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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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Wanna be a baller? I can't help you there, but you might want to take a look at PikPok's Slam Dunk King [Free] for a bit of inspiration. You might have all the coordination and slick moves of a sloth, but if you've got nimble fingers you're most of the way there. And, honestly? You don't need to care a whit about basketball to love this game.

Slam Dunk King is all about the trick shot. Balls are sent your way, and you've got to dunk them like a pro while racking up some crazy combos. Flick them into the net, flick away bombs, and sneak a few tricks in and you'll be well on your way. There are twelve tricks to learn, from the humble Juggle to the Air Gordon, and each will rack up your points. Tie them all together and you'll fly off the charts.

Once a round is up, your score is taken and run through a series of modifiers. How long did you go without dropping a ball, how big were your combos, how cool were your tricks? All of that is taken into account before you get your final score.

There are three ways to play. Time Attack gives you 90 seconds to earn the biggest score you can. Bombs slow you down, but nothing can stop you but the clock. Arcade mode gives you three balls – drop 'em all or let a bomb hit the net and you're done. You can earn balls back with good performance, though. Finally there's Sudden Death, by far the most punishing. One missed ball will end your game. Arcade and Sudden Death can both be unlocked by earning high scores.

Accompanying you on your quest for Slam Dunk coronation is your choice of mascot. Copernicus the robot comes along for free, and when you score enough points you can trigger him to earn bonus points for hitting bombs. There are five others to unlock, each with its own special ability.

To unlock them, and cosmetic upgrades like new courts and balls, you need crowns. Crowns can be earned by playing well. In Time Attack, performing well opens up overtime, where the balls are traded out for bronze, silver and gold crowns. Each one you dunk gives you a bit more currency to work with. You also earn a ranking that can be leveled up as you play. Not only does it give you crowns each time you level, it also increases your score modifiers.

Now, about the whole "free" things — PikPok has been incredibly generous with this freemium model, and I hope it pays off. You can play the whole game, accessing every bit of content for free, without any limits. The only thing you have to put up with is a banner ad in some menu screens, and you can pay to banish it. You can also pay to get more crowns — you earn them fairly slowly while you play, and there are a lot of tempting cosmetic upgrades to use them on. But nothing is locked behind a paywall.

Slam Dunk King masters the frantic, barely-controlled flicking and swiping that makes games like Fruit Ninja so great. Learning to juggle balls, pull off tricks and defend from bombs is a challenge, but the rewards for improvement are great. This game has the makings of a great leaderboard competition on Game Center and OpenFeint, but it's a lot of fun to challenge your own scores too. And it's free, so you really shouldn't miss it. The ball is in your court, and once its yours, you should swing by our discussion thread and let us know what you think.

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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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Simply put, Rescue City [Free] is a worthy addition to the line-drawing genre that has long since been dominated by the prowess of Flight Control. Rather than directly mimicking the open-world environment of the flight-landing title, Rescue City succeeds at implementing a more structured approach to vehicle management that not only still requires strategy and management, but also manages to simplify the core gameplay experience.  A tough difficulty curve and a lack of variety in environments are the only significant obstacles that hold Rescue City back.

Rescue City places you in charge of the police, firefighter, and ambulance services for a section of a city. As various incidents pop up, you must dispatch the appropriate emergency services by drawing a route to the location. Each incident has a countdown timer attached to it, and the game ends if you do not respond to the incident in time. In addition, the game also ends if any of your vehicles collide with each other while on the road.  Obviously, the crux of the gameplay becomes effective route management as you will be trying to respond to each incident as fast as possible while preventing any vehicle crashes.

As mentioned above, veterans of Flight Control will feel right at home with the gameplay and control scheme of Rescue City. However, Rescue City has some important gameplay tweaks that lead to a somewhat different experience. For example, the cityscape environment of Rescue City means that your line-drawing escapades will be restricted to the available streets, rather than the unlimited possibilities of sky navigation.

In addition, each service has different dispatch methods and vehicle stats, which add further depth to the game. For example, the ambulance incident begins at the location of need, and your job is to always guide the ambulance back to the hospital. The fire truck, meanwhile, always begins at the station and must be guided to the fire (and is much slower than the other vehicles). The police dispatch is the most interesting element: initial dispatch begins at the police station, but the car can resolve multiple police incidents without needing to return to the station. However, the police car gets its own timer, which must be reset periodically by returning to the station (and yes, the game will end if you don’t get your car back in time). The different vehicles are definitely what set Rescue City apart from other line-drawing games, and I think it’s a well-done addition to a genre that’s characterized as being full of stagnant clones.

Rescue City falters somewhat with its environment variety as well as its tough difficulty curve. Rescue City does do a good job introducing all the core elements in the first few levels, but it seems as if the difficulty gets turned up significantly once the tutorial period is over. Personally, I don’t have a problem with the difficulty (in fact, I thought it was a refreshing change of pace), but I imagine that some casual gamers may become quickly frustrated with progression. If you are one of those folks, the easiest way to succeed in Rescue City is to play the mission several times, memorize the locations of the initial emergencies (each level is fixed in that regard), and use the extra time to formulate additional strategies.

One other issue with Rescue City lies in its lack of variety in city settings. The overall game is divided into three cities with different graphic styles. However, within each city, maps get reused several times, which can make the game a bit drab and repetitive. More unique maps within each city would have gone a long way towards fixing this issue.  Also, while Rescue City scores each mission upon completion, it would have been nice if the game provided some sort of ranking system and leaderboard, as this would aid in potential replayability. Currently, once you finish all the missions, you really have no reason to return.

At its heart, even with the nice additions to the gameplay, Rescue City is still a pretty simplistic game (as are most line-drawing titles). As such, gamers looking for a particularly complicated or deep experience probably won’t find that here. However, casual gamers looking for a well-done take on the strategic line-drawing game should definitely check out Rescue City – especially since the first fifteen missions are free (the rest of the game can be unlocked as an IAP for $0.99).

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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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What does a good-looking, yet buggy and monotonous game like Shadowgun [$7.99] really need? It needs extremely ambitious multiplayer, apparently. Madfinger Games has announced that it’ll launch bits and pieces of the game’s slated competitive online component in waves. First up: cross-platform team and regular deathmatch. Next up: more exotic, though still un-announced modes.

Love or hate the game, you have to appreciate the scope of what Madfinger is working within as it continues to try to raise the bar with Shadowgun.

What’s kinda striking us as funny is that there’s no ETA on this update. Generally speaking, that’s a bad sign. We rarely see iOS game competitive components release after launch and if they do, they launch a long, long time after initial game release. Hold on to your butts, in other words.

[Via Pocket Gamer]

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Radiangames, an indie outfit headed and directed by Volition veteran Luke Schneider, is set to release its first iPhone and iPad game, Super Crossfire, with help from Chillingo. We’ve got the first trailer just below this text stuff.

The game caught our all-seeing eye earlier this week and we’ve gone hands-on since. Its psychedelic visuals and multitudes of explode-y bits and bobs are truly hip to experience, but the actual game part isn’t too shabby either. Basically, it’s a ramped up take on Space Invaders that lets you alternate planes of attack: you can move your ship from the bottom of the screen to the top as you please, allowing for some interesting play.

This is actually the third game in a series that started out as an Xbox Live Indie Games joint. Radian has made several games for XBLIG, including the woefully underrated JoyJoy. In our upcoming bonus podcast, we get on the honker with Schneider and talk about XBLIG, and of course, jump into some detail about his time with AAA and his thoughts on Super Crossfire.

No word on price or release date just yet, but that’ll come in time. As a side-note here, if you’re really into the business or philosophical side of why an indie studio would want to get into a partnership with a publisher, check out Radiangames' post on Super Crossfire and what went down with the title since its PC debut trailer in March. It’s a hip read.

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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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Commander Pixman [99¢] from One Minute Games is a retro platformer. In fact, it's so retro that the graphics are intentionally pixelated, the landscape is formed by a simple yellow line and the background is an old-school scrolling star-field. Graphically, this is platforming cut down to it's most basic form. And I'm totally enjoying it.

Commander Andrew “Pixman” Blazkowicz has crashed and must escape from an alien base by reaching the end of each level. If we do this fast enough, we'll be awarded three stars. And if we kill all the enemies on a level, we'll receive a red badge. Both of these goals can be completed in one attempt, or during separate runs. This allows a rapid enemy-avoiding run-through and a separate unhurried enemy-hunt, squeezing more playability from each level.

There's a healthy 80 levels in total (65 plus 15 extra bonus levels). Each level is small and the goal is to complete them quickly, with some levels completed within a few seconds. This isn't a large platform game which takes ages to explore like Emberwind [99¢/HD], instead it's a rapid sprint, more like Mos Speedrun [$1.99/Lite], but here you're armed with a weapon. This is a game where you'll die every few seconds and then try again. You can quite easily die and restart 10 times in a minute, but that's all part of this game. Just reaching the end of the level, is enough to unlock the next level.

To unlock the bonus levels you can complete objectives to prove you're not a rookie. For example, completing level 20 unlocks the first bonus level and reveals the next objective: to earn an enemy-killing badge on level 22 within 13 seconds. Although having seen how hard the bonus levels can be, unlocking them is the easy part!

The game description mentions there's "over 20 hazards, monsters and utilities". This includes mines with delayed detonation, gravity lifts, trampolines, spikes, crushers, automatic turrets and teleportation portals. There's dissolving platforms and keys for locked areas. With simple graphics there's a risk of the levels appearing repetitive, but pleasingly, they feel well designed and varied, with enough difficulty to be quite challenging without being impossible.

To progress in this game you need quick reflexes and precision movements, as the enemies are often patrolling within a confined area leaving you just a tiny window of opportunity – a mere split second – to land in exactly the right place. So, the inevitable question is: "What are the controls like?"

Well, there's virtual buttons for moving left or right, jumping and shooting. The left, right and shooting parts work fine, but the floaty jet-pack jumping takes some getting used to. If you watch really carefully, Pixman's jumps seem to be slow at the start, then speed up -  and that teeny, tiny, nanosecond of delay at the start means the enemy often runs into you, whereas you might have expected to jump free. The jumping is such an important part of this fast-paced game that it needs to be perfect …and it almost is, it just takes some time to become accustomed.

After completing a level, you can watch your previous attempts all clambering simultaneously across the level in a mass-replay. It displays up to 40 simultaneous previous-attempts on a recent iOS device, or 10 on an older device for performance reasons. This ensures the game can run on older devices. After watching the trailer, some people may mistakenly assume you control multiple characters in the game-play, like Grim Joggers [$1.99/Free], but that's not the case. You control one commander at a time and trust me, that's challenging enough.

The mass replay feature is interesting to watch, because one-by-one each little green Commander drops off at the point they died, until eventually just one makes it to the finish zone. This feature would be improved if the last attempt was shown in another color, so you can assess your latest performance against other attempts. And since the movements have all been recorded, it would be nice in the future to have the option of a ghost of your best time to compete against.

With its emphasis on speed and times, this game is crying out for Game Center leaderboards and achievements, but unfortunately these aren't provided yet. However, the developer plans to integrate Game Center in one of the first updates and is also working on a content update that provides 20 harder(!) levels. The game does track some statistics already, such as your best time for each level and totals for time spent playing, stars collected, deaths and number of enemies killed.

Commander Pixman is a good game for hardcore platform gamers. It's fast-moving and challenging, with simplistic retro graphics and some heavier than usual background music. It's not for the death-adverse, as you'll die frequently and it requires skill, impeccable timing and perseverance as it's not easy to gain three stars for each level. If you can handle that, then it's also extremely satisfying to finally beat a level. Who knew eight seconds could leave you feeling so proud?

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A cute panda, a match three puzzler, and a summery theme with cute accouterments such as picnic baskets and watermelons — where can Panda Picnic (Free) go wrong? I mean, if you literally think about the idea of pandas out on a picnic together, you immediately start smiling. Or at least I do. I'm assuming the picnic basket is full of bamboo, though — not my idea of a scrumptious lunch. Maybe I'll hang with the humans after all.

Enough about food: Let's talk about how Panda Picnic works. If you have ever played the notoriously popular Words With Friends, at least one pat of the format here will look familiar, and that's the part where you play with online friends. Panda Picnic has one flaw right out of the gate, in my opinion, and that is that is does not have a single player mode to allow you to practice on your own. Your options are to start a game with a Facebook friend, a random opponent, or a local friend.

There is nothing wrong with any of these options as long as the other player actually takes their turn, which can take ages if said person has gotten distracted from their phone and is dicking around updating their profile or whatever else it is we spend years on the internet doing. With a game as popular as Words With Friends, the waiting is not as bad, but with Panda Picnic, your best bet is to have at least three or four games going at a time. At least that way, you have more chances of actually making a move.

Speaking of making moves, here's how it all works. Each level opens with a slot machine in the bottom of your screen, and the puzzle with the panda curating it for you up top. You'll take a spin, get a series of different fruits, and decide if those are the ones you want for your next turn. If you have some coins accumulated, you may be able to spin again (these can be won or purchased in microtransactions). If not, you may be stuck with what you got. You'll notch each of these in a little slingshot and hurl them up to the top of the board, Bust-A-Move style. There's a little tally on the right side of the screen that shows off  how many of each fruit you still need to completely clear the board too, which I mostly just forgot was there in the first place.

The controls are very accurate, and I do like that there is a chat feature in case you want to actually speak to the person you're playing, although I never used it myself. The sounds are fun, and my only small complaint was the panda does this thing where he flicks his tongue in and out of his mouth like a snake and looks a little drug-addled. But hey, his problems have nothing to do with the gameplay, so you really don't have to worry too much about him.

Panda Picnic is pretty cute, and I admit I did enjoy the gameplay. Ultimately, however, I would wander away from it because it took so long for people to make moves. Playing with a local friend was more satisfying for me, as the gameplay could actually flow and I didn't have to do so much waiting. If you're on the lookout for a free puzzler you can play online with at anytime though, you may find the arcade twist to the gameplay hits that sweet spot you were hoping for.

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