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Last week, we told you the (somewhat) surprising news that Rockstar would be bringing the classic Grand Theft Auto III to iOS and Android platforms to celebrate the franchise's 10 year anniversary of entering the world of 3D, and thus changing the open-world sandbox genre forever. At the time, Rockstar noted that the game was only planned for dual-core processor-based devices, due to the strain that running a huge open-world game would have on lesser mobile hardware. On the iOS side of things, that meant that only the iPad 2 and the brand new iPhone 4S would be able to run GTA III thanks to their dual-core A5 chips.

Of course, there are far, far more GTA fans than there are A5 device owners, and there was quite a backlash from gamers with older devices who were understandably upset that they wouldn't be able to get their carjack-on without upgrading their kit. However, over the weekend Rockstar has been showing off GTA III for mobile devices in playable form at the New York Comic-Con, and in fact they have confirmed to Kotaku that the dual-core processor requirement will only be a limitation at first, and that they're planning on having the game be compatible with single-core iOS devices sometime after launch.

Now, before you go getting too excited, they don't specifically state which single-core devices they intend to target. It may just be the iPhone 4, since it's the only other device with 512 mb of RAM, which could be a deal breaker for the iPhone 3GS and 3rd and 4th generation iPod touch. We really don't know at this point, but at least the compatible device listing will be increasing in some capacity, which is a good thing.

Speaking of GTA III at NYCC, one adventurous attendee decided to muster up some courage and take a little video of himself playing the game on an iPad 2 demo unit. So far, it looks like the GTA III that we all know and love from 10 years ago:

Chances are pretty good that this video was not taken with the permission of the Rockstar reps on hand at the convention, so don't be surprised if the video ends up disappearing sooner rather than later. But for now, it's a nice glimpse into what GTA III will be like on mobile. Also, though it's hard to tell from this shaky video, various other outlets' hands-on impressions of the demo build so far all state that the visuals have been given the high-res treatment, or at least as high a resolution as a 10 year old game can have. This leads me to believe that the GTA III we end up getting on iOS is based off of the superior Xbox version, though that's just a bit of speculation on my part.

GTA III is scheduled for a Fall release, and if it's anything like their launch of Chinatown Wars on iOS, we may be seeing the game incredibly soon, as that title popped up just a few short days after they were showing off preview builds to the media. That's more speculation on my part, but I remain hopeful. Until the game actually does launch, feel free to check out our forums where GTA III: 10th Anniversary Edition is getting a healthy amount of discussion.

[Via Kotaku and our forums]

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We have a couple more upcoming games from Chillingo to share that we previewed at Wednesday's Naughty or Nice games event held by EA in New York. Two puzzle games of rather different pace.

Home Sheep Home 2

Back in May we took a look at Chillingo's iOS port of the BAFTA-nominated Flash game Home Sheep Home and found it to be "baaah-rilliant," giving it four stars. Sometime later this fall, the studio will be launching a sequel to this Shaun the Sheep-inspired game, entitled Home Sheep Home 2: A Little Epic.

Like its iOS predecessor, Home Sheep Home 2 is a puzzle platformer with a pencil-sketch aesthetic, featuring Shaun — pretty standard sized, as far as sheep go — along with his little pal Timmy and his massive gal Shirley.

Each screen of the game is a fairly elaborate puzzle proposition. The task at hand is to get all three sheep from one side of the screen to the other. To do this, each of the sheep most be properly employed in order to solve the puzzle and move on to the next screen. For example, you might need to hop Timmy onto Shaun's back to send him up to a button that needs pressing, and then use Shirly as a raft to float Shaun across a pool of water. That kind of thing.

The game looks to be not a radical departure from the original, but a collection of new puzzles in the spirit of the old.

Home Sheep Home 2 will be offered in two versions, one for the iPhone and one for the iPad, at as-yet undetermined prices.

Hank Hazard: The Stunt Hamster

Another upcoming title we were shown a the Naughty or Nice event is the action puzzler Hank Hazard: The Stunt Hamster. The game involves helping Hank live his dream of becoming the first daredevil hamster by sending him flying around level after level of arranged obstacles, collecting stars, and getting out with the best time left on the clock.

You set Hank in motion by removing various items on the screen to get his little run-about ball rolling. You might eliminate a column of blocks or pop a balloon from which he hangs. Once he's on his way, obstacles such as flames, floating sliders, chomping teeth and rocket fists — some of which you can activate with a tap — send him hither and yon, daredevil style.

Hank Hazard: The Stunt Hamster will support both the iPhone and the iPad and was developed by Red Rocket Games.

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Lately, I've been on the lookout for freemium games that offer up more than the usual. I feel like I've built and bred just about everything under the sun, ya know? Forever Drive [Free], though — Supermono knocked it out of the park with this one. It's free-to-play, it's gorgeous and it's eons away from the same old thing.

As we've covered extensively, Forever Drive is about, um, driving forever. It's an arcade-style driving game where your performance is ranked not on speed but on the points you pick up and the combos you build. It sports a comprehensive leveling system that earns you better, shinier and cooler cars as you progress, and a track editor that lets you help build the endless roads you'll be riding on. And everything looks like it's been ripped straight out of the best parts of Tron. Sounds great, no?

Loving Forever Drive means buying into its gameplay. A quick look at our forums suggests that some players aren't really feeling the fun, and that's fair. At its core, this game gets into a grind. Tracks can be quite samey as you drive through several end-to-end, and the only thing you're racing against is time. But it keeps drawing me back in. I'm driven by the need to do better.

You see, you need a steady hand to do well in Forever Drive. You're constantly on a timer, and tracks are covered in time-extending checkpoints. Each track you complete ratchets up your score, but it gets harder and harder to make it to the next checkpoint. If you want to keep going, you'll need to hit every power-up on the field and dodge every car you pass. There's a constant sense that if you can just do well enough, you'll get to drive forever.

Dodging cars gives you another perk — each one you pass builds up your score modifier. You can also grab stars and ride the edges of the track (without crashing) for more points. At the end of your run your score is translated into experience and over time you level up, unlocking new cars, plates and paint jobs, and new scenery for track building.

We have a full preview of the track editor written up if you want to get into the nitty-gritty. Suffice it to say that it's extremely simple to use, but also powerful. I've started to see tracks come up that manage to be quite interesting and remain within its confines (tracks can't cross themselves, and there's a strict limit for how complex they can be). And you can vote tracks up or down on completing them, ensuring that dull or broken tracks won't come up too often before they're voted out of the game.

At this point, you're probably waiting for the other shoe to drop, but it's not going to happen. The pricing model is more than fair. You can purchase credits, and then spend them to earn experience (but not high scores) considerably faster. There are a few cars and cosmetic upgrades you can pay for. You're also limited to creating a handful of tracks, but you can open up more save slots with in-app purchases. That last one is a bit of an odd choice for a game that so relies on community input. Otherwise, I've put hours into Forever Drive without spending a dime, and without feeling like I'm running up against any limitations.

There are a few small issues, and hopefully Supermono will address them in updates. Buildings can be placed over tracks in the track editor, which has already become this game's troll-of-choice. Eventually down-voting will remove them from play, but it's sure annoying to have your screen constantly blocked in the meantime. You also can't delete a track once you publish it, so that 3-track creation limit is a little too firm. Finally, the 10x experience multiplier for credit runs makes those runs feel so efficient that your experience seems to crawl the rest of the time.

The only issue I couldn't get around was the controls. They come in four flavors — slider, joystick, tilt, or "arcade," which has directional buttons on both sides of the screen. On smaller devices these all work fine, but on iPad the only comfortable option is arcade steering. Unfortunately it puts the brake buttons uncomfortably far away. And no matter where you put your hands, the buttons for rating tracks are very distant. The interface needs adjustment if it's to be played comfortably on iPad.

Even awkward controls didn't stop me, though. The journey to driving forever is made all the better by striking visuals. Forever Drive has a neon and black color palette, and it makes heavy use of lighting effects, shaders and shadows. It's a slick, stylized look that would be comfortable in the world of Tron. Put in your headphones while you play and you'll also be treated to a great techno soundtrack. It's the perfect combination for trancing out.

Forever Drive is a slick, mellow game that rewards both your time and your skill. It won't appeal to everyone, but it can (and should) reach a larger audience than the average racing game. Supermono has done a fantastic job of creating something beautiful, interesting and free, so give it a test drive. There's no obligation, and no money down.

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Developer ustwo™ doesn’t really consider themselves game developers, though they have dabbled with their series of “DOT” games, most recently DOT5URBO [Free]. No, most of their success and notoriety is from their utility and entertainment apps, and their extremely well-received interactive children’s app Nursery Rhymes with StoryTime [$3.99].

However, they’re preparing to jump head first into the world of games with their upcoming Whale Trail. A take on the endless cave flyer genre, Whale Trail gets the base mechanics of this type of game just right. You play as Willow the Whale, trying to escape an evil underwater monster who has invaded your ocean home. You realize that a magical whale trail gives you the power to float into the sky and escape his grasp.

This whale trail is fueled by the colorful bubbles that are spread across the randomly generated play field. Your trail is constantly decreasing, so in order to keep afloat in the air you’ll need to collect these bubbles to keep the whale trail chugging along. Mixing things up are the ability to do a loop-de-loop, small turbo whirlwinds that can shoot you along and allow access to higher elevations, and spikey items which will give you temporary invincibility when enough have been collected. Invincibility from what, you ask? From the evil dark clouds that also litter the landscape, and will cause your whale trail to diminish at an increased rate if you don’t avoid them.

I’ve been playing a preview version of Whale Trail for the past couple of weeks, and so far have really come to adore the game. It doesn’t do anything especially new or crazy in the game mechanics department, though it does have a great “feel” and tugs at you to give it just one more go to increase your high score.

Where Whale Trail sets itself apart from the packs of similar titles is in its stunning visuals. The entire world is a brightly colored, almost psychedelic collection of crazy graphics and sounds. It’s as if The Beatles’ movie Yellow Submarine decided to morph into a video game starring a cute whale. There’s even a catchy folk-rock theme song about Willow the Whale humming along in the background, completing the hippie vibe. No ‘shrooms necessary. Check out the newly released trailer for Whale Trail to see what I mean:

Whale Trail is currently slated for an October 20th release date, and before then there may even be a few new features that sneak in as ustwo™ continues to tweak the game. I’m impressed with it already, and feel like it has the solid gameplay chops to keep you coming back as well as the aural and visual splendor to sink its hooks into you on an emotional level, Tiny Wings [99¢] style. We’ll definitely be giving the final version of Whale Trail a flight through the sky (with diamonds) when it launches later this month, and until then you can drop by our forums for discussion of the game.

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Free-to-play and I don’t get along too well. If it’s not the embedded ads turning me off, it’s the oddball paid power-ups and the off-kilter balance and experience boosters. In the worst cases, it's the lack of fun because a developer pulled it out  and made it a paid feature to sponge revenue. I’d rather just pay up-front and get the entire experience from the get-go. It saves me time and frustration.

Steambirds: Survival makes F2P an exceedingly easy pill to swallow. It looks sharp, it seems to function just fine on a mechanical level, and its fun without needing to immediately pump money into it. In the early going of our preview build, at least, it appears to have all the functionality and fleshiness of a paid game, minus the paid part. This is what this new-age of free-to-play is supposed to look like, right?

I don’t think fans of Steambirds [$1.99 / HD] are going to be disappointed or overjoyed with what’s going on in Survival — it’s essentially the same game with free-to-play currency bolted on. Just like in the original, it’s a turn-based 2D strategy game that revolves positioning the gun-equipped side of your plane in smart firing positions. What makes this particularly engaging is the fact that you need to account for enemy movements before your own. The more enemies, the finer the strategy gets, even though there’s all sorts of explosive power-ups that give you a slight edge in confrontations.

It might just be me, but I love this kind of ramped back and dry action experience. I get the same kind of enjoyment from meticulous placement and observation in Survival as I do in a more intellectual puzzle-y type game.

We’ve been told that Survival has 64 different missions and while that’s probably true, the first handful look, feel, and play pretty similar. This is natural issue since Survival is primarily a wave-based “go get the enemies” type of title and all, but the same-yness makes me wonder where the legs are if it has any at all. I think the core mechanics are good enough to keep people interested in bursts, but beyond that?

You know, maybe the legs are in the currency. As you play, you earn coins that you can then turn and use to unlock new aircraft, recruit AI pilots to join you, and buy new levels. You can, of course, buy these coins with real cash, as well as pay to unlock all the levels in the game and disable its atrocious ads. Considering the prices on this stuff, it appears as though it'll take some time to unlock everything.

Survival is coming pretty soon, so we’ll give the full build a good look and probably report back to you on what it has in store. Based on what I’m seeing now, though, Survival seems to be a friendly F2P title that doesn’t dole out the fun part in exchange for money, and that is a pretty big deal in my book. Oh! And the game part is pretty hip.

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This past week we posted a preview of the first three games set to hit the App Store, marking the launch of the Elite Collection of 8-bit home computer games from noted and long-running studio Elite Systems. The games have just gone live and are available in both iPhone and iPad "HD" versions.

The initial Elite Collection titles that have arrived are Datasoft's 1987 magical platformer Black Magic, Image Works' lovely 1992 release First Samurai, and the frantic 1992 space shooter Enforcer from Manfred Trenz. Every one of these titles is very well implemented in iOS and is among the top tier of games to be found on the 8-bit platforms of decades past.

The the Elite Collection is Elite Systems' initiative to expand on their ongoing retro rebirth efforts and bring a host of classics of old to iOS — those that originated on platforms beyond the ZX Spectrum, which was their initial source platform. For more details on these titles (including videos), see our preview.

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A few weeks ago we brought you word that WayForward, the studio behind a brilliant A Boy And His Blob re-make as well as a new (and good) BloodRayne title, is setting its sights on the iPhone and iPad with a port of Shantae: Risky’s Revenge. Now, we have the its first trailer and we thought it’d be hip to share it with you because we’re cool.

As you’ll see in the trailer, Risky’s Revenge is an action-y platformer. Generally, the more kinetic the game the more its mobile port suffers, but WayForward has done a miraculous job on the virtual controls — the game moves like it should and plays how it was designed to be played in the first place. Sounds strong, I know, but our preview build communicates that the studio knows what it’s doing here.

We still don’t have a solid release date, but the window continues to be “soon.” We’ll make sure fill you in whenever we know what’s up.

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Earlier this month we brought news of Elite Systems' initiative to expand on their ongoing retro rebirth efforts and bring a host of classics of old to iOS — those that originated on platforms beyond the ZX Spectrum, which was their initial source platform. Studio co-founder Steve Wilcox was kind enough to provide us with builds of the first wave of titles that will soon arrive in the Elite Collection of 8-bit home computer games to share with our readers.

The first Elite Collection titles that will arrive in the App Store are Datasoft's 1987 magical platformer Black Magic, Image Works' lovely 1992 release First Samurai, and the frantic 1992 space shooter Enforcer from Manfred Trenz. Every one of these titles is very well implemented in iOS and is among the top tier of games to be found on the 8-bit platforms of decades past.

Let's have a look.

Black Magic

The evil wizard Zahgrim has turned good Aganar to stone. Being a ghastly sort of wizard, Zahgrim has removed his six eyes and placed them in different locations across the land so they may view the destruction being wrought in his name. Your task is to recover each eye and place them, one by one, into the empty sockets of the Blind Statue. Hordes of monters roaming the land make this a challenge, but you've got your arrows and magic to aid you, and a bit of help from a somewhat fiendish troll.

In researching Black Magic for this post, I found a great many fond recollections gamers shared of hours spent chasing down the six eyes of Zahgrim. The title is very well loved and secured an 8.2 user rating from Lemon64.

Enforcer

Enforcer: Fullmetal Megablaster is an excellent side-scrolling space shooter released for the Commodore 64 in 1992. That it is, indeed, excellent should come as no surprise, given that it was written by Mafred Trenz, the developer behind the Turrican series, the C64 version of R-Type, and The Great Giana Sisters. Enforcer features some of the best graphics ever to grace the C64's screen and the on-screen action is furious and maddeningly difficult.

The game features six levels through a range of space and cave backdrops, with an boss waiting at the end of each. It is a very well-received title that has secured an 8.3 user rating on Lemon64.

First Samurai

First Samurai, released for the Commodore 64 in 1992, puts you in the shoes of the first samurai in history. You start out as a hermit travelling through an ancient land, but with enough food — and sake — you will grow stronger and stronger, gaining power and eventually becoming a samurai. That is, if the daunting enemy creatures don't do you in first, which they probably will.

First Samurai is, without question, one of the five best looking C64 titles I've ever encountered and features very nice platform combat action. Elite's iOS version features glass-smooth sprite animation and brings a truly worthwhile platformer to our favorite mobile game devices. First Samurai got an 8.3 user ranking at Lemon64.

The Elite Collection titles detailed here will be available in both standard (iPhone, iPod touch) and HD (iPad) versions that are playable in both portrait and landscape orientations. (All videos in this post are of the iPad HD versions of the games.) Each title features the latest implementation of Elite's iDaptive control system, which allows highly customized placement of both virtual joystick and virtual key controls on the game screen, as illustrated in the embedded videos. I am in hopes that Elite will consider the addition of iCade support for all of these titles, to allow for an even more authentic retro game experience.

Elite has gathered quite a collection with which to launch their new retro effort, and I must confess it's been rather painless labor running through these titles in preparation for this post. For the retro fans out there, each of these titles is a no-brainer buy — obviously — but, as I am one who appreciates the simpler formulas of old, I must urge even those without a nostalgic bent to have a close look at the provided videos and consider giving these titles a shake.

My crotchety old self is often of the mind that "they don't make 'em like they used to," when it comes to games I really want to spend time with. This initial Elite offering is a rather good representation of "the best they ever made 'em." And there's much more of this ilk on the way from the studio. It's a pretty great time to be a (retro) iOS gamer.

We will let readers know when the first three Elite Collection titles go live in the App Store this weekend and will keep the news coming on future titles in the collection, as we hear it.

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So, we got a build of Forever Drive and decided to put the pedal on the floor in order to bring you some early impressions. And, wow, guys, does this seem cool.

With Forever Drive, Supermono Studios is taking a smarter approach to user-created content design: instead of asking players to mold and shape entire experiences, it asks that they mold and torture a fraction of a blip on an infinitely expandable super-highway. By managing user expectations before people even begin creating, Supermono is freeing its users from failure and the game’s players from having to filter out tons of garbage. Most user-created content titles, including Media Molecule’s venerable series starring a boy made of sacks, do not practice any kind of control or creative constraint, which is what makes Forever Drive unique, and as we’ve been discovering, pretty fun.

You got to at least appreciate Supermono’s core design conceit. It’s shooting from the hip with Forever Drive — there are no curated races, no lifeless campaign, and no attempts at narrative. Through and through, this is a racing game about racing forever, and it’s built by you and everyone else. The basic idea behind this is simple. Supermono wants you to play a racing game about the journey instead of the destination. That's some next level stuff.

“What we've tried to create is a very streamlined experience — something a little different from the "load a track, do 3 laps, stop, repeat" gameplay that's become almost universal in driving games,” Supermono’s Dave Ferner told us earlier this year.

“We're trying to create something that feels more like an epic journey, with that feeling of discovery and wonder you get driving fast into an unfamiliar land…”

I recently gave the level editing portion of the title a go and I’ve been surprised by how deceptively simple it is and how graceful most of your projects tend to be, even if you’re just goofing around and attempting to make something phallic. You’ll probably never make a level on par with 1-1, but you’ll make something that works and fits with the game.

Basically, there are two parts to the creation process: track editing and environmental editing. The former editor lets you build a small swathe of track from one end of the editor to the other, while the latter gives you the power to add scenery. Other tools give you the power to raise or lower the track where you please, as well as make fine adjustments on the turns you may or may not choose to have.

It’s not rocket science and I think that’s important: execution on design concepts floating around on your head is about as hard as drawing your bedroom realistically from the picture you see when you close your eyes. By making the editor simple and keeping the bar low with the amount of content you’re responsible for, Supermono is constricting the scope of your ideas, but not their potential.

And while whatever you make will probably be gold, there are tricks to making a good track, as I’ve learned from Dave. He suggests paying attention to the actual curvature of tracks, how a straight benefits the overall design, other high-concept-y things. He also suggests checking out this article by Luke McMillan called A Rational Approach To Racing Game Track Design, which is crazy good read if you’re into design or production.

"One of the main barriers to mainstream acceptance of user-created tracks is the complexity of the editors — we didn't want a PC style professional tool with a million hotkeys, we wanted a super-streamlined editor which was fun to use," Ferner tells us. "We honestly spent months on that thing — it takes a lot of work to make something simple out of something complicated!

"And because our game relies on users to create the content, we aimed to create an editor that was almost a mini-game in itself — there's even some unlocks which you can only get by building popular tracks, and we may even put a highscore table for track creators… it's all a big experiment, but hey, you never know until you've tried it!"

If a section of track somehow manages to suck, you’ll be able to down-vote it. After enough, it’ll be removed from the rotation.

The track I made while farting around (after the no-no shaped one, that is) was a simple “S”-shaped joint. The game automatically integrates in spots where players can drift to earn XP (which is currency used to purchase upgrades, cars, and more stuff for the editor) and it also auto-scaled the height in order to accommodate some lackluster building placement. The actual placement was a simple as dragging and dropping or pinching to zoom to smooth out the rough spots. You’ll see a few images of it if you look around this write-up.

We still haven’t seen the full-full game — you know, the one with the potentially hundreds of thousands of user-created sections of tracks, so we haven’t really dug into the core of the experience. We’ll definitely do that when the game goes wide later this October.

On that note, this is definitely a game that’ll live and die by its audience. At the end of the day, it’s a title that is relying on a community and a vast one at that, so we’ll have to wait and see how people react it hits and how long they’ll stick with the user-creation component in a post-release environment. Provided there is an audience, Forever Drive has the potential to fulfill the promise of its insane conceit, and really, we can’t wait to see if it can manage.

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The Dark Meadow by Phosphor Games is an upcoming action adventurey horror game and despite heaps of excitement, we still don't know a whole lot about– Yet, anyway. Well, that's all going to change on October 6th, when the game is unleashed to the world, per a recent announcement from the developer.

Here's the trailer again, if you didn't catch it over the weekend:

Hopefully we'll be able to do some additional preview coverage before the 6th, but if you're looking for other similarly excited people to chat about the game with, head into our forums.

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