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Fall 2011 is the unofficial season of anthropomorphized penguins. Don’t believe me? Between the penguin sweater craze and the release of Happy Feet 2, adorable penguins are everywhere. Now, a third entry into fall’s penguin lineup is here in the form of BulkyPix’s super-cute new game, Crazy Escape [99¢]. And this one answers the question on everybody’s mind: Can penguins drive tiny penguin cars, and if so, is it extra-adorable?

It’s a story as old as time itself: Two penguin buddies have to take to their Jeep (err, low-emission 4×4 of indeterminate branding, I should say) to save their sheep friends from being kidnapped and eaten by wolves. As these penguins race along the winding road, they must collect sheep, stars (ostensibly because penguins like shiny objects?), keys (to unchain locked-up sheep, of course!), and avoid stationary wolves, roaming wolves, chasing wolves – basically wolves of all kinds, all right?! You can run into fences (good) and trees (bad!), and the less road you cover to complete the level, the better.

Your finger acts as a simultaneous road-creating device and penguin-steerer. You drag your finger across the screen to create the path your penguins take. Ideally, you devise the shortest route possible to collect your stars and sheep friends, as this results in the highest score.

At first, it’s not particularly challenging because there’s no element of speed involved. However, as the game progresses, wolves start out on the road behind you, following your every movement, and if you dawdle too long you’ll be busted for sure. Additionally, things like oil slicks and trees get in your path which, if hit, cause you to swerve (at best) or force you to restart the level (at worst). Here’s hoping everyone was wearing their seatbelts!

The levels go by lightning-fast, so it’s perfect if you have a short attention span or a short period of time in which to play. The graphics are also pretty cute. However, as it’s a line-drawing game, the most important part is the drawing element. The worst part of so many drawing games is an imprecise, over-sensitive or otherwise less-than-ideal drawing mechanic.

Luckily, that’s not the case with Crazy Escape. The drawing was perfectly in-sync with my finger; at times, perhaps a little too in-sync, as I have shaky hands (particularly when being chased by hungry wolves). My only real complaint is that on an iPhone or iPod touch screen, it’s hard to see what you’re doing. My chubby fingers kept blocking my view, which made it difficult to navigate around the increasingly challenging obstacles the game threw at me as I progressed.

Still, despite my fat fingers, I found this game to be extremely fun. For only a buck, there’s really no excuse to not download this one. You get a seemingly-endless number of levels and a fun diversion, and it’s Universal to boot. Besides, you don’t want to find yourself ill-prepared for the fall penguin craze, do you?

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Coming early next year, developer FarSight Studios will be bringing a massive collection of some of the most classic pinball games from throughout history to just about every single gaming platform imaginable. Of course, the one that matters most to us is the iOS platform, which the upcoming Pinball Arcade is indeed slated to hit. You're likely familiar with FarSight's previous pinball work, the Pinball Hall of Fame series, with The Gottlieb Collection and The Williams Collection, each of which has landed on various platforms over the last several years. With The Pinball Arcade, they look to take a similar "collection" approach, only with far more licensed tables.

The Pinball Arcade lays claim to more than 50 different tables from classic companies like Williams and Gottlieb (naturally), Bally, and Stern. FarSight is calling the game "the most comprehensive pinball video game ever created" which it certainly will be if they can really achieve their lofty goal of included tables. Details are scarce at this point, but it sounds as if the game will initially ship with at least the tables mentioned in the above trailer, and possibly more, with a steady stream of additional tables being made available as downloadable content post release.

We'll look to dig up some more information on The Pinball Arcade as the new year approaches, but the prospect of having dozens of virtual representations of classic pinball machines available right in your pocket has players in our forums drooling in anticipation (myself included).

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In 3D Pixel Racing [$1.99] the car graphics look extremely blocky – there's simply no anti-aliasing (or smoothing of the edges) …but that's not a bad thing, because it's completely intentional! This car racing game uses 8-bit pixelated graphics to depict the 3D cars, tracks and menus, so they look like they're constructed from tiny blocks of Lego. You might think this sounds like 8-bit Rally [99¢], but no, this is far more pixelated than that.

While the unusual "pixel" graphics are definitely the main draw, there's also quite a few other features, including 5 game modes, 11 cars, 10 tracks, and various weather conditions, which all sounds really good on paper. However, this game has received mixed feedback in our discussion thread, with the menu system in particular being singled out for criticism.

The developers advise the menu system was ported across from the Wii version and it is, quite frankly, one of the worst menu interfaces I've encountered on any iOS game. Basically, two buttons labeled "1" and "2"  are assigned different purposes depending on the screen.  It's astounding that after investing in a game, producing such interesting graphics, and delivering multiple game modes that anyone would implement a user interface that's so obviously unpleasant to navigate. As a rule of thumb: If you need to display instructions for your menu buttons, it's too complex.

Having condemned the nasty menu system, let's examine the gameplay. The five different game modes provide a nice range of racing formats, including single race, championship races over five random tracks, and a "capture-the-flag" mode where you gain points by stealing or driving with the flag. There's also a "Hot Pursuit" mode where you play either a fleeing criminal or a chasing policeman, just like Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit [$4.99 / HD]. And finally, there's a time trial mode. There's no multiplayer mode, but five game modes is still a pretty decent offering.

Each of the 11 cars has speed, grip, and handling attributes, with one model being a Formula One vehicle. In addition to day-time / night-time racing, the cars are affected by the weather conditions, including sun, snow, rain and fog, which all affect the amount of tire grip and visibility. Although according to the help screen, rain causes very low visibility, while there's good visibility in foggy conditions. Remind me not to go driving with those guys!

Pitstops are available in Championship and Single race modes, for changing tires and refueling.  An indicator tells you how damaged your tires are, which reduces their grip.  You also have a fuel gauge. If the fuel tank is empty, the car emits smoke and moves jerkily. Pitstops can be turned off in the settings, if you prefer.

The control systems differ depending on which device you're using. iPad users can choose either virtual joystick controls, or tilt.  There's no need to select one option or the other, you simply start tilting, or using the on-screen controls. The infamous "1" button is used for brake and reverse, while "2" is your accelerator. Any iPhone / iPod users are limited to tilt controls.

The virtual stick controls are reasonable, but not perfect. If your finger moves too far off the pad, it stops controlling the car. And the tilt controls felt awkward on the iPad, with no option for adjusting tilt sensitivity.  On my first race my driving seemed pretty decent, as I managed to hold an almost reasonable racing line, but apparently I was playing easy mode, with the "drive assist" option set to high by default (Off, Low, Med, High). The car was almost driving itself around corners.

(Trailer from the original WiiWare version)

There were a couple of other issues:  There's no high score leaderboards, which is unusual for a racing game. This is crying out for Game Center. Also, some options like drive assist, CPU difficulty, and number of laps should really be presented as options when starting the race, not hidden away inconveniently in the options screen. And lastly, the English is confusing at times, like when you press a button and it says "Confirm or continue?"

3D Pixel Racing is a winner in the categories of graphical creativity and delivery of plenty of game modes, but it comes last for user-interface design due to cluttered menus and buttons which make it unpleasant to navigate. This game seems to polarize people, with some loving it and others wanting to delete it. Personally, I'm in the middle.  If you survive the menus and adjust to the controls, there's certainly some fun to be found, at a lower price than many big-name racing games.

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In this week's bonus episode of The TouchArcade Show, we speak with Rocketcat Games' Kepa Auwae about Rocketcat's past, present, and future and discuss his studio's action RPG Mage Gauntlet [$2.99] in great detail. Kepa keeps it real the entire time. Dude spills the beans on the studio's plans for a trilogy, a free-to-play spin-off, and what it's probably going to do to improve on the current build of Mage Gauntlet. This was a spectacularly fun conversation, and if you're a fan of Mage Gauntlet, you'll undoubtedly leave it with some excitement.

If you'd like to give us a listen, go ahead and do so via streaming or direct download. You could also subscribe to use on iTunes or Zune to get every new episode the second they hit the Internet. If you ask me, this is the premier way to enjoy your TouchArcade orally.

iTunes Link: The TouchArcade Show
Zune Marketplace: TouchArcade.com Podcasts
RSS Feed: The TouchArcade Show
Direct Link: TouchArcadeShow-Bonus-022.mp3, 25MB

If you've got the time this week, we'd really love to hear your positive feedback on our iTunes reviews page. Also, feel free to fire us an e-mail: podcast@toucharcade.com.

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The mobile division of Nexon Co. is readying an iOS version of their popular free-to-play online first-person shooter Combat Arms. Known as Combat Arms: Zombies, the title has been developed using Unreal Engine 3 and is based off of the zombie themed cooperative Fireteam Mode from the original game. There aren't many details regarding Combat Arms: Zombies at the moment, but Nexon Mobile hints that they are interested in supporting the game post-release until it almost equals the full scale of the original Combat Arms online game.

I've never played Combat Arms, but this Zombies edition sounds like a cooperative survival mode similar to the popular Call of Duty: Zombies [$4.99/HD] that's been a pretty big hit on iOS the past couple of years. The first trailer for the game looks pretty darn impressive, and although it doesn't appear to show any actual gameplay, it does seem that the entire video was rendered using an in-game engine.

Combat Arms: Zombies will first be unveiled in playable form at the G-Star 2011 expo in South Korea on November 10th. The release date is expected sometime shortly after, though nothing specific has been confirmed. We'll of course be keeping our eye out for Combat Arms: Zombies as it gets closer to release, and bring you any new information or media as we get it.

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Retro gamers are about a week out from a true bundle of 8-bit gaming goodness, with a promise of much more to come. On the weekend of October 28th, Elite Systems will be releasing the Elite Collection and Elite Collection HD (for iPad) that bring a dozen 8-bit games to the App Store, and at a week-long introductory price of $0.99.

Last month I spoke with Elite Systems co-founder Steve Wilcox who took me through his studio's plans to bring a great number of notable 8-bit titles from years past to iOS gamers, using a new proprietary technology developed within Elite. This new system, or facilitator, brings these titles to iOS at near 100% accuracy and allows a great degree of control customization thanks to the studio's "iDaptive" control system. Elite's initial move in this effort involved ZX Spectrum-only titles, but it's worth noting that with this new collection, Elite has pushed beyond just the ZX Spectrum platform.

The first wave of titles in the Elite Collection effort arrived at the end of last month in the form of individual, stand-alone titles. The games released were Black Magic, First Samurai, and Enforcer — all in both iPhone and iPad "HD" versions. The Elite Collection arriving this weekend brings 12 titles in all, as well as an in-app store through which additional games will be made available (and the plan is for over a hundred titles in all).

[ Also see - video links for: Black Magic, Enforcer, First Samurai ]

The bundled titles consist of:

• Elite Collection Vol. #1:
  • featuring ALTERNATE REALITY: THE CITY and also including
  • Black Magic
  • Alternate Reality: The Dungeon
• Elite Collection Vol. #2:
  • featuring URIDIUM and also including
  • Buggy Boy (a.k.a. Speed Buggy)
  • First Samurai
• Elite Collection Vol. #3:
  • featuring BUNDESLIGA MANAGER and also including
  • Denaris
  • Enforcer
• Additional 8-bit "Singles":
  • Battleships (a.k.a. Battleship)
  • Frank Bruno's Boxing
  • Batty

Released simultaneously with the Elite Collection will be the individual, stand-alone titles Alternate Reality: The City, Uridium, and Bundesliga Manager DE, each in both iPhone and iPad "HD" versions at $0.99 each.

Wilcox indicates that Elite will be releasing four volumes of games, each consisting of one to six 8-bit home computer titles, each month. One of the titles soon to be released is a particularly excellent game that's sure to get many readers out there excited: Choplifter! At the time of its initial release, the Elite Collection in-app store is expected to have 13 additional titles available for download. We'll have more on those when the app goes live.

Some prospective additions to the Elite Collection's in-app shop, down the road, are:

• Audiogenic Software Vol. #1 featuring Emlyn Hughes International Soccer
• Free Fall Games Vol. #1 featuring Archon II: Adept
• Geoff Crammond Vol. #1 featuring Stunt Car Racer
• Ozark Softscape Vol. #1 featuring M.U.L.E.

Between their ZX Spectrum-based efforts and these new 8-bit titles, Elite is truly driving a massive campaign that I feel sure most every retro gamer out there can appreciate. We'll keep readers updated as new titles arrive, but in the meantime, enjoy these excellent games from a different time.

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I discovered tower defense late in my gaming career. I have no good justification for this. Perhaps I was too busy burying my face into all the RPGs and sidescrollers I could find. However, my intro game into the genre was PixelJunk Monsters, and if you gotta discover late, it may as well be with one of the genre's best entries. Ever since, I salivate Pavlovian-style every time someone murmurs the words "tower defense," and I had the same reaction when Gem Keeper [$2.99] was mentioned around the Touch Arcade office. I also was digging the fact that NCSoft made it, because I like them and I wanted to see how their skills would translate to iOS.

Like any proper tower defense title, Gem Keeper has plenty of levels to keep your building skills busy. 30 are available in total, and over the course of gameplay you have the ability to earn 14 different towers to use to strategically keep baddies out of your fortress. You'll start slow, with only a basic gunfire tower and a few bombs at your disposal. However, soon enough you'll be slowing em down with sticky goo and firing giant spiked cannonballs. I loved that you had the option to switch between Easy, Medium and Hard difficulty at anytime, even right before you start a level. Gem Keeper doesn't disappoint when it comes to the challenge either, but I'll return to that later.

Everything about the presentation of Gem Keeper has the potential to vault it to the top picks of this genre for iOS. It runs smoothly and has very cute animations, but it still has a mature enough feel that adults won't be turned off by the look of it. It does feature many of the hallmarks of tower defense titles: you'll plant towers to try to ward off waves of enemies, you can upgrade or rip down your towers at anytime, and it increases in difficulty as you progress. However, one thing that it does that is unique is allow you to build towers on sliding rails, so as the waves come by, you can move the towers with a swipe of a finger so they keep getting fired upon. This is an excellent way to keep the player engaged, instead of just sitting there watching to see if what you've built is enough. This extra little bit of action was enough to keep me much more engaged than I am in the usual tower defense title.

The three stages (each has ten levels) are Forest, Ice and Mine, so you'll be able to enjoy different "themes", as they call them. One thing I noticed was that NCSoft actually went out of their way to make the Normal level decently challenging. Usually I zoom through them without a hitch, but by the time I got to the Ice world, I had to replay levels several times each to get a feel for what was coming and what towers had to be built and ripped down at what intervals. The game keeps you busy, and I really enjoyed that. You won't be able to just build a bunch of towers and boost them — you'll need to use your brain to figure out exactly which towers work for what waves and stay on top of building and breaking down; otherwise, you won't pass the level. In other words, it will keep you busy, and is an ideal fit if you want a challenge.

Gem Keeper is simply a stunner in both execution and gameplay, and I cannot recommend it highly enough. Whether you plow through the 30 stages of Adventure mode or go for Endless gameplay just to see how many waves you can fend off, this game is lovely to look at and even more fun to play. Tower defense fanatics, beware though — you're about to lose a lot of your free time.

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Attention Kairosoft nerds: the studio, fresh off a release of Edo Town earlier this fall, has just dropped a new game on the Japanese App Store. It's called Zaibatsu Towns, and from what we're gathering via a few fantastic translator-types, it's a financial-oriented town-building game not so dissimilar from its last still region-exclusive title. The key difference appears to be the town itself — it's not as 'traditional' Japanese as Edo Town's.

With the release of this, Kairosoft broke its emerging worldwide release pattern. We're not so sure Edo Town is on the way next, in other words. For all we know, we could be receiving Game Dev Story 2 next, or hey, even this.

One thing for certain, though: I want whatever game is coming. Also, hurry up, Kairosoft. I just finished Grand Prix Story [$3.99 / Lite] for the fourth and final time. What's a man to do with all this new time on his hands?

[Thanks to a for helping us with this, people; you know who you are!]

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Halfbrick's marketing wizard and president of Halfbrick Marketing School For The Gifted And Golden-Tongued, Phil Larsen, promised us that more updates to Jetpack Joyride [$.99] were on the way. Again, the magnificent man leaves no room for disappointment. In the latest version of the game, the studio has added two new jetpacks, more costumes, and score-tracking features that'll definitely inspire some ire amongst friends if you rock at joy riding.

To get specific, this update adds the Chrome Plated Afterburner and the Golden Piggy Pack as new additions to the jetpack line-up. Also, you can now dress as "Sensei" from the Fruit Ninja [$0.99 / HD / Lite] series, a silver robot, or even a king in his robes. More importantly, you can now post your scores directly to Twitter and Facebook and enjoy Doodle Jump-style markers in-game that reveal where your friends have croaked. That's actually quite a huge addition, eh?

Jetpack Joyride is still stupid-fun for us. I can't explain it, either. It just has that one, almost indescribable "one more play" appeal. We can't stop. Seriously. Help us.

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Putter King Adventure Golf [99¢] is released by Putter King, a company with real indoor miniature golf franchises, so these guys should know how to design a fun and challenging mini-putt experience. We were keen to see how their real-world ideas would translate onto our iOS devices. The good news is: They've done a pretty decent job of it.

This game sports four different modes: Championship mode is a regular single-player round of mini-golf. In Time trial mode, you're racing against the clock to sink the ball in the shortest possible time on any specific unlocked hole. Multi-player mode allows 2 to 4 local players to take turns on the same device (there's currently no online multiplayer). But before you play the other modes, you may want to invest some time on practice mode, to hone your skills. It would be nice if there was a career mode or tournament, to tie multiple games together, but there's currently not.

There are four cartoon avatars to choose between (2 male, 2 female), although this decision only affects which character appears on the screen. The avatars have no different attributes and don't really impact the game, so they're basically just a cosmetic preference. Although they are quite large and do obscure your view of the course, so since there's no option for "no avatar", it's probably a strategic advantage to pick the thinnest character.

There are three different courses, with 23 uniquely themed holes to play in total. The courses include 'Adventure in Japan', 'Trip around the world' and 'Putty's playground', with the last course being initially locked.  Each hole in Putty's playground must be unlocked by completing a specific challenge, such as: Score two hole-in-one's in a row, or finish a championship below par.

The courses are all rendered in 3D and feature all the slopes, jumps, water traps, bridges, tunnels and obstacles you'd expect to see on a regular mini-putt course.  Some of the more elaborate obstacles include a sumo wrestler, a moving sushi conveyer belt and the mandatory windmill.  There's different surfaces, like fake grass, wood, stone and even an ice slope. They also mix things up occasionally by making you take shots in the dark or without any aiming lines. One level even asks you a multi-choice general knowledge question, which opens a short-cut if you answer correctly.

The physics are well implemented, providing the same frustration you'd feel in real life as your ball circles the hole without sinking, or narrowly misses the hole and rows back down the slope of Mt. Fuji (again). The main challenge is getting the speed of your swing right, as a gentle touch is required at times.

The controls work pretty well …mostly. A large horizontal slider along the bottom of the screen lets you choose which of the three starting points to tee off from (not sure why you can't just touch a starting tee).  To aim your shot, you drag your finger around the screen while little white dots indicate where you're aiming. When you're ready to hit the ball, you simply drag a large vertical slider down …and then push it upwards at the desired speed. Very occasionally, it wouldn't let me aim the ball in the direction I wanted, as it became a little confused in tight spaces, although it would always respond in the end.

In real mini-golf there's often a maximum 9-shot limit, to stop queues forming at holes. But here, you can take over forty shots. There's no option for throwing your clubs when you play badly, but you can hit the ball right off the green, into the "out-of-bounds" area, which every mini-putter needs to try at least once.

Once you eventually sink the ball, your result is displayed (eg: Bogey) and your overall scorecard appears. Unfortunately the scorecard doesn't include an in-progress total, so you can't immediately tell if you're above or below par overall. Openfeint leaderboards are provided for the three courses and for time trials on each hole, with just seven achievements.

The 3D course graphics and themed backgrounds are generally well presented, although your avatars feet and club often pass straight through the objects on the course. And some text labels exceed their background boxes, which looks untidy. Also, some objects become translucent when they block your view, however a couple of times my view was completely obscured in both camera perspectives, making aiming difficult, which is particularly frustrating if you're in the middle of a dream round (I wasn't).

Putter King Adventure Golf does a great job of capturing the spirit of miniature golf, bringing back memories of playing this as a child against my father. With the multiplayer mode, a family of four can now have mini-golf competitions at home, with the loser doing the dishes. The 3D holes are pretty creative, but if you want something different, the developers are currently running a design-a-hole competition, with the winning three user-designed holes to be added as a free update in future.

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