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Back in April, we learned that developer SoMoGa was hard at work on an iOS port of classic RPG Lunar: Silver Star Story, and today we finally have the first screenshots from the game. SoMoGa was responsible for porting the Sega Saturn RPG Vay [$4.99] to the App Store in 2008, and did a pretty fantastic job doing so. While Vay was a somewhat obscure title, the Lunar series has a pretty dedicated following worldwide, and has seen several different releases and remakes over the years.

Originally, Lunar: The Silver Star was released for the Sega CD back in 1993. A remake of the game, called Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete and featuring enhanced audio and visuals, came to the more powerful Sega Saturn console in 1997, but only in Japan.  This remake eventually did make its way to North America by way of the PlayStation console in 1999.

This leads me to one thing a lot of people have been wondering since the announcement of Lunar: Silver Star Story Touch, which is exactly what version of the game the iOS port would be based on. SoMoGa played it a bit coy in an email to us, explaining that the version these screenshots are taken from is based on the Saturn remake, but that the Sega CD version is getting ported as well.

I don’t know if that means there will be a completely separate release of the original or if there will be some sort of mode inside of the game that lets you play with the original graphics and sound. SoMoGa promises to clarify this further soon, but if you’re a purist looking for the original game experience it looks like you’ll be in luck one way or another.

Expect more news on Lunar: Silver Star Story Touch soon, and you can look for the game to hit the App Store sometime before the end of the current quarter, which basically means sometime before the end of September.

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Good news if you’re a Konami fan: the Japanese publisher and creator has received the July 4th memo being passed around, and as a result, most of its titles on the App Store are now listed at a paltry $.99 instead of their standard prices.

For a limited time the over-the-shoulder shooter based in the Metal Gear universe, Metal Gear Solid Touch, as well as Silent Hill: The Escape, and Castlevania Puzzle: Encore of the Night are up on the price-chopping block. These are easily the brightest of Konami’s various releases, but there’s some other goodies being offered, too, including the arcade brawler X-Men, which just came out a month or so ago.

• Alcatraz Breakout – $.99 → Free
• Castlevania Puzzle: Encore of the Night – $4.99 → $.99
• Frogger Pad -$4.99 → $.99
• Krazy Kart Racing – $2.99 → $.99
• International Track & Field – $1.99 → $.99
• Metal Gear Solid Touch – $7.99 → $.99 [Universal]
• Silent Hill: The Escape – $4.99 → $.99
• Silent Scope – $2.99 → $.99
• X-Men – $2.99 → $.99 [Universal]

Not a bad list at all. Even though it’s older, I highly suggest Metal Gear Solid Touch, if only because it's based on Metal Gear Solid 4's ludicrous story. You'll learn what "crazy" is after you give that thing a spin. X-Men is a good one, too.

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Yuji Naka, the former head of Sonic Team and now co-owner of PROPE, has dropped a new Unreal Engine 3 thing on the App Store. Note the hesitance.

It’s called PD – proper discoverer [$2.99], and it’s remarkable because it doesn’t jive with what PROPE has released in the past. It’s not a Let’s TAP mini-game title, in other words.

It's experiential. Like Epic’s showpiece of the engine’s power, Epic Citadel [Free], PD has you walking around a castle and its grounds in first-person. The goal is to see everything PROPE has rendered. In order to do that, you have to collect hidden cards scattered in the environments.

PD strikes me as little more than a tech demo. And for better or worse, it's a demo that PROPE is monetizing as it learns the ropes of Unreal Engine 3 and what it can offer in terms of lighting, shading, and all that technical jazz.

In the past, we've seen many other studios experimenting with Unreal Engine 3 take and twist Epic Citadel in a similar manner. Just a couple of months ago, actually, I played a poker game with an Epic Citadel-y vibe and structure. Yeah. It was weird.

It’s interesting to see a Japanese developer experimenting with Unreal, no less Unreal for tablet and smart device games, but will PROPE continue using the engine? I’ve blasted over a note to the studio in hopes to learn of its long-term plans, or at least its goals. I’ll let you know when or if I hear back.

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Kairosoft’s Game Dev Story [$1.99 / Lite] is now cheaper than what it was. For a limited time, and in celebration of the release of Pocket Academy [$3.99 / Lite], the quirky simulation game that puts you in the shoes of producer, administrator, and game developer is $1.99. That’s a 50 percent savings from the regular price of $3.99.

If you listen to our podcast, you know that I’m a ridiculously huge fan of GDS. If I could, I’d erect a statue in its name in front of my apartment complex and praise it each morning before I start work or make some coffee. It’s good in all the right ways and has a level of depth and cunning that few simulation games, especially on this platform, tend to have.

Our review, of course, is glowing if you’re interested in a… critical dissection of the title instead of my lunatic ramblings in a news article.

In other news, but not-so-recent news, GDS has received a few updates since it’s initial release. For example, it now supports Game Center and its leaderboards functionality. You can also now switch the language back and forth between it's native language Japanese and the English translation, which might actually prove to be helpful considering that some of the translation work is shaky at best.

Pocket Academy, by the way, is another excellent Kairosoft simulation, combining the same quirk from GDS, except applied to a school.

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Just a couple of weeks ago, CAVE released a new trailer for their upcoming iOS version of manic horizontal shooter Deathsmiles, along with an apology for the game missing its intended Spring release window. It turns out that they didn’t miss it by much though, as CAVE has officially announced that Deathsmiles will be releasing next Thursday July 7th.

In addition, just as they’ve done with their previous iOS releases Espgaluda II [$8.99/Lite], Dodonpachi Resurrection [$8.99/Lite], and Mushihimesama Bug Panic [$4.99/Lite], Deathsmiles will launch at a discounted price of $4.99 for the first 4 days before jumping up to its regular $8.99 price tag. Also like those games, the iOS version of Deathsmiles will feature an exclusive iPhone mode in addition to the regular arcade mode that features new gameplay elements and a brand new playable character.

If having to wait until July 7th to see Deathsmiles being played on an iOS device is just too much for you to handle, then you’ll be happy to know that on July 1st CAVE producer MasaKING will be playing the game live over UStream as an early preview. They will also be discussing aspects about creating the game, and although it will be entirely in Japanese, the video will be liveblogged in English so folks like me can still follow along. If this interests you, head on over to the CAVE World Live UStream channel on July 1st at 11am GMT (or 6am on the East Coast here in the US).

We’ll be diving into Deathsmiles and bringing you a full review in time for its launch on July 7th, and you can drop by the thread in our forums to pass the time with your fellow gamers while waiting for the release.

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We've been sort of Kairosoft crazy ever since they released their phenomenal game company simulation Game Dev Story [$1.99/Lite] last year. Then, Kairosoft followed up that release here in the States with Hot Springs Story [$3.99/Lite], an even more refined simulation that let you manage and expand your own Japanese spa. Since then, Kairosoft has been releasing tons of differently themed simulations using their trademark character and style, but so far none of them have made it out of the Japanese App Store and into the US.

Back in April we took a look at one of those titles, which through our powers of mediocre translation we were calling Pocket School Story 2. It turns out that the game is actually called Pocket Academy [$3.99/Lite], and it has just gone live in the US App Store. Pocket Academy looks extremely similar to Hot Springs Story, except that you are creating a successful school from the ground up and managing all of the different aspects of it rather than a Japanese bath house.

We'll be putting Pocket Academy through its paces and come back with a full review soon, but since there are no doubt many of you who will buy a new Kairosoft game sight unseen (myself included) I figured that the decent thing to do would be to let you know of its availability and provide you with a link to the game. You can also check out the early impressions from gamers in our forums who have picked up the game, and we'll be back with more on Pocket Academy soon.

Update: A lite version is now available too.

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We've been sort of Kairosoft crazy ever since they released their phenomenal game company simulation Game Dev Story [$1.99/Lite] last year. Then, Kairosoft followed up that release here in the States with Hot Springs Story [$3.99/Lite], an even more refined simulation that let you manage and expand your own Japanese spa. Since then, Kairosoft has been releasing tons of differently themed simulations using their trademark character and style, but so far none of them have made it out of the Japanese App Store and into the US.

Back in April we took a look at one of those titles, which through our powers of mediocre translation we were calling Pocket School Story 2. It turns out that the game is actually called Pocket Academy [$3.99], and it has just gone live in the US App Store. Pocket Academy looks extremely similar to Hot Springs Story, except that you are creating a successful school from the ground up and managing all of the different aspects of it rather than a Japanese bath house.

We'll be putting Pocket Academy through its paces and come back with a full review soon, but since there are no doubt many of you who will buy a new Kairosoft game sight unseen (myself included) I figured that the decent thing to do would be to let you know of its availability and provide you with a link to the game. You can also check out the early impressions from gamers in our forums who have picked up the game, and we'll be back with more on Pocket Academy soon.

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War Grimoire [$1.99 / HD] is a tower defense title with the trappings of a great genre-based game, but its execution of fundamental elements and basic design are holding it back.

Instead of lingering on the bad, I’ll note what drew our all-seeing eye to the project in the first place: its visual flair.

War Grimoire's world is a vibrant one, enriched by traditional fantasy and Japanese comics and cartoon tropes. In this genre in particular, it’s unusual to see a well-budgeted game shoot for something outside of space marines, bugs, and ravaged worlds.

Character has a place, too. Instead of traditional towers, soldiers of all builds — including archers, mages, and dragons — are the pillars of defense. While it does default to dull monsters, there are some creative enemies that end up attacking your armies in ways I’ve never seen in a tower defense title before.

One of the more remarkable aspects is tower placement. Most levels allow you free reign with placement. It’s like the wild west of tower defense titles in this regard. Enemies pile in from all over the place, and you’ve got to be wise with your limited resources, but near infinite placement of long-distance soldiers and close-up fighters.

I also want to make note of the RPG tie-in. As in most tower defense games, you can upgrade your ‘towers’ while a level progresses. In this, however, you can take it a step further by upgrading individual class weapons and skill trees with points earned from the battles you’ve won, or hey, even lost.

In the pre-release images for War Grimoire, we saw massive battles: huge numbers of enemies and soldiers smacking each other in a centralized area. It looked chaotic, but in the fun, manageable sort of way. There was reason to the placement, at least.

In execution, battles fall apart. They’re in fact, too chaotic. Enemy pathways are clearly enough defined from the get-go, but then they take odd turns that you can’t anticipate if you haven’t played a level before. Worst case, they take odd turns that you flat-out can’t defend because it’s impossible to earn enough in-level currency to defend these points.

Disorganized chaos is the tip of the iceberg in a title otherwise riddled with much smaller design issues. The UI is needlessly heavy, games don’t always save properly, the English translation is terrible, and in general, success is measured by trial-and-error.

I’d love to see this game patched with a couple of updates. It has a bright future if the core is tweaked and massaged.

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Ben Cousins, the former general manager at EA Easy Studios who oversaw the creation of Battlefield Play 4 Free, has landed a new job in a similar field. It’s been revealed that Cousins is now working with ngmoco and forming a new studio in Sweden focused on delivering F2P games on mobile platforms.

Chock it up to “studio infancy” syndrome, but ngmoco isn’t divulging any specifics on what Cousins will be cooking up. We’re simply being told that he’ll lead the studio and drop games on Mobage courtesy of DeNA, the Japanese studio who bought ngmoco for an obscene amount of money earlier last year.

“The games industry is at an inflection point,” Cousins said in a statement. “These platforms are bringing hundreds of millions of new gamers into the fold, and at the same time existing core gamers are discovering the innovation, immersion and connectivity they bring. I’m excited to participate in helping shape what we believe is the future of games.”

It’s easy enough to speculate that Cousins will be making more core gamer-focused F2P games, which seems like a smart move considering the growth in this sector. We’ve got all sorts of “core” F2P games — League of Legends is a leading example — and it seems as though they’re continuing to fair well post-release.

It bears noting that Cousins was also a creative lead at EA DICE, so he’s got some decent ‘core’ game experience under his belt, namely with (proper) Battlefield games.

If anything, dude is going to be making F2P games. That much is plain. I just wonder if we’ll see more bullets instead of farms from ngmoco Sweden.

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Japanese mobile company DeNA has announced two new games for the Japanese market via its new-fangled social platform called “Mobage.” The names of the games should ring a bell: Infinity Blade X and Professor Layton Royale.

Professor Layton Royale is the product of an actual partnership with Level-5, the original creators of the series. Yet, I don’t think it’d be wise to expect Royale to be a full-fledged entry in the Nintendo DS franchise — it’s a crossover between Layton and Kaito Royale.

In a press conference the other afternoon, it was announced that users would be tasked with taking on the role of detective, as well as a thief and a citizen. That doesn’t sound too Layton-y to me, at least, but I suppose we’ll see for sure later this fall when it hits.

Infinity Blade X, on the other hand, is the Infinity Blade [$5.99 / HD] we all know and love — minus the whole “free to play” part. In a nutshell, on Mobage virtual items will serve as the way the game makes money; there will be no initial cost. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that you won't be able to earn extravagant weapons and armor with in-game gold. You'll just be forced to buy them.

DeNA seeks to be a world leader in the mobile / social realm and it’s making huge strides by being aggressive and creative in the space. These two games are just the latest in a string of other moves that has made Mobage enticing in the East has us scratching our chins in the West.

[Via Pocket Gamer]

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