If you spent Labor Day weekend disconnected from the Internet, you missed out on our full coverage of everything iPhone gaming related at the 2009 Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle, Washington. Originally started in 2004 by Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik, authors of the Penny Arcade web comic, it has grown substantially over the years and PAX '09 was large enough to take up the entire Washington State Convention and Trade Center while completely selling out during pre-registration.

If you're a gamer of any kind, I recommend at least looking into attending next year's PAX. No matter if you were into card games, board games, tabletop RPG's, video games, and/or other types of games, PAX had something to offer everyone. If you couldn't find someone playing what you wanted to play, an extensive "Looking For Group" system got gamers together to play even the most obscure games imaginable.

Anyway, here is what you missed of Touch Arcade PAX '09 coverage:

Blades of Fury

Gameloft gave us hands-on time with everything they have in the pipeline that is due to be released soon, and each game was equally impressive. Each preview linked below includes in-game video:

• Blades of Fury – See this Soul Calibur-like fighting game in action.
• Dungeon Hunter – A hack and slash RPG.
• Earthworm Jim – A port of a Genesis classic platformer.
• Shrek Kart – Gameloft's entry in to the kart racing genre.
• Asphalt 5 – The Burnout-inspired sequel to Asphalt 4.

I ran into Subatomic Studios on the show floor and found out that the new Fieldrunners PSPGo levels are coming to the iPhone via DLC. Each additional map is going to be 99¢.

InstantAction showed me a very early preview of Flipt, a game very similar to the puzzle platformer Shift that came out a while ago.

Following Flipt, I met with Gamevil to get a new gameplay video of Hybrid: Eternal Whisper and check out the new Baseball Superstars. Both games we now have preview versions of and will post an in-depth first look soon.

Com2Us let me try out their new game, Sniper Vs Sniper, a shooter with multiplayer elements similar to their other game, Homerun Battle 3D [App Store] (previously known as Baseball Slugger). Also, during the "Touching a New Generation: How the iPhone has Changed Portable Gaming" panel, a new RPG was revealed by Com2Us: Chronicles of Inotia 2, a network enabled RPG in which users can join guilds and compete against other.

A few other notable news items over the weekend:

• Early Screenshots of FIFA '10
• LiveFire Now Known as Eliminate
• C64 Emulator Approved
• Taito's Arkanoid Available

What was even more exciting about PAX though were the previews that we can't talk about yet both from well-known iPhone developers and publishers as well as from companies with franchises you would never expect to appear on the App Store. We'll be talking about these new games as soon as we can, but in the meantime, just rest assured that late 2009 and early 2010 is going to be amazing for iPhone gamers.

I arrived in beautiful Seattle this morning, and after a somewhat expected rental car fiasco I've since spent my time wandering the floor, meeting with video game companies, and overall being completely immersed in PAX.

The really cool thing about PAX that seems significantly different from other events I've been to is that while there may be a lot of gaming conventions, PAX definitely feels like a gamer convention. The floor is flooded in people dressed in costumes playing soon to be released games. The hallways are packed with people playing various handhelds and I've spotted a silly amount of iDevices in use. Every table is littered with gamers surrounding board games, dice being tossed in Dungeons & Dragons games, and others playing card games like Magic: The Gathering.

We're not sure how much iPhone-specific content there will be, but the first flood of content coming soon is courtesy of Gameloft. If you're an iPhone developer at PAX, feel free to contact us. We will also be attending GDC Austin later this month.

Here are a few items of interest from the past week.

• Puzzle Bobble (International Link) has finally arrived for customers outside of the U.S. Known as Bust a Move in the U.S and is a solid port of the classic title.
• Modern Combat has been delayed a couple of weeks according to Gameloft. Modern Combat is a particularly impressive looking first person shooter that uses a brand new game engine.
• geoDefense Swarm was rejected and has been resubmitted. Swarm is the open-field followup to the popular geoDefense tower defense game. We took an early look at the game back in August.

The big news yesterday was that Apple had scheduled a media event on September 9th where they are widely expected to introduce new iPods. The new iPod Touches are likely to be upgraded to similar specs as the iPhone 3GS, incorporating the faster ARM processors and improved 3D graphics hardware.

Meanwhile Android developer Larva Labs reveals that sales numbers on Google's Android marketplace are pretty poor at this stage. Despite holding the #5 and #12 spots amongst the most popular apps in their market, Larva Labs reports only earning about $62.39 / day on average. Similarly ranked games on the iPhone would deliver thousands of dollars a day in revenue. Mobile advertising firm Admobs has recently estimated the iTunes App Store market as being worth nearly $2.5 billion a year.

In fact, Gameloft today announced that they alone have sold over 6 million iPhone games to date.

The company currently has 35 games available on the App Store, of which 18 have made the Top 10 Paid Games list worldwide. The iPhone OS continues to be Gameloft’s number one platform.

CH Games, creators of Dungeon & Hero [App Store] just released a trailer of their upcoming RPG which is being published by Chillingo. According to their site, you will play as Litta, a young boy whose dream is to see the outside world. After embarking on an adventure that will change Litta's life, you eventually guide the continent to peace– It sounds like a pretty standard premise for an RPG.

These screenshots appear to be from the Windows Mobile or Symbian version of the game:

In the game there are four different weapons to choose from along with an "intense skill system" that should allow a hefty amount of character customization. 22 unique towns along with 150 different battlefields are prepared for your conquering, and to get from place to place a little faster, Seed will also have you captaining a ship and piloting an air balloon.

Also in game is a day and night cycle along with quests that can only be completed at certain times of the day. These day and night cycles apparently changes combat as well. Seed also has a elemental component to combat where Water, Wind, Earth, and Fire can be leveraged to affect the outcome of your battles. Equipping different armor and weapons will change the appearance of your character and throughout the world of Seed you will come across all kinds of different items of different rarity that also can be customized with "sockets, compounding, and refining."

That's all we know right now, as Chillingo provides us more information on what could be yet another awesome RPG for the iPhone we will be sure to post it.

In the outside chance that you don't find yourself mashing the check for updates button in iTunes as often as you check your email, here are a few game updates that have added some cool new features and fixes that have come out in the past few days. Videos may not reflect the most recent versions of the games.

Touch KO, $4.99 – Along with most of the first impressions on our forums, we also thought the difficulty level included in the initial release was far too easy in our review. Touch KO 1.1 brings some much needed bug fixes, the ability to skip through the slow motion replays, makes combos more powerful, but most importantly added a hard mode with new AI that is much more difficult.

Face Fighter, $1.99 – A silly fighting game that allows you to use your camera or photo library to customize opponents with the faces of your friends, enemies, pets, and loved ones. Face Fighter 2.0 adds Bluetooth multiplayer, so now instead of beating your friends up you can beat on each other.

Baseball Slugger, 99¢ – Com2uS added 2.2.1 compatibility for everyone still stuck in the pre-3.0 dark ages, the ability to brag on Twitter from within the game, as well as a global and national ranking system. Also, if you've been regretting choosing "HelloKitty15" as your Baseball Slugger user name, you will also be able to change that in this latest version of the game.

Harbor Master, 99¢ – Episode 5: Monster Cove brings yet another new map, this time with sea monsters that capture ships and take over docks. Tapping the monsters when they appear sends them back to the deep. Also, something to look out for in the next update is competitive Bluetooth multiplayer.

GI Joyride, 99¢ – Trapdoor's tilt racer that I've spent more time than I'd care to admit playing added all kinds unlockables, new vehicles, paint jobs, an experience point systems, and Facebook leaderboards. Somehow the ability to drive around a van with an awesome paint job instead of the standard tank has me playing this game again.

Since the announcement in late March, sports fans have been anxiously anticipating the Madden series jumping to the iPhone. We still don't know when it's going to be released outside of sometime in September, these three screenshots should whet your appetite:

We will post more information on Madden 10 as it becomes available.

Update @ 12:53PM CST (Thanks, TGR):

EA posted what appears to be the iTunes description on their Facebook page. Looks like they're going to have all 32 licensed teams with "life-like" players and real stadiums. Also included is the exclusive ability to draw your own plays using the touch interface, adjust the speed of the game, assemble your own teams, and even play in season mode with in-depth trades and other goodies. All of this wrapped up with the real voice commentary of John Madden, Tom Hammond, and Cris Collinsworth.

Sony announced yesterday the plan to introduce new downloadable "mini" games on their Playstation Store starting on October 1st:

"The minis development process has been designed to open the door to a broad range of developers to encourage new talent and creative ideas to PSP. minis are being developed by some of the most creative studios from across the globe from GameShasta, a medium-sized development team based in India, to HoneySlug a three-man team in Camden, London. Some developers, such as Creat, have already created content for PlayStation Network; others, such as Subatomic Studios. are bringing their experience in the mobile phone market to PSP."

iPhone gamers will be familiar with some of the launch titles. Amongst them: Fieldrunners, Hero of Sparta, and Minigore.

Fieldrunners was the first iPhone game to announce a transition over to the PSP, but it appears Sony is continuing to poach some other indie titles from the iPhone market to fill out their new "mini" game strategy. It gives successful iPhone developers another potential avenue for their products.

If you don't keep your nose glued to our forums or the various Twitter feeds of game developers, chances are you've missed out on these four bits of news that have popped up in the last couple days:

Zenonia 2 was revealed on Gamevil's Twitter. There's a thread on our forums with all of the images that have been released so far complete with fans of the original sharing their anticipation with other forum members.

Gangstar had a teaser site for the game with screenshots and video revealed via Gameloft's Twitter along with announcing that the game will be launched at $6.99 when it is finally released.

Madden 10 for iPhone was reportedly pushed back to September. We still have yet to hear any details on the game, its control method, or anything else outside of knowing that it's eventually coming to the App Store. When in September it's going to be released is currently anyone's guess.

Mad Monkey Studios released another tech demo from their upcoming 3GS-only game project that we covered when it was first announced. We don't have any more information than that, according to this video the game is going to be "sketch shaded":

The video shows a cool direction for the art style of their upcoming game to be taking, but it's hard to get too excited over tech demos without having any idea what the final game will even be about.

In honor of QuakeCon this weekend, Id Software has significantly dropped the prices of both Doom Resurrection [App Store] (Originally $9.99, now $2.99) and Wolfenstein 3D Classic [App Store] (Originally $2.99, now 99¢). If you were holding back on getting either games, now is the time to buy as the sale will only run until QuakeCon is over on the 16th.

Doom Resurrection utilizes Doom 3 assets to create a game with visuals that hold their own even when compared to the graphical giants of the App Store like Real Racing. Not quite a traditional first person shooter, Doom Resurrection is on rails and is controlled using the accelerometer to move a targeting reticule around the screen. In our review, we found Doom Resurrection to be "pretty awesome" and at this price hopefully some of the rails naysayers will take the leap of faith and give the game a try.

[ Full HD version | Low Bandwidth version ]

Wolfenstein 3D, first released in 1992, is the game that popularized the first shooter person genre. In the iPhone version, all six original episodes are included with 60 total levels and four different control layouts. The controls in the iPhone Wolfenstein 3D are generally regarded on our forums to be among the best for first person shooters, so if nothing else the game is worth checking out to see John Carmack's idea of how games like this should be controlled with the limited input methods available on the iPhone.

[ Full HD version | Low Bandwidth version ]

App Store Links:

• Doom Resurrection, $2.99
• Wolfenstein 3D Classic, 99¢
• Wolfenstein 3D Classic Lite, Free