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Orange Pixel’s Meganoid [$.99] now has more content than before. The ultra-stupid hard platform game has been updated with a serious dosage of levels, bringing the ‘normal’ mode up to a stellar 90 different offerings. Sarge Mode (read: hard mode) is now up to 80 courtesy of this latest update pass, which also ushered in Game Center support, several bug fixes and tweaks, and the once Android-exclusive “Oreah Mode,” a backwards variant of the game. A total of 50 levels from this have been added.

On the studio’s official blog, Orange Pixel notes that it’s attempting to bring the total of all three modes to 100 levels, which explains the whole “more to come line” we’ve heard. When not dropping more content into Meganoid, it’s busy with its next platformer, INC.

If you haven’t checked out Meganoid, feel free to read our review. It’s a good mash-up game with super responsive controls and a fun lo-fi art and sound direction. It might be a little too hard for its own good at times, but we dug it overall.

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Back at Mobile World Congress, held in early February in Barcelona this year, Fish Labs was showing off some incredible looking version of Galaxy on Fire 2 [$9.99] running on Nvidia's Android-based Tegra 2 devices. Here's the demo video of the graphical tech they were showing off, which admittedly was much more impressive when you saw it running on an actual device:

Per the latest press release to come out of Fish Labs, it sounds like they've taken this Tegra 2 version, and turned the graphics up to 11 for the Mac and the iPad 2. Now for the bad news, Galaxy on Fire 2 Full HD will be a brand new game on the App Store, and won't be an update to the existing game. A Fish Labs post in our forums explains this is to solve issues like being able to show the high-resolution screenshots without confusing people, not forcing all non-iPad 2 owners to keep an extra 800MB of unutilized graphical assets on their device, prevent game save inconsistency, and it will allow them to price/update each version individually.

Here's the good news: This new version of the game looks awesome:

For the rest of the screenshots (and there are a bunch) head over to the Fish Labs site. This Fully HD version of the game is expected to launch this fall, and I can't wait to play through the whole thing again on my iPad 2.

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Late last month, we detailed an impending update to CAVE’s bullet hell shmup Deathsmiles [$11.99/Lite], and over the weekend that update went live in the App Store. It includes a screen shifting option to give you more room to control the game on either edge of the screen, unlockable costumes for Tiara in iPhone mode, brand new background music hidden in the game, and a number of new DLC items including weapons from past CAVE shooters Guwange and Dodonpachi Resurrection [$11.99/Lite].

You may also remember us mentioning that CAVE was broadcasting a preview of the Deathsmiles update over UStream last Friday, and hinted that there would likely be other surprises in store as well. It turns out that there were a couple of pretty big announcements during the stream.

The first is that CAVE is bringing a version of their Japanese cellphone title Castle Creator to iOS. Castle Creator allows you to build up your own little empire in medieval Japan and then test out its durability in skirmishes against other peoples’ empires. It sounds like there will be social and location-based elements built into the gameplay.

There’s a second game based on Castle Creator coming as well, though currently it’s only going to be for folks in Japan. All we really know about this game is that it will feature slot machine style gameplay, but more details on both of these Castle Creator titles should be coming out this weekend when CAVE holds a press event in Japan.

The second big announcement during CAVE’s live stream was that an iPad specific version of Espgaluda II [$11.99/Lite] is currently in the works. The game will feature enhanced graphics over its iPhone counterpart, and will be tailored towards the extra power of the iPad 2. TouchGen has captured a video from the stream of CAVE showing off the iPad version, though they seemed to have some zooming issues during the demo and it’s hard to tell how drastic the differences will be over a video:

There’s no release window announced for Espgaluda II for the iPad, but we’ll hear more on Castle Creator during the CAVE press event next week, and just maybe they’ll throw us some new nuggets of info for the iPad bound shooter as well. We'll keep you posted.

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Street Fighter IV Volt [$6.99] launched back in June and although it played strikingly similar to Capcom's original Street Fighter IV [$4.99] on iOS, it did contain a few significant upgrades. Namely, it featured every character from the original as well as 3 new fighters and competitive online play via Game Center. We really loved the first Street Fighter IV so it wasn’t surprising that we enjoyed the enhanced Street Fighter IV Volt even more in our review.

Capcom fed a pretty steady stream of new characters and features to the original Street Fighter IV, and their new iteration is gearing up to start off on that same foot. According to Andriasang and 4Gamer.net, the first set of new characters for Street Fighter IV Volt will be a pair of female fighters, Sakura and Makoto. Sakura is a long time favorite from back in the Alpha series, and Makoto first appeared in Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike and made a triumphant return in last year’s Super Street Fighter IV on consoles.

There are plenty more screens of both Sakura and Makoto over at Andriasang.com, and as for what may be coming in future updates some enterprising members in our forums may have a lead on that as well. After digging around through some of the game files in Street Fighter IV Volt, they have come across a character list that includes every character already in the game plus Sakura and Makoto, and has spots for Evil Ryu and Fei Long too. This doesn’t necessarily confirm those characters are coming, but it sure is a strong possibility.

There is also another character in Street Fighter IV Volt that was conspicuously absent from the original game, the long time fan favorite Akuma. You fight Akuma as a second boss character after M. Bison in arcade mode, assuming you don’t lose a single round along the way. You can unlock Akuma as a playable character by playing and beating him with every character in Arcade mode or by playing 100 matches online, both potentially time consuming endeavors.

If you want to bypass all that, then there is a very easy way to unlock Akuma if you already have the original Street Fighter IV installed on your device. Simply fire up Arcade mode in Street Fighter IV Volt and at the character select screen tap on the characters in the following order: starting at Ryu, select Abel, Guile, Cammy, then end back on Ryu. Pause for about a second at each character, and when you return back to Ryu tap on him again to reveal Akuma, who will stay unlocked permanently at the character select screen from now on.

Unfortunately, my dodgy Google translating of the articles didn’t divulge a release date for the Sakura and Makoto update, but we’ll keep our eye out for it and let you know when it hits.

[Via 4Gamer.net and Andriasang]

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If you'd told me that an iOS game about a pig with seasonal allergies and the monsters that love to eat his boogers would top my list of most charming games on the platform, I'd have laughed in your face. Then I had a chance to get hands-on with Gesundheit! just a few days before its release. Whaddya know, mucus can be charming after all.

I'm not a big fan of gross-out humor, but that's only a small part of what makes Gesundheit! stand out. For starters, it's completely gorgeous. The hand-drawn art style you can see in the screenshots is consistent throughout every level, cutscene and map. The game also sounds fantastic. The music might just rival Bumpy Road for twee charm, and I mean that in the best possible way.

Of course the gameplay is really where it's at. Gesundheit! is a top-down action puzzler. The goal is to lure all the booger-eating monsters into traps without getting caught — and if they see you, they'll come for you. You move your hay-fever plagued pig around by tapping where you want to him go, and control his sneezes with a billiards-style pull and release. This launches a snot ball, which monsters just can't resist. The whole thing seems super precise, which is helpful when you're running for your little piggy life.

I've only had a chance to play a handful of levels, but the combination of game mechanics works very well so far. There are puzzle aspects, while you figure out how to get the monsters to the trap and how to collect all the starfruit on the way. You also need to be stealthy, keeping out of site of monsters, sneezing and darting quickly out of sight. And you'll need good aim to bounce your snot-balls precisely where you want them. New elements, like teleportation pads and mosquito monsters, are introduced regularly to keep things tricky. I can't wait to see the rest of it.

Gesundheit! has come nearly out of nowhere, being revealed by Konami behind closed doors just last week at San Diego Comic-Con. But it's not exactly brand new. Back in 2008, Gesundheit! emerged at the Independent Games Festival as a student showcase finalist. It went pretty viral as a PC demo, but a full release never made it out the door. When Revolutionary Concepts started working with artist Matt Hammill, they found out about his pet project and collaborated with him to bring it to iOS. Looks like the results are worth the wait — this game feels right at home on a touch screen.

Gesundheit! will be released this Thursday for the introductory price of $0.99 on iPhone and iPod touch, and $1.99 on iPad (3rd gen devices and iOS 3.2 or higher). We'll bring you a full review of this sneezerific charmer once it's out. In the meantime you can join the anticipation in our discussion thread.

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The obvious choice for the oft-teased tablet-bound version of Czech studio Amanita Design’s gorgeous and moody point-and-click Machinarium has always been the iPad because of its reach, but the whole “Apple doesn’t support Flash” thing has been the stumbling block. Good news, though: apparently a non-flash-based iPad version of the title has actually been in the works, and in even better news, it’ll hit the App Store next month. Neat!

"It's almost finished, but we still need to fix a lot of small bugs and test it properly. It should be ready during the next month… hopefully." Amanita founder Jakub Dvorský, told Pocket Gamer.

Amanita has remained busy since the Machinarium's initial release in 2009. Machinarium has since seen a release on Mac and a PSN version is slated to hit this fall. The studio has put out a sequel to Samarost, Samarost 2 [$2.99], across various platforms.

It’s hard not to pump your fists for these guys. Despite Machinarium's low and flexible price point, it has been pirated a ton, kinda like another equally imaginative and price-flexible title, World of Goo, was / probably still is.

At one point, both studios reckoned that only around 10 percent of the players who had the games actually paid for them, which is disgusting. Here’s to hoping that the Machinarium iPad port is good in the first place, and subsequently gets the feature love that World of Goo [$4.99] did upon its App Store debut.

We’ll be looking at this after it releases, but if you’re totally in the dark about the game, there are a billion and one reviews out there to look at.

[via Pocket Gamer]

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Last March, Minigore [99¢/HD] developer Mountain Sheep teamed up with Remedy and Cornfox & Bros. to bring us Death Rally [99¢], a fantastic remake of a classic PC combat racing game. During Death Rally’s development, Mountain Sheep also had another project being kept warm on the back burner that was again the product of a developer team-up, this time with Aqua Globs [99¢/Lite/HD] creator Qwiboo with a little bit of Angry Birds [99¢/HD] music composer Ari Pulkkinen thrown in for good measure.

The developers involved in the project announced in our forums last week that this new game will be called Bike Baron, and today we have the first trailer for the game. Bike Baron is basically a Trials HD-like motorcycle stunt game, but instead of an industrial themed art style it has more of a cartoonish, lighthearted vibe. The “Bike Baron” himself totally reminds me of Dick Dastardly crossed with Super Dave Osborne, which is a great mix if you ask me.

The trailer for Bike Baron pretty much speaks for itself, showing off a single play through of a level, and is looking fantastic so far:

There’s no set release date for Bike Baron, though the developers have commented that there’s only a few weeks left of final development and that the game should be out sometime in August at the latest. We also don’t know what the price will be yet, but we do know that Bike Baron will be launching as a universal app and will contain a level editor, which you can see briefly at the beginning of the above video. You can check out more screens, concept art, and info in the thread in our forums, and we’ll be sure to give Bike Baron a "trial" when it launches in the coming weeks.

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The studio that built Skittles the Tiger is dipping its toes in App Store development later in 2011. Kinectimals creator Frontier Developments has announced its intentions to port its critically successful WiiWare puzzle title, LostWinds, to Android, the iPhone, and the iPad. LostWinds originally hit in 2008 and was soon followed by a sequel in 2009.

Eurogamer nabbed the exclusive on this one via a conversation with Frontier head honcho David Braben. Braben showed the pub the game running on an iPad and demoed its virtual control / touch control scheme. As of right now, players will move Toku with a virtual joystick, but will be able to create the wind effects with on-screen touch.

Not familiar with LostWinds? You and a lot of other people, I’m guessing, considering it debuted and was soon buried on a lackluster digital service notorious for its clutter. Toku is the lead, but the real star is the wind that you conjure with gestures. Check it out:

Braben is a big deal in retro circles. He co-wrote the space trading game Elite in the 80s and went on to establish Frontier. Since then, he’s had a hand in Frontier: Elite II, V2000, Darxide and several other titles leading up to its more recent, more gesture-friendly titles. We'll be keeping our eyes on this one, for sure.

[Via Eurogamer]

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We get off the rails as we discuss on-rails and more this week on TAS. In the Front Page section of the show, we give a shout-out to a couple of fabulous-looking Unreal 3 Engine games, Epoch and Afterlife. We also pour over the EA acquisition of PopCap Games, the rising international prices of App Store titles, and toss our opinions on iOS clones. Limp Bizkit’s new release provides a break in the action as the Internet sidetracks us.

In the Games section, Eli talks about his latest card game love affair with Ascension: Chronicle of the Godslayer and Jared gives the skinny on Reckless Getaway. Somehow, someway, I end up talking about THQ Digital Warrington’s XBLA release Warhammer 40,000: Kill Team on top of Kairosoft’s Pocket Academy.

Love the idea of the show but don’t know where to get it? I got you, bro. Look just below and you’ll see an assortment of links. You could also, additionally, subscribe to us via the iTunes Music Store or the Zune Marketplace. Oh! And you could rate us, too.

iTunes Link: The TouchArcade Show
Zune Marketplace: TouchArcade.com Podcasts
RSS Feed: The TouchArcade Show
Direct Link: TouchArcadeShow-008.mp3, 50MB

Here are the show notes and thanks for all your questions this week. If you’d like to get in touch with us, just rip off an e-mail to podcast@toucharcade.com. Your letter will get read on the air and you’ll finally leave an impression on the Internet.

GAMES

• Ascension: Chronicle of the Godslayer [$4.99 / Lite]
• Reckless Getaway [$2.99]
• Pocket Academy [$3.99 / Lite]

FRONT PAGE

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Apple has been doing some maintenance on iTunes Connect, which is the glue behind the scenes that holds together the family of iTunes stores. As part of some planned downtime, they've also adjusted pricing in some international markets with currencies that have fluctuated. Some price points have done up, while others went down.

Here are the new low-end pricing tiers for regions that have changed, and the rest of the tiers fall in line accordingly with the new pricing:

UK: £0.59 → £0.69
Australia: AU$1.19 → AU$0.99
Japan: 115 → 85 Yen
Mexico: $10 → $12
Switzerland: 1.10Fr → 1.00Fr
Norway: 6.00Kr → 7.00Kr

It seems the only countries affected were those that were furthest out of line with current conversion rates. Congratulations, Australia, Japan, and Switzlerland, you'll be saving a little cash. Sadly, iTunes gift cards aren't going to stretch as far as they used to in the UK, Mexico, and Norway, but that's the way of the world I suppose.

[MacStories via MacRumors]

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