Well, we were wondering what the next game from iShoot's Ethan Nicholas could be. It turns out it is an outdoor hunting game that has been created in partnership with four-time Olympic medalist, Kim Rhode.

In Kim Rhode’s Outdoor Shooting the player is placed in a variety of realistic environments teeming with animals such as white-tailed deer, grizzly bears and wild turkeys. Available weapons range from realistic pistols, rifles and shotguns all the way up to the thoroughly unrealistic but highly satisfying M134 mini-gun and RPG-7. Complete with lifelike sound effects and a natural environment, players are immersed in settings that allow them to hone their shooting skills.

The game is expected in late 2009 or early 2010. No pricing information has been made available.

Despite objections by some TouchArcade commenters, the hunting genre of game has been very popular on other platforms and has even seen a ton of success on the iPhone platform. John Moffett's iHunt [$0.99] ranked just above iShoot in a list of best selling App Store apps of all-time. Meanwhile, Glu mobile's Deer Hunter 3D has been consistently ranked in the top 100 for the past 3 months.

Based on screenshots and description, Nicholas' version does seem to have notable improvements over those titles, which may strike a chord in fans.

We first heard of Data East's plans to bring Cobra Command to the iPhone last month, and just got word that they plan on submitting the game to Apple this week. Originally released in 1984, Cobra Command was one of the first games to overlay computer generated graphics on top of Laser Disc footage to create arcade games that were unlike anything else available at the time.

Here are some screenshots from the latest build of the game:

For comparison, here is a video of the original running inside of the Daphne emulator. This latest version of the game for the iPhone will have the following improvements over the game from 1984:

• Full motion widescreen video, fully restored and presented in H.264 running at 60 frames per second.
• Vastly superior graphics and effects to match the on-screen action. Including an all new Cockpit, guns, missiles, and sound effects.
• Redesigned precision multi-touch controls.
• Accelerometer-based tilt steering! You really are in command of the worlds most awesome combat machine.
• Instantaneous seek time, providing a seamless experience where on on-screen action unfolds uninterrupted in real time.
• Unlockable Bonuses. Including Arcade Classic, and Expert Modes.

If Cobra Command is submitted this week like they're planning, it should be available on the App Store sometime in mid-November.

Two Lives Left have been posting regular updates in a thread on our forums about their upcoming game, Wheeler's Treasure. I recently got my hands on a copy of the game, and so far I'm extremely impressed. Not only did they seemingly create an entire game inspired by the Orlando Bloom water wheel fight scene in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, but they've really managed to nail the difficulty curve.

One of the things we've discussed at length during our podcasts is how much we enjoy games that foster the feeling of if you could only have managed to not make that last mistake you could have gone even farther, almost forcing you to play again to see if you could beat your previous attempt. Games like Flight Control and its associated spinoffs, Doodle Jump, and the recently discovered Boost 3D all provide this experience, and so far Wheeler's Treasure is giving me a similar vibe.

The goal of the game is to see how many yarrds (get it?) you can accompany a wheel through a sidescrolling environment filled with all kinds of obstacles. Your character is moved using simple swiping gestures, and buttons in the bottom corner of the screen control the use of your items– Another clever feature of Wheeler's Treasure.

The game includes achievements, such as picking up a certain number of jewels or stomping on a certain number of bats in one run. Each achievement unlocks a map that gives you a hint for where you can find items that your character can equip. During the tutorial you're awarded boots that allow you to double jump, and a hook that you can use to grab on to the wheel for a brief period of time. Meeting the goal of the jewels achievement tips you off to where you can find the loot magnet, making picking up coins easier.

The entire game is wrapped in a whimsical hand drawn art style with music that matches perfectly with the look and feel of the game. Wheeler's Treasure features complete OpenFeint integration, so when your game is finally over either from your death or your wheel's destruction you can submit your score to the online leaderboards before starting again. These scores appear in-game as tombstones, providing an excellent indication of how you're stacking up next to your friends' performance.

The game world is procedurally generated, so no two games will ever be the same, and obviously the farther you go the harder the game becomes. As you progress in game, you also will unlock additional 3D scenes to reveal the story behind Wheeler's Treasure.

Two Lives Left recently released this gameplay trailer, along with a few other gameplay videos and control demonstrations in their thread for the game:

Wheeler's Treasure has already been submitted to Apple for approval and is expected to appear on the App Store sometime soon.

Last month we posted a brief preview of Chillingo's upcoming hack and slash RPG, The Relic. Originally described as "Gauntlet on steroids", this latest gameplay video does a great job showing exactly what they mean by this. Here is Chillingo's latest description of the game:

Long ago, craftsmen of legendary art conceived an artifact of immortality; an engine of life to overthrow death and usher in the rule of peace. Yet one thousand years the Quinotaur reigns and fills the holes of the earth with horrors. Ascend from the deep where he has buried you, end the tyrant and destroy the source of his power – The Relic.

Play alone or with friends the intense hack and slash game that pits you against hordes of skeletons, spiders and evil wizards. Live the story, consume potions, collect spells and complete quests through a number of levels to uncover the secret of The Relic and finally restore peace to the world. Enjoy stunning graphics, animation and music that make the world of The Relic come alive.

The Relic will be playable with up to two players via bluetooth, and if you're on WiFi up to four players will be able to slash their way to victory.

While still under development, The Relic is looking very interesting.

Following ngmoco's announcement that their upcoming online multiplayer deathmatch game Eliminate is going to be free, our forums have absolutely exploded with activity. Anxious gamers who can't wait to have Eliminate in their hands have created an unstoppable juggernaut of a thread that recently topped 6,000 posts with over 160,000 views. Eliminate is in Apple's hands, and hopefully will be approved and on the App Store soon.

In the meantime, ngmoco released another gameplay video. While it's obviously not as good as playing the game itself, it gives you a fairly good idea of the kind of fast-paced gameplay you can expect in the world of Eliminate.

For more information on Eliminate, take a look at our hands-on preview from ngmoco's press day earlier this month or ngmoco's official Eliminate site.

Touch Arcade forum member Rozgo has been posting for around a month now on the progress of his currently untitled 2.5D sidescroller that already shows a lot of promise. In the two videos he has posted we see multiple weapons, using missiles to break things, a grappling hook to solve physics puzzles, and many other amazing things that have come out of this one-man wolfpack of iPhone development.

This game looked impressive in screenshots, but seeing it in motion is something else. As a huge fan of both MegaMan and Metroid, these videos have me amazingly excited to have the game in my hands.

Alex Rozgo's game is still in development, which you can follow in his thread on our forums. According to his posts, he's optimistic to have the game submitted in early November to hopefully see it released on the App Store a few weeks later.

We just got word from John Carmack himself that Doom Classic was recently submitted to Apple for approval.

According to our previous interview with Carmack, Doom Classic will stay faithful to the original with OpenGL rendered graphics along with slightly better sound quality and a "brand new finely crafted control system".

Recently he posted in our forums asking for opinions on how our forum members preferred controlling first person shooters on the platform, so it should be interesting to see how much of this feedback gets implemented in to the actual game.

We will have more information on Doom Classic and its impending release next week.

Ethan Nicholas is one of the big indie success stories of the App Store. Nicholas quit his job back in January after his tank artillery game iShoot grabbed the #1 spot in the App Store. Nicholas reportedly made over $800,000 within five months.

The pressure is on for Nicholas who was recently profiled in a Newsweek article which described that it is harder than ever to find success in the App Store. Nicholas admits that a lot of the success of iShoot was "pure luck" and he is "very worried about being a one-hit wonder."

According to the article, Nicholas has spend eight months and more than 6 figures working on his follow-up title. Nicholas tweeted the first peek at his next project with just these screenshots. No other details have been provided.

The TouchArcade forum thread has generated speculation about exactly what kind of game it might be from a traditional first person shooter to a hunting game. The following tweet from early October doesn't seem to provide much clarity:

Working on making critters explode when hit with a rocket.

We'll be interested to see Nicholas's followup game. Good luck Ethan!

App Store Link: iShoot, $1.99, iShoot Lite, Free

I first got a look at Five Minutes to Kill Yourself [App Store] as part of an oddly secretive preview from the folks at Adult Swim. With the game's impending release in the near future, now is finally the time to pull the cover off Adult Swim's latest iPhone adaptation of yet another one of their flash games.

As the title may imply, in Five Minutes to Kill Yourself, you've found yourself fed up with working in your monotonous office environment and have decided to off yourself. Utilizing various objects found around your office, you only have five minutes to do enough damage to put yourself out of your misery.

It isn't that simple though, as your bothersome coworkers often initiate unskippable conversations with you. Much like working in a real office, these conversations accomplish nothing other than wasting your time. In some instances, through dialog choices you might get a coworker to attack you, but most of the time they just pester you about lunch.

You can staple your forehead, drink toilet water, pee on computers, and countless other things. The amount of objects that you can interact with and the objects that can be combined with others for even more lethal damage is pretty amazing. The following video shows the game's tutorial, selecting clothing, and finally, killing yourself:

[ Full HD version | Low Bandwidth version ]

Five Minutes to Kill Yourself is also available as a free flash game on the Adult Swim website. It plays exactly the same as the iPhone version, the only difference is instead of using your mouse you use your finger.

Five Minutes to Kill Yourself should be available on the App Store very soon.

Update: Wow, we weren't kidding about it being available soon. It was just released moments ago.

App Store Link: 5 Minutes to Kill Yourself, $2.99

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:

[ Full HD version | Low Bandwidth version ]

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.