-game music and voiceovers, and the changes to Wild West are far more significant: a slightly redesigned table, some improved animations, as well as music and missions have been added. The upcoming soundtrack to Wild Westcan be downloaded here.
In previous versions of these games, you were able to shake your phone as much as you wanted to bump the table. Gameprom has finally put a limit on how much you can do this by adding a tilt sensor. The effect this change will have on the global high score list should be dramatic, as previously the best way to cheese a high score was to shake your iPhone like crazy to keep bumping off the bumpers in Wild West's bank and The Deep's sunken ship.
Both updates have already been submitted and Gameprom is just waiting for Apple to throw the approval switch. In the meantime, if you haven't downloaded either of these games, they are two of the best 3D pinball games on the App Store even in their current pre-update state and easily worth $0.99.
Gameprom's The Deep Pinball [App Store] just appeared for download on the App Store. With a dynamic camera system similar to Wild West Pinball [App Store], The Deep is based on the same great pinball engine with an entirely new table.
Complete with a sunken ship to bounce around on, a treasure chest to open, and sharks to hunt, the pinball table in The Deep is a significant evolution from the comparatively barren table in Wild West Pinball. Both games have online global scoring, but The Deep is anything like Wild West, the top score boards will be flooded with super-human pinball scoring monsters before too long.
Here's a gameplay video I took of me completing a few objectives and exploring the various areas of the pinball table:
Wild West Pinball was my favorite pinball game for the iPhone until The Deep came along. As someone who often emptied entire pockets full of quarters in to pinball machines in my life, it's great to be able to get a game like this for what would amount to four plays of any real machine. If you have any interest in pinball, The Deep is a steal at $0.99.
If you haven't already, before reading this please go download Wild West Pinball [App Store] while it's still free. No seriously, go download it. Tell your friends. Wild West Pinball is one of the best 3D pinball games on the App Store, and while some people complained about not being able to see the whole table as the camera panned around to follow the ball, that was one of the things I really like about the game.
Gameprom's upcoming pinball game, The Deep brings the same level of performance and the same high quality pinball table graphics seen in Wild West Pinball, only this time bank robberies and shootouts are traded for sunken treasure and other underwater dangers.
Check out this gameplay video where I complete a few "missions" (in-game objectives that have you hitting a specific part of the table with your ball), cracking open the treasure chest, and plundering the sunken ship:
The Deep has already been submitted and Gameprom is optimistic it will appear on the App Store sometime in the next week.
One of my very favorite iPhone games is Cowboy Rodeo's iPhone port of the classic Amiga pinball game Pinball Dreams [App Store] from Digital Illusions. It's easily one of the best multi-table pinball games in the App Store. And, while I greatly enjoyed the original on my Amiga back in the early '90s, I found it's sequel — Pinball Fantasies — to be a superior game. And so it was with a smile on my face that I reported, back in February, that Pinball Fantasies was headed to the App Store.
And, based on an update from forum reader Mindfield, it seems Pinball Fantasies' release is just a few weeks away.
Mindfeld is a beta tester who's been working with Cowboy Rodeo of late and was able to give us a feel of what's to come in the iPhone port of this highly acclaimed title.
…the main menu is still familiar with its coverflow-style interface, but the high scores have been moved below so they can be seen as soon as you flip to a game. Flipping the game icon now rather amusingly shows you the back of a floppy disk. Most of the rest is still pretty familiar, though. In-game, all of the same features are present; all of the screen action areas are still there, and the pause menu still brings up the options to change graphics, lock orientation, and so on, but there’s a new option to add a “finger area” which blocks off a portion of the bottom of the screen dedicated to flipper use. This is purely a visual thing, in case you don’t want your thumbs obscuring part of the action. Landscape mode is still supported as well, which has its own natural areas for the thumbs due to the portrait nature of the tables, though it is at the expense of some visibility.
As I mentioned in my earlier post, the tables in Pinball Fantasies are vertically taller and generally more complex than those in Pinball Dreams, and the game features four different tables.
Party Land – a table oriented around an amusement park, where the letters of either PARTY or CRAZY must be lit to start a high-scoring event. This is the easiest table due to several high scoring targets such as the Arcade and the Loop Ramp. This is the table included in the shareware release
Speed Devils – focused on car racing, and the player must overtake cars to take the lead. This is more difficult due to much fewer high-scoring targets
Billion Dollar Gameshow – a gameshow-style table where the player attempts to win prizes by achieving certain combinations of ramps. This is the most difficult, as if the player loses the ball before winning the jackpot the prizes are lost
Stones 'N Bones – based on a haunted house, where the player must go through different modes of play (by hitting targets spelling out "Stone" and "Bone"), with the later modes scoring more points. This is generally considered the highest-scoring table. It is similar in theme to Nightmare in Pinball Dreams.
Mindfield indciates that the game runs rather close to a solid 60 fps on the 2G iPod touch and will be submitted to the App Store in the next day or two. So, in the next few weeks, Pinball Fantasies for the iPhone should be available for download.
Gameprom's Wild West Pinball game is now free [App Store]. It was originally priced at $2.99 and tries to offer a more authentic pinball experience than many of its competitors. The game was very well received and praised for its accurate physics model. The most recent update (1.1) added an improved graphics engine, new icon design and better support for global leaderboards.
It appears the game will be free from now on and support will stop after the 1.2 update. We suspect the price drop is an effort to promote their next title The Deep Pinball. A gameplay video of this new upcoming pinball game has been provided:
One game that we neglected on its initial release was Undead Attack Pinball — an interesting combination of a defense game and pinball. 
The App Store seems to go in cycles with releases and upgrades coming in waves. Tonight a number of long awaited game updates have appeared, including Duke Nukem. 
One of my very favorite iPhone games is Cowboy Rodeo's iPhone port of the classic Amiga pinball game 
