Fans of retro arcade games and modern 3D titles alike may find interest in Silver Machine Games‘ soon-to-be-released iPhone space combat flight-sim Metal Sun, which is basically a remake of the 1980 arcade title Defender — but in 3D.
The objective of the game is to fly your accelerometer-controlled fighter jet across a varied landscape, with 360-degrees of freedom, defending a small group of people (blue orbs) from abduction by a sky-full of alien craft. The game features ship customization, upgrades, and a trading mechanic.
The developer indicates that, while the initial release is single-player only, multiplayer support will come in a future update, as well as a “pocket MMO" of sorts, involving destructable cities, giant alien walkers, and various enhancements that take advantage of the iPhone 3.0 SDK.
They’ve got big plans for the iPhone 3GS as well:
The 3GS graphics capabilities are amazing and we’re currently in the process of a major upgrade to the VIVID rendering system (our internal engine) to support it. Some of the stuff we’ve currently got in alpha test look better than some PS3 games I’ve seen – particularly when it comes to destructibility; we’ve got an entire city on one 3GS device that comes apart down almost to the individual brick level. Smoke, debris, flames and pieces of skyscrapers falling down so realistic it looks more like a movie than a game. The 3GS is just that powerful!
For this first release though Metal Sun was designed to run and look good on a standard iPhone – indeed, until things start exploding it actually runs at 50 FPS on a 2G touch! For the next release though it’ll detect if a 3GS is present and if so will enhance the display considerably! And then some.
Those who have spent time with a preview build of the game have had positive things to say. Metal Sun has been submitted to the App Store and should appear any day now, at a price of $1.99.
See the developer’s gameplay video for a look at the action.
