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A pre-existing game might be one of the best to show off your soon-to-be brand new iPhone 4S’ power, if Firemint’s Real Racing 2 is in your collection. Real Racing 2 [$4.99] and Real Racing 2 HD [$6.99] are set to receive a free and new update that’ll add an extra layer of graphical goodness on top of their pre-existing sizzle, all in the service of harnessing the A5 chip. New dynamic shadows and lighting, increased polygon counts, reflections, and exposure effects are all being added in the game’s latest update, which should hit pretty soon.

And that’s not all — iOS 5 is coming and so are a handful of features to Real Racing 2 that revolve around Airplay support. With the update, you’ll be able to wirelessly stream the game’s content to your TV. Also, if you’ve got friends with the game and an iPhone 4S or an iPad 2, you’ll be able to play with them in split-screen. “Party Play” mode will allow up to 4 players to compete on the same screen, provided the host has Apple’s new hotnesses.

Firemint isn’t known for missing a hardware launch, so we didn’t expect any less. Still, this seems like an absolutely spectacular deal for current and new owners of the game. Real Racing 2 was great to begin with, and now it’ll look even sharper than ever.

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Arcade Jumper [$1.99] by Black Hive Media is a retro side-scrolling platform game which feels like the old classic Mario. There's enemies to either shoot or jump on their heads, and the main character wears a red cap with red and blue clothes. Yup, that certainly sounds very Mario-esque, but fortunately there's plenty of innovation in this game too.

It's the 1980's and Eddy's brother Jimmy has been sucked into an arcade machine by 'Ghosty', the naughty child-abducting spirit with a friendly-sounding name. To save Jimmy, you need to complete 10 zones, each with three stages (30 stages in total).

Stages are completed by finding warp-tokens, then returning to the start of the stage to insert the token into the glowing arcade cabinet and warping to the next stage. There's a timer which counts down, so you need to keep moving. At the end of each zone (3 stages) you're confronted by the floating kidnapper, Ghostly, who must be chased down and then shot or jumped on before time runs out to complete the zone.

Along the way you collect fruit, like apples, bananas, oranges and cherries, coins (just like Mario) and invincibility stars. You'll also find tickets, which are used to buy game items or unlock playable characters. Sometimes these items are hidden inside crates which are revealed by head-butting into them, which is another mechanism borrowed from Mario.

If your health bar hits zero due to colliding with enemies, or you fall from the platforms, you immediately die and it's game over. Unfortunately, you're only given one life. And if you've finally managed to progress through a few zones, it doesn't matter – when you die, you'll still re-start from the very beginning, which despite the fun, can be frustrating after numerous restarts.

Each time you obtain 25,000 points you receive a "Continue" (maximum of 3), which is like a "life". This will help you progress further, but once they're used up, you still return to the very beginning in your next game. The worst part about dying is that there's six screens to pass through before restarting, followed by a slow "materializing" animation, which gets annoying, especially if you died within the first few seconds. An immediate restart should be available to avoid the frequent delays.

There's four characters to play, each with different weapon and jumping strengths. Initially only Eddie is unlocked, but once you unlock Destructoid (the robot) things become far more entertaining, as he can double jump which speeds up the whole experience. The best character, Mitch can double-jump and double-shoot.

Each time a stage starts, it's a surprise what the level will look like as Arcade Jumper cleverly displays different graphical themes (skins) for the backgrounds, levels and enemies. You might find yourself in a Mario-type level jumping on shelled creatures, in a space setting shooting at space invaders, in an urban environment capping thugs and dodging helicopters, or even facing shaggy pink 4-legged creatures wearing sunglasses and over-sized jewelry. Regardless of the level's appearance, the gameplay is the same in each theme, but it's quite nice to have this variety.

There's buttons for left, right, jump and shoot, which are responsive, although the player occasionally slides a little for no apparent reason. You can optionally unlock an alternate slider control using your tickets, which is an interesting idea, although after unlocking this I preferred the original controls. I also downloaded JoyPad [Free] to turn my iPod into a controller while playing on the iPad, which worked really well.

In addition to the main game mode, there's three mini-games you can play from the main menu to earn tickets. In 'Skeet Ball' you swipe a ball at targets. 'Pongchinko' involves dropping three balls down rows of pegs, hoping it lands in high scoring container at the bottom. While 'Space Frantic' appears to be a whack-a-mole variant, although there's no instructions. After each mini-game, tickets are dispensed based on your performance.

The tickets can be used to unlock "player assists" such as a flipper to rebound you back onto the platform if you fall or a helpful "cool space guy" who flys around you shooting enemies and is prepared to take a bullet for you, plus unlocking the three other characters.  If you can't be bothered collecting tickets from the platform levels and mini-games, you can optionally purchase tickets as an in-app purchase, although this really isn't necessary.

This game is universal, as it can be installed on any iOS devices. However, be warned: when it runs on the iPad, the game dimensions are about same size as the ipod, with the extra space being used to draw an arcade cabinet around the outside, like a large border.  The iPad version uses a fraction of the screen for actual gameplay.

Also, this game works on the iCade cabinet, which is becoming a selling point, however because the iPad version displays a cabinet on the screen you end up with:  The game surrounded by a picture of a cabinet, which is inside the actual iCade cabinet. Something about a cabinet within a cabinet just isn't ideal. This has been brought to the developer's attention.

Arcade Jumper is a fun game, especially once you've unlocked the double-jump. However, the restart delays are excessive and the constant returning to the beginning is wearing thin and may stop some players from seeing the  zones full of sloping and tilting platforms, asteroids and fireballs ….and probably other stuff I haven't seen yet, because of constantly returning to the beginning. Arcade Jumper has plenty of potential as some small tweaks could improve the player's experience dramatically, but as is it's still an interesting take on a Mario-like platformer that's worth having a look at.

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The iPhone 4S will utilize the Apple-designed A5 chip, which according to Apple, allows for studios to make games with up to “7X faster graphics.” At its press event moments ago, Apple brought Epic Games CEO Mike Capps on-stage to discuss the innovation and show off a new project set to harness the dual-core chip: Infinity Blade 2, the sequel to the hugely popular and eye-poppingly gorgeous Infinity Blade by Chair Entertainment.

The demo was brief, but people on the ground apparently got an eye-full of graphical awesome, as Capps showed off a significantly better looking sequel with shadow and reflective effects, as well as some neat little touches like, say, real-time koi swimming in a pond. The mechanical part appears to be pretty similar: you'll play as a soldier-y type of guy charged with killing big monsters with various slashes.

Capps said, during the demo, that the game is “only going to run like this on the iPhone 4s. Why? Because it's awesome." And the wait for it won't be long: Infinity Blade 2 is due out this December 1.

[via Endgadget]

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We’ve been eagerly anticipating Rocketcat Games’ newest upcoming iOS game Mage Gauntlet since it was first revealed back in July, and that anticipation has only intensified with the newest gameplay trailer that was released for the game late last month. The funny thing about game development, though, is that projects tend to go through a pretty intense evolution from their beginnings until the time a finished product hits the market. One of my favorite things is to see early prototypes or concepts for a game and then compare them to later versions, much like the incredible transformation that Aralon: Sword and Shadow [$4.99] underwent during its development cycle. There’s even an entire thread in our forums dedicated to developers showing off their before and after work on their games.

Mage Gauntlet is no different, and Rocketcat has recently released a short video showing the earliest version of their game, which charming as it may be, looks like the nasty gas station hot dog that’s been sitting on those spinning heat roller things for the past week compared to the filet mignon that is the latest Mage Gauntlet trailer. Ok I’ll admit, sometimes I have a hankering for those crazy hot dogs, but still, Mage Gauntlet has come a long way since its humble beginnings:

Pretty crazy, huh? In the YouTube description, Rocketcat explains that Mage Gauntlet was originally planned as a top-down arcade shooter, sort of like an 8-bit fantasy-themed Minigore [99¢/HD]. It then changed to a randomly generated dungeon crawler, and finally morphed into the action RPG with an SNES-era aesthetic that it is today. Interestingly, through this growth process, the story remained unchanged, and they’ve even held onto certain gameplay mechanics from that first version like having 4 spell slots and an emphasis on powerful but quick-burning spells. For reference, here is the latest Mage Gauntlet trailer for you to compare:

I think it’s pretty safe to say that we’re all glad the game has evolved to where it’s at now, though to be honest that game in the old trailer does look pretty cool. And Rocketcat, please, tuck away that “randomly generated dungeon diver” idea for a future game. At any rate, Mage Gauntlet has been in Apple’s possession for a couple of weeks now, and barring any more snafus it should hopefully be available extremely soon. Rocketcat’s best guesstimation is next week, October 13th, so keep your eyes glued to this space and we’ll let you know just as soon as it’s available. You can also get plenty more information and lively discussion on Mage Gauntlet in the thread in our forums, so be sure to check that out as well.

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Our ratings for games we reviewed in September are now in place, and we now present to you the ones that are on the top of the heap. Each game reviewed receives a 1-5 star rating relative to the other games from that month. Generally, a 3 or higher is considered a "good" rating.

Our final scores are not the product of any traditionally objective measures such as graphics or sound, but simply reflect the games we would most recommend to others. Keep in mind, this listing is comprised of games we reviewed in September, and not necessarily games that were specifically released in September.

5 Stars

Machinarium, $4.99 – [Review] – [Forum Thread] – This game generated a heck of a lot of controversy when it was revealed that it'd only run on the iPad 2 only, which had us more than a little worried about its performance if it requires top-end hardware. It turns out, Machinarium runs fantastically, despite its Adobe Air-based innards. If you've got the hardware, don't miss this remarkably clever adventure.

Another World – 20th Anniversary, $4.99 – [Review] – [Forum Thread] – It's hard to find a game on the App Store with more history behind it than Another World. Touch-based controls (as well as an optional virtual D-pad) along with both original and remastered graphics make for an outstanding port of this classic adventure game.

Tiny Heroes, $1.99 – [Review] – [Forum Thread] – geoDefense and geoDefense Swarm cranked tower defense on the App Store up to 11, and, dare I say it, Tiny Heroes makes a great attempt to crank it to 12. Or, at least, 11 and a half. This fantasy-based tower defense title should not be missed by anyone who even vaguely fancies the genre.

King of Dragon Pass, $9.99 – [Review] – [Forum Thread] – No lie, I've spent more time playing this game than all the other games that we reviewed in September combined. If my exhaustive review wasn't clear enough, here's all you need to know: If you like simulation games, you needed King of Dragon Pass on your iPhone yesterday. I've still got my fingers crossed for an iPad version, but I'm more than happy managing my clan whenever I've got a few seconds to spare on my iPhone.

Monsters Ate My Condo, $0.99 – [Review] – [Forum Thread] – Adult Swim and Pik Pok joined forces to bring us one of the craziest matching games we've ever seen on the App Store. The game requires matching similarly colored floors while appeasing nearby color-coded monsters, each with a more ridiculous super-power than the last. Also, you can score billions if you're good. Billions!

4.5 Stars

Fling a Thing, $0.99 – [Review] – [Forum Thread] – It seems physics-based game that rely on flinging mechanics always work well on iOS devices. Fling a Thing follows this formula, and the addition of a crazy art style, excellent puzzle progression, and, well, things to fling makes it a great little game to have.

Gyro13 – Steam Copter Arcade HD, $0.99 – [Review] – [Forum Thread] – It took way too long, but developers are finally starting to utilize the Unreal Engine in some interesting ways. Gyro13 puts you in charge of a cool looking gyrocopter to rescue miners trapped inside of a shockingly dangerous mine. The graphics and sound are great, and the skill requirement makes completing objectives feel like a major accomplishment.

Where’s My Water?, $0.99 – [Review] – [Forum Thread] – This super-fun liquid-centric physics game puts you in the driver seat of helping an alligator take a shower. Sure, it's hard to come up with a more ridiculous premise, but maybe that's part of this game's charm. A wacky scrolling mechanic on some levels is the only thing we have to complain about, otherwise Where's My Water is fabulous.

Orbit1, Free – [Review] – The iPad is home to a ton of awesome single-device multiplayer games, and Orbit1 is one of the finest we've seen so far. Simple controls combined with incredibly fun gameplay make for the perfect game to play with friends while waiting in line, or doing anything else where you're bored and have an iPad as well as four people hanging around.

GoatUp, $1.99 – [Review] – [Forum Thread] – Jeff Minter's Llamasoft is responsible for releasing quite a few great retro-inspired games, and GoatUp is no exception to that. It's an endless climber with a fantastic retro spin, complete with graphics to match. If you've been a fan of Minter's previous works, make sure you don't miss this one.

jAggy Race, $0.99 – [Review] – [Forum Thread] – What do the best kart racers always have? If you answered "TONS of jumps," you are correct. jAggy Race is filled with jumps and all sorts of other aerial stunts to perform in the wide array of tracks it comes loaded with.

Radballs, $0.99 – [Review] – [Forum Thread] – We fell in love with RadBalls inside of the first few seconds of the trailer, and by the time it was over we were ready to yield our first born to its creator. Oh, yeah, the game is fun as hell too. It's a music-centric matching game that even allows you to use your own tracks. Check it out.

1112 episode 03, $4.99 – [Review] – [Forum Thread] – We enjoyed ourselves through the first two episodes of 1112, and the third installment is no different. I'd start with the earlier games first, just so you're playing everything in order. Now… If the developer could start releasing more than one episode a year…

DrawRace 2, $0.99 – [Review] – [Forum Thread] – The original Draw Race was a ton of fun and Draw Race 2 is better in absolutely every way. The line drawing control mechanic is fantastic, and the menu system could potentially fool people into thinking it was a real serious business racing game.

The rest of the game ratings can be seen in their respective rating categories (also found in the sidebar navigation): 5 Stars, 4.5 Stars, 4 Stars, 3.5 Stars, 3 Stars, and 2 Stars.

As always, we expect there will be some debate about relative scores, but keep in mind that everyone's personal ratings may vary based on individual tastes.

For more of our favorite iOS games, check out our "Best iPhone Games" category which includes all of these monthly posts as well as other special compilations of the greatest games the App Store has to offer:

• So You Just Got a Verizon iPhone… Let's Get You Up To Speed!
• So You Just Got an iPhone 4 – An App Store Gaming Guide
• Best iPod Touch and iPhone Games: 2010 Buyer's Guide
• 2010: TouchArcade Staff Favorites – Eli
• 2010: TouchArcade Staff Favorites – Blake
• 2010: TouchArcade Staff Favorites – Brad
• 2010: TouchArcade Staff Favorites – Jared
• Best iPod Touch and iPhone Games: 2009 Buyer's Guide

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While Apple keynotes themselves are always a lot of fun, I actually almost like the day immediately before the keynote more. Speculation on what's coming reaches a climax, and all you've got to do is wait a day to see who was right and who was wrong. MacRumors provides a rundown of possibilities from the hardware lineup, and subsequent rumors make an iPhone 4S seem even more reasonable as more and more vague leaks of "iPhone 4S" branding appear. Following case leaks and a few other shaky rumors, there hasn't been a very strong indication that the redesigned iPhone 5 is coming at all– At least not yet.

Regardless of what the new iPhone looks like, the addition of the A5 processor should make the iPhone 5 (or 4S) a pocket-sized power-house. Anandtech recently posted a set of benchmarks of mobile GPU's, and the GPU in the iPad 2 is still blowing the doors off the competition:

The rumor mill seems to be in agreement that the "main" feature to be touted at this keynote will be an entire new voice-powered "Assistant." Check out a demo video that MacRumors compiled based on rumors of how it will work:

9to5Mac has an interview with the co-founder of Siri, the company who is believed to be behind this new technology, who has the following to say:

Make no mistake: Apple’s ‘mainstreaming’ Artificial Intelligence in the form of a Virtual Personal Assistant is a groundbreaking event. I’d go so far as to say it is a World-Changing event. Right now a few people dabble in partial AI enabled apps like Google Voice Actions, Vlingo or Nuance Go. Siri was many iterations ahead of these technologies, or at least it was two years ago. This is REAL AI with REAL market use. If the rumors are true, Apple will enable millions upon millions of people to interact with machines with natural language. The PAL will get things done and this is only the tip of the iceberg. We’re talking another technology revolution. A new computing paradigm shift.

So here comes the fun part, what do you think is going to come of tomorrow's keynote? A spec-bumped iPhone 4S? A surprise reveal of an entirely new iPhone 5? New iOS 5 features that haven't been revealed yet like Assistant? New iPod touches to coincide with the iPhone launch? Or will something come out of left field like the iPad 3 with Retina Display, or a million other things that could potentially happen that Apple managed to keep a total secret?

Personally, I think the iPhone 4S is happening but I just can't shake the thoughts of the potential redesign. I'm not sure how credible the weird case "leaks" we've seen are, but the rumored redesign appearing in an Apple app I just can't rationalize in any way other than a design like that is coming. What reason could Apple, a company who historically has put immense importance on a refined user experience place that icon in their own apps? It just doesn't make sense!

I guess we'll find out tomorrow, but, in the time being, we can let our speculation run wild– At least for another 24 hours or so.

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FlipShip [99¢/Lite] from ByteSize Games is a 2D dodge and shoot'em-up game, which at first glance seems to resemble a bunch of other titles, like Tilt to Live [$2.99/Lite/HD], Geometry Wars [99¢], Hyperlight [$1.99] and Infinity Field [99¢/HD].  However, once you start playing it's immediately apparent that FlipShip features some interesting ideas, adding a strategic element which differentiates it nicely from those other games.

In FlipShip, your craft is maneuvered using tilt controls and automatically fires when an enemy is within range, so there's no fire button. Where it differs from your typical shooter is that the color of your spaceship is important, because you can only destroy enemies the same color as yourself. This is reminiscent of the color-based Japanese shoot'em-up Ikaruga from 2001. For example, if your ship is red, you can destroy any red enemies, but you'd better be careful to avoid the blues.  Over time more and more of the different-color enemies appear, making them increasingly difficult to avoid.

At any time you can tap the screen to "flip" the color of your ship. That's right, the title of this game – FlipShip – actually refers to "flipping the color", not flipping the spaceship over. So now, suddenly your spaceship has turned blue. This means you're now hunting the masses of blue enemies which have built up and avoiding the red ones, basically the exact opposite of before.

At this point, things get a little strategic. You could simply keep changing colors, depending on what's close. But, each time you kill a same-color enemy your combo points are increased, and these combos ramp up pretty quickly, so there's a big incentive to remain one color as long as possible to achieve massive combo points. If you play it safe and change colors, your combo point value is immediately reset. Although, if you wait too long you may get trapped by the growing number of different-color enemies and die. Choosing when to flip becomes a key part of this game.

After you've been playing for a while and destroyed masses of same-color enemies to earn an insane combo-point value, you'll probably expect to have a huge score …BUT…  you won't.  You see, your points don't actually count until you "bank" them, by flipping your color.  If you die without flipping color, you lose all your precious combo-points and score nothing.

This creates a constant strategic dilemma – do you keep hunting the same-color enemies to increase your massive combo-score, or do you feel threatened by the growing number of enemies to avoid, and flip color to safely bank the combo points so they're not at risk?  This simple mechanism elevates this game from a regular arcade shooter into a much more strategic affair.

I'm not a huge fan of tilt controls, but after configuring the tilting in the options, it worked perfectly, allowing the craft to precisely dodge and weave around enemies, squeezing through tight gaps to collect power-ups such as slow-motion, bubble-shield, packs of homing missiles and electrical bursts.

There's three spaceships to choose from, each with different speed, weapon range and a unique special ability which is triggered by tapping the power meter once it's filled by destroying enemies.  There's six levels of difficulty, ranging from 'very easy' to 'insane', each with a Game Center leaderboard, although some users report there's little difference between some of the difficulty levels and no need for so many.

Flipship's neon vector-style graphics are not as flashy, exciting and high-energy as Infinity Field, and there's not a huge amount of variety in the gameplay with just one game mode. However, the strategic color flipping concept works really well, the controls are totally responsive and people are enjoying it in our forums.

The next update will make the game Universal and is already with Apple for release shortly, plus there's a free lite version if you're curious. Playing this game may even tell you something about your own character. How confident and greedy are you – will you gamble for the high score, or flip?

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This week’s episode of The TouchArcade Show is an awesome one because it sees the return of The Bearded One, Jared Nelson, after his Grand European Adventure. At the top, we talk about the sights, sounds, and tastes of Mordor, Germany, Paris and other exotic places. Somehow, we find the time to talk about games later on, but when we do, we cover a lot of bases. Topics include the next iPhone, the latest video game releases, Kindle Fire, and your e-mails.

If you’d like to give this a listen, go ahead by clicking that link just below. If you’d like to save a piece of us on your hard drive (and who wouldn’t) while also getting the next ‘cast the second it’s uploaded you, you should really grab us on iTunes and Zune.

iTunes Link: The TouchArcade Show
Zune Marketplace: TouchArcade.com Podcasts
RSS Feed: The TouchArcade Show
Direct Link: TouchArcadeShow-019.mp3, 41MB

Here are your show notes. We’ll be back this Monday with another awesome bonus episode, and of course, this coming Friday with another regularly scheduled show. Send us an e-mail while you wait, by the way: podcast@toucharcade.com.

GAMES!

Eli Note: This is the European pizza bag technology I mentioned.

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Here's a brief public service announcement of sorts to those of you out there who are still rocking the click wheel iPod and regularly use it to play games– At some point last night they vanished from iTunes entirely. If you haven't already, now is a fantastic time to back up your existing library of click wheel games, as it's really not clear if you'll ever be able to download them again. A free Dropbox account would work perfectly for this, or really any other cloud storage service that you can just upload your games to and forget about.

Reading further into this move by Apple, it seems reasonable to think that this might be the end of the iconic click wheel line of iPods. MacRumors notes that there haven't even been any new releases in the click wheel iPod game library since 2009. The click wheel iPod wasn't updated in last year's iPod event either, casting even further doubt onto the fate of the device. With Apple pushing so hard into cloud-based services and the shocking array of media streaming apps available for iOS devices, it seems reasonable to think that the company feels there's no longer a place for the non-iOS large-capacity traditional iPod.

Seriously though, back up those games.

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