Do you suffer from the dreaded and painful Floating Steering Wheel Grip, bane of the hardcore Wii gamer?  Do you weep when you must power off Mario Kart and head out the door for school or work?  Well, if you’re an iPhone or iPod touch user, Polarbit is here with the answer: Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 3D.

The nefarious Nitrous Oxide has joined forces with evil genius Dr. Cortex and his demented side-kick Ripper Roo, in a plot to beat the Bandicoots into submission once and for all, and at long last clear the way for world domination. In order to lure Crash and his gang out in the open, they stage a Kart tournament. The winners will be crowned “Kings Of Kart Racing For All Eternity”, the losers will be banished from N. Sanity Island.

Join the zany inhabitants of N-Sanity Island as they slip, slide and skid their way around wild tracks set in environments ranging from the Egyptian desert to Outer Space! Dodge rockets, falling meteorites and boulders as you fight for your place at the top of the podium.

Polarbit, the development house responsible for the popular iPhone jailbreak title Raging Thunder, is developing a high-end, 3D version of Vivendi’s Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 2 for the iPhone, to be published by Vivendi.  Pocket Gamer had this to say about an earlier smartphone version of the title,

…Nitro Kart is a massive game with plenty to unlock, which gives you enough of an incentive to want to keep playing. Not only are there four cups to play through - each of which has four tracks - there’s also a Challenge mode where you complete specific tasks, many of them unrelated to racing, in order to collect Wumpas to buy new karts.

These challenges provide loads of variety, and while we struggled with some due to their demanding criteria, they’re a welcome diversion from a straightforward bout of karting.

Given the degree to which the iPhone is the superior gaming platform relative to any other smartphone, it seems this will be a rather solid addition to the iTunes App Store’s games lineup from a developer that’s clearly excited about the platform.

Gameplay is simple and straightforward: tap the screen to start, tilt left and right to steer, tilt forward and back to control speed.  As can be seen from the demonstration video, the graphics are rich, the framerate is fluid, and the music and sound effects aren’t lacking.

Key features, as Polarbit tells it:

• Stunning, console quality graphics
• Twelve beautifully crafted tracks
• The famous Crash Bandicoot cast of characters
• A host of weapons, items and power-ups
• Fully configurable controls

So, thanks to Polarbit, you’ll never need to leave the kart behind…

The folks over at TUAW recently conducted an interview with Anders Nilsson of Polarbit, the development house that brought the 3D racing title Raging Thunder to the iPhone platform as a free beta via jailbreak.

Be sure to check out the full interview, but here’s a taste:

I really love the way the game takes advantage of the iPhone’s built-in accelerometer. What are some of the other features of the iPhone that have inspired you while porting this game and how do they affect the software?

As you may or may not know, we target all the major high-end mobile platforms (Symbian, Windows Mobile, Brew etc), so we’ve supported features like accelerometer, touch-screen and 3D acceleration since well before the iPhone was announced. That said, where the iPhone really excels is in the integration of these features - how nicely it all works together. And really, you’d expect nothing less from an Apple product.

Nilsson indicates that Raging Thunder will be available as an “official” iPhone application via the iTunes App Store once it arrives later this month.

Earlier this week we made a post covering two upcoming iPhone games, Balls of Steel and Bubble Space, from a newly formed development group.  We have received word that in addition to the aforementioned titles, this group is readying a 3D auto racing game known as Cardrenaline.

Cardrenaline, according to the developers, is a larger undertaking than either of the group’s other in-progress titles.  And judging from the above mock-up screenshot of the working prototype, it looks like our favorite of the three.  Stay tuned…

In March, Int13, a French mobile game developer, posted a preview video of their upcoming Crazy Kart 2 racing game for the iPhone. The Youtube video shows off their early efforts in porting to the iPhone with the official SDK. The final version of the game is due for a July release with the following features:

- 320 * 320 pixels playing area
- Touch controls with a virtual steering wheel
- 3 vehicle classes (karts, motorbikes, hovercrafts)
- 6 characters with different vehicles
- Downloadable content (new vehicles, new tracks)
- Wifi online multiplayer with match making and up to four simultaneous players

The developer states that the game runs at 60 frames per second and that they have plans for a full 3D accelerated sequel to the game in the future.

Polarbit has released an early version of their Raging Thunder racing game for Jailbroken iPhones.

Raging Thunder is a gut-churning, tire burning racer developed for a broad range of mobile platforms and handheld devices. Race against time, CPU controlled opponents or up to three other speed addicts in this fast paced and exhilarating coin-op style racing game.

A Youtube video of the gameplay was posted to Modmyifone. The game is available via Installer.app (BigBoss repository) for those of you with Jailbroken iPhones.

Freeverse has released a video preview of the first original 3D iPhone game: Wingnuts Moto Racer. We’d previously reported that Freeverse had embraced the iPhone/iPod Touch as a gaming platform with plans to release a number of games.

Wingnuts Motoracer is an OpenGL 3D racing game in which you navigate a motorcycle along a race course to reach designated checkpoints. A video of the game is embedded below:

It appears the video has been pulled. We’ve replaced the video with a screenshot. Sorry.

At present, the game controls use the touch-display to steer left/right, but Freeverse Marketing Director Brian Akaka tells us that the eventual plans are to use the iPhone’s accelerometer as “tilt” steering for the game.  3D performance of the iPhone is described as “great” with the ability to push over 6000 polygons at once.

Wingnuts Moto Racer is expected to be ready for release in June when the official iTunes App store is launched.  Visit Freeverse’s iPhone Games page for their other iPhone/Touch game plans.