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Way back in 1984, English teacher-turned-game developer Mike Singleton released a vast and innovative adventure gamed for the ZX Spectrum home computer called The Lords of Midnight. The game was extremely well received and garnered high praise for its gameplay, the expansive world in which it is set, and its use of a clever graphical technique known as “landscaping” to render the scene with pre-scaled sprites. The Lords of Midnight turned out to be Singleton’s most well respected title and is considered by many to be one of the best video games ever created.

Versions of The Lords of Midnight were soon released on a few other (mainly European) platforms of the day, and in 1991 DOS PC versions of the game and its sequel, Doomdark’s Revenge, were released, originally developed as reverse engineered fan conversions by Christopher Wild. (Singleton gave his stamp of approval to Wild’s conversions — see Wild’s 2004 Retro Gamer two-piece article / interview with Singleton.) Not long after, Wild began thinking about doing Windows versions of the games and thus began his work on The Midnight Engine, a system that would allow the Midnight games to run under modern operating systems and, thanks to data abstraction, would also allow new games to be created under the same framework.

At this point, the astute reader has probably figured out that I am not just waxing nostalgic for the simple fun of it. No, I am happy to say that there is reason for my taking a few moments to bring the uninitiated up to speed, here, and that reason is a project that has been underway for over year now to bring The Lords of Midnight to iOS.

In January of 2011, original author Mike Singleton reached out to Christopher Wild, suggesting a collaboration to get his 27 year old classic in the hands of a new audience. Since that time, at a varying pace, the project has been underway.

Wild has been posting progress updates to his blog throughout the year, and indicates that it is definitely the intention of both he and Singleton to do this conversion just right.

Let me firstly assure you that we are not developing a freeform, realtime, 3d game. We are not developing [the less well-received sequel to Doomdark's Revenge] the Citadel. We are not going to f*** it up!

Lords of Midnight is about the landscaping. It’s about those 2d panoramic views. It’s about moving some characters and pressing night and the end of the turn and waiting for the dawn to break to find out what happened.

So, the landscaping stays. Yes it will get an update. Graphically we will try a few things to help us justify bringing a 27 year old game back to the future. If you’ve followed the history of [The Midnight Engine] with the Lords of Midnight and more importantly Doomdark’s Revenge, you’ll have an idea of some of the things that means.

We’re going to make a few changes to the AI. Nothing drastic. This is not about turning Lords of Midnight into the style of RPG/Adventure games that are currently available. The AI in lords of midnight works – it’s a little simplistic, but it’s perfect for the style of game. However, there are a few little things that no longer sit comfortably, and to be fair, probably didn’t when Mike originally coded them. So there will be a couple of tweaks and additions.

The affect of these additions is that the game will not play like it used to. In spirit it will be the same, but don’t expect to be able to fire up the emulators and watch the old spectrum game play exactly like the new one. There will likely be some surprises, but I think everyone will enjoy.

Wild also indicates that certain AI changes will be made to facilitate multi-user gameplay and that it will remain turn-based like the original — not real-time. The picture that he paints of the conversion goals should appeal to those iOS gamers who loved the title in decades past.

The iOS conversion of The Lords of Midnight is being developed under the Marmalade SDK (née Airplay SDK), will run natively on both the iPhone and the iPad, and should make its way to various other platforms, as well. Doomdark’s Revenge will also be brought over, some time after The Lords of Midnight arrives.

The team has just posted a demonstration video, albeit preliminary and somewhat rough, of the game running on iPad hardware.

That a whole new generation of gamers will have easy access to such a rich classic is wonderful news, and rest assured we will keep readers apprised as progress on The Lords of Midnight for iOS marches on.

( Embedded screenshots are from the ZX Spectrum original and graphics in the demo video are placeholder — not final versions. )

[ via Gaming on the Go, thanks @gnomeslair ]

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Games like Hero Academy and the new SSX are seeding the opinion that asynchronous play is THE way to do multiplayer. After catching a glimpse of One Man Left’s upcoming turn-based strategy game Outwitters today, we’re convinced that it is.

As One Man describes it, Outwitters is “a little like chess, but with spawn points and explosions.” Chess’ conceits have influenced quite a bit of the game’s development, as each of three team’s six pieces have wildly different movement and attack patterns. We assume high-level Outwitters users will take a similar thinking man’s approach to its action, which is what makes its asynchronous pop — you want to hang back and think, and you also want to compete. This style of play gives you both of those worlds. Outwitters is also launching with an online league system.

The three teams in order of appearance here: the Adorables, the Scallywags, and the Feedback

To be clear, though, this game couldn’t be any more different from Chess outside of its ideas. Outwitters‘ game board is divided into tons of hexes, the pieces are actually a collection of wildly vibrant characters with wide-ranging moves, such as ranged attacks to slaps to healing, and the objective of each game is to blow up the opposing user’s base. Also, each turn gives a player a certain amount of moves from a pool, and even give them the opportunity to spend those moves on building new troops. The character is amazing to behold: we were super impressed with how alive the game felt in our hands. This thing is oozing with all the right stuff.

Here’s a shot of your typical map, by the way:

You typical game. Check out the board.

We’ll have a lot more on Outwitters in the future. Keep your eyes on One Man’s web site and stayed tuned to us, too, as the game hurdles towards a Universal release in a couple of months. The plan is that it’ll launch free. Maps and additional armies will be provided via IAP.

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The first time I booted up ZiGGURAT [$0.99], I was lying in bed, in the dark. I was hoping for something relatively simple  to unwind with, but the pulsing music and unending creep of monoptic aliens made that impossible. Just playing Ziggurat felt clunky the first time I tried it, forcing me to sit upright in bed.

There’s no pause button in Ziggurat, which speaks volumes about its design. Ziggurat demands attention.

Tim Rogers — a game designer under the Action Button Entertainment moniker and professional Kotaku.com word-puker — also demands attention, or at least an attention span. His reputation is for sharp criticism (his own reviews site is particularly brutal) buried under sprawling, maximalist writing, but Ziggurat is beautiful in its simplicity. In its own way, it reinforces all of the fundamental, paradoxical truth of the “endless” genre: infinite potential married to inevitable failure.

The best endless games give players just enough atmospheric window dressing to keep them wondering: where did those giant robots in Canabalt come from? What are they researching in that lab in Jetpack Joyride? Ziggurat’s pitch: You play a woman perched at the very top of the eponymous ziggurat, armed with a laser shotgun and nothing else. High above the swirling clouds, you can see other structures in the background, each one perhaps topped with another human fighter. It’s tempting to hope that, should you actually survive the alien horde, it might be possible to rebuild society in these pyramids, but it’s a false hope.

As the sun set behinds her, our soldier is trapped on a few bricks, with no place to go. The only things that move in Ziggurat are the bullets and the aliens; the soldier is firmly grounded. Even before the aliens start climbing up the pyramid, the soldier’s sprite falls into a little heaving motion, bloodstream pumped full of adrenaline like a cornered opossum or feral dog. The sprite work in Ziggurat is excellent — particularly on the iPad — and it’s packed full of small details that reinforce the design of the game.

The detailed sprites are functional, too. As the aliens climb up the sides of the ziggurat, their cycloptic heads swell and deflate; as the soldier charges her shotgun, the energy ball moves through three different phases. A fully charged bullet against a fully inflated alien face sets off a generously large explosion, which can catch other aliens in its blast. Ziggurat is about efficiency and timing, about shooting the least amount of bullets to set off the largest chain reactions possible, about imposing order on chaos by … unleashing enormous explosions.

The mechanics would be impossible without Rogers’ art direction in place, but they also tend to get buried in the explosions, the chiptunes, and the bullets. There’s no tutorial, but the game is paced so that players can subconsciously learn the design, even while they’re fighting for their lives.

Ziggurat might seem difficult or unwieldy until you realize how the explosions work, until you tap into the game’s internal rhythms. Some aliens jump, others climb, and still others just seem to float, but they all expand and deflate and explode all the same. The joy of Ziggurat, for me, is that cycle of tension and release. When the soldier dies — which happens when one stray bullet or alien claw touches her — the screen flashes red and a discordant guitar riff screeches out. In Gears of War, a guitar riff meant sucess; in Ziggurat, it means failure. In both cases, it means you can start breathing again.

And unlike other “endless” games, Ziggurat is designed tightly enough that I never felt like I was plateauing. I am undoubtedly bad at Ziggurat — my Twitter feed and GameCenter leaderboards make that clear enough — but I’m always getting better. This isn’t a game of masochism, it’s a game of evolutionary improvement, of making the last woman alive stronger and better, one death at a time. There will be good sessions and bad sessions, but my scores are constantly climbing upwards. The title, Ziggurat, doesn’t just describe the setting of the game, but the dominant metaphor: a series of steps, arduously climbed.

Thinking of a structural ziggurat might also the best way to conceptualize the game’s controls. Aiming the soldier’s gun is done by sliding your figure along a horizontal axis at the bottom of the screen, left to right. At the outer edges, the soldier aims her gun down, at an angle. As you slide closer to the middle of the screen, the reticule moves up, until it hits 90 degrees. Everything from the alien freaks to the bullets they shoot to the soldier’s own shotgun coalesces in one spot, at the top of the ziggurat.

(There’s another, Angry Birds-esque control scheme in which your gun acts as a slingshot, but it’s slower and more imprecise than the originals. It also forces players to tap and slide their fingers all over the screen, obscuring the action. And, frankly, it lacks the thematic cohesion afforded by the “precision” controls. Avoid it.)

My favorite thing about Ziggurat is that it dismantles the hardcore-casual myth that has so long plagued videogame culture generally, and iOS gaming specifically. An “endless” shooter with Peggle controls doesn’t make for good advertising, but Ziggurat is a game that forces its players to pay attention, to process and react to constantly shifting situations, to do the (literally) impossible. It’s got GameCenter and Twitter functionality that encourages pro-social competition and discussion without asking players to pony up for more bullets or a different-colored spacesuit. It’s judiciously designed and takes the platform seriously, and Ziggurat speaks for itself.

As I broke the three-digit mark for the first time and saw the sun sink below the clouds, an orange alien behind a force field sneaked behind the soldier and killed her. The screen flashed, a discordant note erupted from my speakers, and I started over.

I’ll see you at the top.

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If you listen to The TouchArcade Show, you’ll know that we often joke about just how silly the culture of price changes is on the App Store. Even the most obscure of holidays are fair game for entire-catalog 99¢ sales. Anyway, long story short amounts to me goofing around on Twitter mentioning how my birthday almost seems like a more relevant holiday for iOS sales than Presidents Day. I didn’t really think anyone was going to do it, but it turns out there’s a small number of developers observing my birth as reason to drop prices. So, if you’ve had your eyes on any of these games, I guess thank my parents.

Breakeroids, $1.99 → 99¢
Commander Pixman, $1.99 → 99¢
King Cashing: Slots Adventure, $1.99 → 99¢
Match Panic, $1.99 → 99¢
Outfoxed, $1.99 → 99¢
Pickpawcket $2.99 → 99¢
Pin Fall, $1.99 → 99¢
Pinch n’ Pop, $1.99 → 99¢
Piyo Blocks 2, 99¢ → Free
Pollywog, 99¢ → Free
Power of Logic 99¢ → Free [HD]
Ramps, $1.99 → 99¢
Silverfish, $1.99 → 99¢
Silverfish MAX, $3.99 → 99¢
Soccer Tactics Multiplayer, $1.99 → 99¢
Tripolar, 99¢→ Free
Zen Wars, 99¢ → Free

Oh and SlotZ Racer Caterham Special has always been free, but if you play it today, you’ll get a special track. Exciting, eh?

If you’re looking to find more games on sale on days that aren’t today, the best way to do this is by bookmarking this AppShopper link. These days so much stuff goes on sale that we don’t often post about them as pricing is just in a constant state of flux. Keeping a close eye on AppShopper is the best way to not miss anything.

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So this is pretty weird. Last week, the classic Japanese role playing game from Atlus, Shin Megami Tensei [$13.99], appeared in the App Store.

Originally released for the Super Famicom in 1992, the game was re-released for the PlayStation and the Game Boy Advance about a decade later, but the game has never been released outside of Japan (though unofficial English-translated versions do exist around the web). The original Shin Megami Tensei has spawned tons of sequels and spinoffs, and the entire series has an extremely dedicated following.

Now, when I first saw Shin Megami Tensei in the App Store, I was almost certain it wasn’t a sanctioned port. In this line of business, unauthorized ports or ripoffs of popular games appear fairly often, especially as of late it seems.

The iOS version of Shin Megami Tensei definitely did not look legit. It had an atrocious virtual control overlay that took up more than half the screen, and the app description sounded like it had been carefully reworded from the Wikipedia entry on the game.

Oh, and the entire game was still in Japanese only. Let me repeat that: the game is entirely in Japanese with no English whatsoever.

So based on that, and given the fairly hefty price tag, I was ready to write Shin Megami Tensei off as just another unauthorized cash grab. Except, upon further snooping, it’s not.

It’s published by Index Corporation, the Japanese company that bought Atlus several years back. A tweet from Atlus Japan’s Twitter account confirms that they are officially behind this iOS version. It appears to be a bare-bones emulated port of the 2003 Game Boy Advance version, with no special care put into translating it to iOS. But hey, it’s Shin Megami Tensei on your iPhone, I guess.

If you know Japanese and can deal with a no-frills port, then this is likely your dream come true. For anybody else, this is probably just a frustrating example of what could have been. A proper, English-translated port of Shin Megami Tensei that has been carefully crafted for the iOS platform would make a lot of people happy, and although I don’t think it’s likely, I’m holding out hope that Atlus is considering something like that for the future.

For now, if you are down to drop $14 just so you can carry around the original Shin Megami Tensei in your pocket, then I won’t judge you.

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After what seemed like an excessive period of silence between announcement and release, Battlefield 3 Aftershock hit the App Store this February. The silence and the fact that it hit many, many moons after Battlefield 3 proper were big hints that Aftershock wasn’t going to be the greatest game ever, and boy, was it not. Glitchy and laggy play defined the user experience, and its strange Act of Valor tie-in baffled us. Players bombarded it poor reviews immediately, while we questioned why it was even released in the first place.

Now, it’s gone. EA has removed Aftershock to “re-evaluate” the experience, and presumably, to ensure that Battlefield’s name isn’t completely sullied by this whole thing. Battlefield is an especially big brand for EA. It’s its flagship first-person shooter, and a franchise that it actively sets up to compete against Call of Duty.

IGN obtained the following statement:

“EA Mobile is committed to delivering mobile entertainment experiences that are on par with the content and quality users have come to expect from their favorite EA gaming brands.

To this end, we have decided to remove Battlefield 3: Aftershock from the App Store and are currently re-evaluating the app in response to the consumer feedback we’ve received. We thank all the fans who have downloaded the game to date.”

As IGN notes, another Battlefield 3 game is set to hit the App Store in 2012. We expect this one to offer more than multiplayer. In fact, we wouldn’t be surprised if it used a similar formula to Bad Company, which has been a hit with fans despite having more than a few of its own problems.

In the past, we’ve seen EA pull old apps to make room for sequels. Recently, it pulled Mass Effect: Galaxy in advance of Infiltrator’s release. We’ve never seen this before, but it seems like a good move. The app was broke and it needed some significant bug testing and tweaking. Here’s to hoping that it actually reappears.

[Via IGN, thanks qbanned!]

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In January 2010 we learned that Hironobu Sakaguchi, who created Final Fantasy and had a hand in several other landmark Square titles, was working on an iPhone project while also creating what would eventually be The Last Story for Wii. Since then there hasn’t been much info on exactly what was going on with this intriguing mobile project.

When questioned over Twitter for information regarding what he was currently working on, Sakaguchi answered that he had “around 3 titles” in the works for iOS, according to Andriasang.

Sakaguchi hasn’t offered any further details or clarification on what he means by multiple titles. In this age, it isn’t hard to imagine him talking about some sort of episodic content, or 3 sort of bit-sized kind of experiences scaled for on-the-go play.

Andriasang notes that Sakaguchi is currently traveling Europe promoting the release of The Last Story in that region and returns to Japan on March 1st, when perhaps we can find out more about these mysterious iOS projects.

[Via Andriasang]

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One of the most charming and whimsical games on iOS, Whale Trail [99¢], has just received a nice new content update. We really liked Whale Trail in our review when the game first released in October, and a December update added a whole new dimension to the game by offering 32 scoring-based challenge levels to the mix. Each level had 3 stars to earn, and there was a new Hyper Boost power-up that could launch you way up high in the sky.

Today’s update is along the lines of the first, offering 32 new challenge levels and 2 new power-ups. The premise in the previous update was that the game’s villain Baron Von Barry fell asleep on the job, allowing Willow the Whale to explore the colorful challenge levels in Rainbow Playground without pursuit. In the new set of 32 levels, the Baron turns the tables on Willow and puts him through these extremely difficult challenges in the Thunder Bros’ kingdom where it’s dark and stormy all the time.

The new challenges are just that – a challenge. I mean, I literally had trouble getting 2 stars on the first level so I could unlock the second. It doesn’t get any easier from there, either. The layouts of each challenge demand precision in order to earn every possible point and gain enough stars to keep moving on, and it’s easy to blow a run with just a single mistake. It’s that good kind of challenge, though. The kind that begs you to keep retrying a level until you get it just right, because you know you can, and it’s hugely satisfying when you do.

Also in the Baron’s Revenge levels are two new power-ups. The Cloud Mine will blow away all the surrounding clouds when collected, and the Blubble Magnet will draw all surrounding blubbles towards Willow. Utilizing both of these properly is a must in order to do well in the new set of trials. The original Classic mode has been tweaked as well, and given the new power-ups.

I’m really enjoying the new content in Whale Trail, and developer Ustwo mentioned to me on Twitter that another “massive” update is already in the works, and should be arriving in a couple of months. But right now, make sure to grab the Baron’s Revenge update and take a stab at the extremely challenging but rewarding new set of levels.

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And some say the world is a cold, passionless place. Thanks to a hip angel investor, the visionary behind Prince of Persia, Jordan Mechner, is getting a shot at remaking and re-imagining Karateka for release across multiple downloadable platforms.

In a blog post, Mechner says that he’s been working on the new Karateka with a “small team” for over a year. It’s a passionate write-up for the most part, and the reason is plain: this was his first published game, and it’s a legendary one to boot. The side-scrolling action might have been simple, but the title caught fire and has been purchased and subsequently ported roughly sixteen billion times.

Firm details are impossible to find at this point, but we do know that this is a re-make that will blur the standard lines:

It’s closer than the 2003 Prince of Persia: Sands of Time was to the original, side-scrolling Prince of Persia. But it’s a more radical reinvention than, say, the 2007 XBLA Prince of Persia Classic. The new Karateka is much more than a port; it’s both a remake and a re-imagining of the original game for today’s consoles.

Let’s talk platforms real quick: in numerous interviews, Mechner has confirmed that this is slated to hit XBLA and PSN. Over Twitter, Mechner told TouchArcade the he ‘hopes’ an iOS version can happen. For the record, we do, too.

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