I spent a good amount of time yesterday playing through a preview copy of Namco's upcoming shooter Garters & Ghouls. You play as the freshly reanimated Marie Dupois fighting against an evil force known as "Thrum" who has caused the dead to rise under its control. It's your task to close the portals of the underworld that spawn the various zombies, werewolves, and demons that are rampaging across the countryside.

The game plays a lot like iDracula and other similar games, with two virtual joysticks that control your movement and shooting. Along the way you come across different weapons and powerups, and throughout the land are shops run by the "Steam Queens" where you can buy upgrades for your character's health, movement, weapon damage, and other things.

The main difference between Garters & Ghouls and similar iPhone games it that the gameplay is structured around 25 distinct and large levels and framed in a story that slowly reveals more about Marie Dupois, Thrum, and the other intricacies of the Garters & Ghouls world.

Each of these levels are laid out differently, within varied environments such as graveyards and churches. The goal of each level involves closing all of the evil minion spawning portals, and making your way to the exit. The portals can be seen on the on-screen radar, and making your way through the large maps can take some time. This is notably different than games like Alive 4 Ever and iDracula that keep you relatively contained in a very small area.

The game can get a bit monotonous at times, but the same can be said for all of the games in the same genre. Here's a gameplay video of me playing through the fourth level and a little bit of the fifth:

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Garters & Ghouls is still in development, so the video likely will not be entirely representative of the final version. In particular, your shooting directions felt a bit too discrete, though we heard that this may still change. We'll post more information on the game as we receive it.

Last weekend was the Big Buck Hunter Pro world championship held in Chicago, IL and aside from thousands of dollars of prize money that was given away, they were also giving people the first look at the upcoming iPhone game.

The iPhone version is based on the series of Big Buck Hunter arcade machines which originally debuted all the way back in 2001. Since then, there have been several spin-off machines that have you hunting things like big horn sheep, elk, and even antelope. The arcade game is played using a shotgun aimed at the screen to shoot whatever it is you're hunting and often can be found at bars right next to the Golden Tee machine.

The iPhone, obviously lacking any light gun accessories uses your fingers to do the shooting. This mobile version of the game plays remarkably similar to the arcade machine, although quite a bit of the allure of Big Buck Hunter has always been playing it while you're out drinking with friends and there isn't much the iPhone can do the emulate that.

In the following video I go over all the functionality of the game including shooting deer, the bonus stages, online leaderboards, and even the ability to use your GPS coordinates to find the nearest arcade machine:

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Big Buck Hunter has an absolutely massive following, and it's great to see an iPhone port of the game that is actually fairly representative of the original instead of a quick cash-in on the series. Big Buck Hunter Pro is expected to be available soon, and while no price has been announced yet, I'm sure the iPhone game will be much cheaper than a single night of pumping quarters in to a real Big Buck Hunter machine.

Those waiting for a more proper Star Wars themed game may be in luck with this upcoming Star Wars: Trench Run for the iPhone. THQ Wireless gave us a heads up on this preview video which shows a game built around a famous scene from the original Star Wars movie.

Use the Force to overthrow the evil Galactic Empire as they attempt to destroy the small Rebel base on Yavins jungle moon.

As part of the Rebel Alliances Red Squadron you dogfight with TIE Fighters above the Death Stars surface before heading into a trench where you are inundated by cannon fire. Dodge obstacles, and stay out of Darth Vaders sights as he tries to gun you down before you have the chance to fire your proton torpedoes into a thermal exhaust port the size of a womp rat. If successful, a direct hit will cause a chain reaction that destroys the Death Star, thus saving the Rebel base from impending doom.

Remember, only a precise hit will start a chain reaction. That's impossible you say? Even for a computer? Bah…. I used to bullseye womp rats with my T-16 back home…

We finally got our hands on the demo version of Ace Combat Xi that was shown at the Tokyo Game show last month. The early impressions from this build were positive, and after seeing it first hand, I can confirm all the great things that were said about the game.

Overall, it just looks and feels like an Ace Combat game. They did a surprisingly good job at capturing the essence of the console games, and the tilt controls work great. This development version of the game lacks any kind of sensitivity configuration, so there were times where I felt like I was tilting the phone a little too much, but other than that flying a jet in Ace Combat Xi is a ton of fun.

In the right hand corner of the screen are a series of buttons to fire your various weapons and switch targets, the bottom left side of the screen controls your throttle. The rest of the screen is framed in a somewhat cluttered but really cool looking heads up display showing other information like the location of enemies and how many there are left.

This version of the game is very limited, but even as a brief demo, the overall experience of the Ace Combat console games is absolutely thriving on the iPhone. The constant radio chatter, the great texturing of the ground and sky and the sound of your afterburners rumbling all come together to create one of those "Wow, this is running on an iPhone?" moments.

For increased immersion, you can switch in to first person view and fly your plane using nothing but the HUD. I found this to be a little disorienting, but your visibility is definitely improved without your jet taking up the bottom third of the screen.

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Namco hopes to release Ace Combat Xi this winter and we will continue to post preview information as it's revealed and while this version of the game is little more than a mid-development preview, it is remarkably impressive.

Volkswagen held a press conference in New York City tonight for the launch of the Volkswagen 2010 GTI. During the presentation, they announced Real Racing GTI a free iPhone game based on Firemint's Real Racing game.

Announcing the all-new 2010 GTI! But this is [no] ordinary announcement. Breaking the traditional mold, the all-new 2010 GTI is the first car to be launched through an iPhone / iPod Touch app!

VW teams up with Firemint to present a special GTI edition of the award-winning Real Racing app! Log on to the App Store tomorrow morning to pick up your FREE copy of Real Racing GTI

The game will be free to download and should appear in the App Store by the morning.

Part of the presentation was recorded live here, talk of the app starts at about 7 minutes in, gameplay at around 10 min 30 seconds in:

The free game will presumably serve as both a promotional app for Volkswagen as well as a lite version of Firemint's Real Racing [$6.99]. We expect more official information to be released soon.

Update: Now available!

So, Ghosts 'n Goblins it is.

Exactly which historic name Capcom would finally adopt for the iPhone version of their upcoming sidescroller has finally been revealed. IGN has scored some of the first screenshots for the iPhone version of Ghosts 'n Goblins.

We had first heard of the port back in September at the Tokyo Game Show 2009. Capcom a then unnamed game that used 3D models in a 2D side scrolling game. In that respect, it shares many characteristics with the PSP's Ultimate Ghosts 'n Goblins which was also rendered in 3D.

The iPhone version of the game appears to use a 4-direction virtual pad along with 2 on screen buttons.

No other details were revealed about the game, though we hope to see it soon. Gallery of images from IGN.

Return to the Ghoul Realm as the legendary Arthur or impetuous Lancelot in Ghosts‘N Goblins™: Gold Knights for the iPhone and iPod touch. Explore six stages of peril as you attempt to recover the missing maidens and learn the secret of the demons’ return.

Battle with sword, lance, arrow and axe against swarms of demons, monsters and undead minions in one of the most exciting platformers on iPhone.

Key features

- Brilliant 3D graphics and classic platform action!
- For the first time, play as two different heroes each with a unique play style.
- Master six different weapons per character and power up each weapon with magic.
- Destroy treasure chests to uncover weapons and more powerful suits of armor.
- Further customize your Ghosts ‘N Goblins experience with DLC.

Namco has unveiled new details about their upcoming action adventure game Garters & Ghouls.

Unearth the strange and undying world of Garters & Ghouls! Control and command the newly-dead Marie Dupois as she battles the minions of The Thrum and horrors beyond description! With over 25 levels, randomized level generation and downloadable content, the action never dies!

Based on the screenshots released, the game appears to be a dual-stick survival shooter the likes of which we've seen before, but wrapped in a pretty extensive story and with a progressive level design. There also appears to be a wide variety of locations presented in the game.

This teaser video just shows some of the artwork, but no actual gameplay:

The following screenshots show more details of the actual gameplay:

Ground Effect, developed by Glenn Corpes, has been in development for a few months now. Posting as "GlennX" on our forums, Corpes has posted constant updates since May of this year, along with utilizing the Touch Arcade community as a beta testing pool. It's always great to see projects like this with so much involvement from our forums, and having played a preview build, it seems that polling the community has paid off.

Ground Efect is an arcade style Ekranoplan racing game that takes place around a series of 14 different sets of islands. The relative simplicity of the geometry of these islands allows for an extremely impressive draw distance in the game along with silky smooth framerates on my iPhone 3GS. The game is controlled utilizing either tilt or touch controls, and they work just as well as all the other racing games on the platform. Acceleration is handled automatically, but there are two on screen buttons for boosting and braking. Doing well in the game requires intelligent management of boost, which slowly recharges when you're not using it.

Ground Effect features atmospheric music from the Danish band Diefenbach, which fits perfectly with the mood of the game, 10 different race craft to choose from, along with both daytime and night races. According to the developer, this fun arcade racer is only a few more days worth of tweaks and unless a beta tester finds a major bug, Ground Effect will be submitted to Apple very soon.

If you have questions about the game, feel free to stop by GlennX's latest thread on Ground Effect on our forums.

Crescent Moon Games' upcoming Ravensword game has received a lot of attention from our readers since its original announcement. It is certainly one of the most ambitious iPhone games we've seen coming out of such a small studio. Ravensword is an open-envirornment 3D RPG that sports some impressive graphics.

The one potential hurdle that we (and our readers) saw in early builds of the game, however, was the adoption of a seemingly awkward control system. We discussed in our recent podcast that it seems clear the major developers had already settled on a somewhat standardized "swipe to look" control mechanism for these 3D games.

Fortunately, Crescent Moon has modified their game to adopt a similar control scheme that they detail in this new gameplay video:

The developer also demonstrates other features including auto targeting and the various scaling options provided to boost performance on previous generation devices. Ravensword is in the final stages of development and should be submitted in a matter of days to weeks.

Gameloft recently released this new gameplay video for their upcoming racer Asphalt 5:

As well, the company announced that Earthworm Jim will be released October 21st.

Earthworm Jim originally appeared on the Sega Genesis in 1994, and since then saw ports on numerous platforms soon to be including the XBOX 360 via XBOX Live Arcade, the PS3 via PlayStation Network, and the Wii via WiiWare.