From TAITO Corporation, comes a beautiful looking tower defense game inspired by classical Japanese paintings with a samurai twist. Check out the description of the game and its features:

Mikado Defenders: an original feudal Japanese defense simulation for the iPhone / iPod touch!

In Mikado Defenders, players deploy samurai foot soldiers, archers, and other units, desperately attempting to defend their fortress from an all-out demonic attack. It’s tower defense, with a uniquely Japanese twist!

Set in the Sengoku Era—a time when Japan was torn asunder by civil war— Mikado Defenders features historical locations such as Edo and Osaka, renowned samurai commanders including Uesugi Kenshin and the “One-Eyed Dragon” Masamune, powerful Guardian Spirit allies, giant demonic enemies, an in-depth castle improvement system and more!

Special Characteristics:
- Castle Improvement – Build your base up from a humble campsite to an impregnable fortress, complete with barricades and turrets! Investing in your castle is vital if you’re to have any hope fending off the Skull Wheel and other massive demons!
- Guardian Spirits – Hold off the attacking demons for long enough and your castle will attract the aid of mystical allies. A single attack from one of these Guardian Spirits boasts the power to turn the tide of battle! Guardian Spirits also improve with your fortress; the stouter your defenses, the more powerful your ally!
- Samurai Commanders – Reinforcing your castle and successfully destroying a “boss” giant demon has the chance of drawing a new samurai commander to your side! Recruit Oda Nobunaga, Sanada Yukimura, Date Masamune, and more! Each commander has their own special characteristics, and these abilities will prove vital in staging a successful defense!

Other Features:
- Simple yet strategic game play!
- Intuitive goals: place your troops on the map, fend off attacking demons, and guard your castle!
- Easy controls: deploy samurai, select commanders, and unleash powerful guardian spirit attacks through intuitive taps and flicks!
- Play on your terms: you can suspend games mid-level, and come back to them later, picking up right where you left off!
- Selectable music: enjoy the provided ZUNTATA soundtrack or listen your own tunes via iPod Library Support!

Check out the screenshots:

The long awaited Astro Ranch from Tag Games is finally going to hit the app stores!

Here are the full list of features:

- A unique game experience – exclusive to iPhone
- Farming game-play mashed up with RPG and mini-games
- Awesome 3D world to explore, with beautiful animation
- Lots of strange alien characters to befriend
- Go fishing, pan for gold, steal fruit from trees and visit aliens!
- Large range of crops, livestock and upgrades to buy
- Message friends, send them gifts and credits and many more social features powered by Scoreloop
- Lots of downloadable content available from the online shop

And a gameplay video:

Launch Details:

- Date – week of the 21st February
- Price – initially discounted to £1.79 / $2.99 / Euro 2.39
- Exclusive golden statue of the mayor available from the shopkeeper for the first 50,000 downloads

We can’t wait to get our hands on this!

Another vampire themed adventure game here for you folks – Vampire Origins from IceHill Games and published by Chillingo is set to be released in the app store real soon.

Here is the description from Chillingo:

Vampire Origins is a hot new 3D shooter, an isometric adventure title coming to the iPhone and iPod Touch.

The game pits Dracula’s arch-rival Van Helsing against legions of underworld creatures. If you fancy Gothic adventures paired with intense fighting, Vampire Origins will boil the blood in your veins.

If you’ve ever played Diablo, you’ll feel right at home with Vampire Origins. A simple battle system ditches complex inventory and weaponry in favor of a point-and-click approach of attacking creatures by tapping them. It may sound boring on paper, but the fast-paced action balances things out. Fast, very agile enemies leave you little time to ponder your next move or marvel Gothic architecture. Although Vampire Origins is an adventure, with some puzzles and lots of exploration, action and killing enemies come before everything else.

And here is a gameplay video:

Looks like a solid game that is action packed. We can’t wait to hear more about it. Here are some screenshots!

A different style of rhythm game is set to be released for the iPhone – B-Boy Beats from Tag Games and Mobile Pie is set to release on February 14, 2010. Here is the description:

Overview
Are you ready to party? B-Boy Beats is a unique, all action, hip hop rhythm game set in 1980’s New York City. As the lead member of a new break-dance crew looking to gain respect, you’ll need to learn the latest moves and battle other crews to claim new turf across various city locations.

Game-play
Place your fingers on the screen and get ready to move! Simply tapping isn’t enough to succeed in B-Boy Beats. Players must hold their fingers on the screen – giving the feel of virtual legs moving across a virtual dance floor!!
Learn the latest dance moves in the fully interactive tutorial before heading out onto the city streets. There are 10 break-dance moves to learn with each one requiring ever greater skill, timing and confidence to pull off. You knew the city was a dangerous place when you left the safety of the suburbs but are you ready to be tested to the limit? There are 7 hardcore crews each breaking on their home turf to take on and ultimately beat down in your quest to be the best in the city.

Underground Hip Hop ft MC Frontalot
B-Boy Beats features 17 dope tracks from the rising stars of underground Hip Hop. Led by Nerdcore and Penny Arcade favourite MC Frontalot the game also includes awesome tracks from Optimus Rhyme, Id Obelus, Ultraklystron, Rai and Magitek.

Features
- The most original music game on iPhone today
- Face off against 7 NYC crews each with their own turf
- Awesome music talent from the hip hop underground
- Rhythm action game-play where your fingers become legs!
- 10 authentic break-dance moves to learn
- Easy and Hard difficulty levels for extra replay value
- Open Feint social network integration

Here is a gameplay video:

Very interesting game indeed – I wonder what sort of difficulty the moves will be. They say 10 authentic moves to learn, so I really doubt air flares, swipes, and windmills are even in the game. But that’s alright, I got a wicked toprock.

Check out the screenshots:

Chillingo has let us know that Cogs, by Lazy 8 Studios, will be submitted very soon to the app store. Here is the description of the game:

Cogs is a groundbreaking puzzle game, where players build increasingly complex machines using sliding tiles in 2D and 3D environments. Multiple gameplay modes and difficulty levels are available. New puzzles are unlocked by building contraptions against the clock with as few moves as possible. This visually stunning and fantastic sounding game is perfect for puzzle fans of any age and ability!

And they even included a great gameplay trailer:

The game looks magnificent – maybe it’s just the inner Incredible Machines fanboy in me talking, but the game looks amazing. It looks like Pipe Dream and Incredible Machines had a love child, and the love child was dipped in holy water. We can’t wait to get our hands on it, and we’ll hopefully have a review up as soon as it comes out!

Viderea announced recently that they are releasing a fantastic looking 3D flight combat game on February 10, 2010 – X Invasion 2. Here is the description:

Game Brief

Earth Date: 2.10.2010

We thought they came in peace. We thought they would bring knowledge. We thought they would bring salvation.

We were wrong.

Hostile aliens have invaded San Francisco, and you are Mankind’s last line of defense. Train Hard,
Be Brave, Fight with Courage, and Godspeed!

Game Features:

X Invasion 2 is the first 3D Reality Based Game for the iPhone/iPod platform to incorporate Viderea’s patent pending TruView Technology. With TruView, users can fly freely over 10,000 square miles of photorealistic and geographically accurate views of the San Francisco Bay Area.

X Invasion 2 has 3 modes of play:

1. Campaign Mode. 16+ unique and intense missions that will test your skill, your accuracy, and your will. This is not the same mission recycled over and over again (ie destroy 1 plane, destroy 2 planes, destroy this plane, destroy that plane,etc). Instead each mission is unique — intense dogfights, follow the leader, aerial rollercoasters, airport landing, night patrol, bombing runs, a final mothership, and more!

2. Arcade Mode. Nonstop action lets you compete for the top spot on our global high scores list. In this mode, you can take on wave after wave of aliens over the vast San Francisco Bay Area. This what true 3D arcade action is meant to be!

3. Tour Mode. Relax and take a virtual tour of the San Francisco Bay Area. Get in your helicopter and enjoy the scenery. Roam freely and see everything in photorealistic quality — downtown San Francisco, the Golden Gate, San Jose, Oakland, Stanford, Berkeley, Silicon Valley, it’s all there and more. You can save interesting photos to your photo album and even share them with others.

Here is a video of the gameplay:

This game looks amazing and seems to run really smooth, can’t wait to get my hands on it! I wish it had online multiplayer or even local multiplayer, but we’ll see what else they can add with it.

iDiwo Team has announced that they have sent in Gold Keeper II for review by Apple, so we should expect it soon! Not only are they updating Gold Keeper I, but they are integrating the following features in Gold Keeper II:

- 5 switchable weapons
- 5 enemies
- bosses
- achievments
- Open Feint support
- new visuals

And a new promo video to go along with it:

We thought the original Gold Keeper was decent – needed a bit more content. Let’s see what iDiwo Team can do with this one!

So Square Enix just revealed on Facebook that they are bringing Final Fantasy I and Final Fantasy II to the iPhone and iPod Touch! Check out the screenshots:

This looks amazing and we cannot wait! We’re huge Final Fantasy fans here, so we’re really looking forward to this. Hurry up Square Enix!

Tehra Dark Warrior by StormBASIC games is almost finished! They have recently released a better look at the game with the concept, genre, and key features, as well as several screenshots. A better description of Tehra Dark Warrior:

1. Game concept

“Tehra: Dark Warrior” is an action 3D game, set in a fantasy world where you fight as Tehra, (a hybrid creature that’s part human, part devil) against monstrous creatures, Orcs, undeads, and a horde of other beasts, before facing Bacdar, the King of demons.

2. Genre

The game is conceived as a classic action hack’n’slash and adventures, based on a fantasy world. Our heroine, Tehra will progress along the game increasing her combat skills, magical power and being able of becoming a more brutal evil version, with extraordinary power.

3. Key Features

• Tehra has two sides as a character: a human and a devil one.
• Easy to play. The player will get the controls in a few minutes.
• Player magic and combat skills evolution.
• Great history mode and challenging minigames include a survival style game for fast-playing.
• Online community, powered by AGON. Check your position at the worldwide leaderboards! Geolocation is supported!
• Defeat enemies and complete levels to win Awards and unlock Challenges. Show them to your friends using Facebook or Twitter.
• Hours of gameplay.
• NextGen 3D graphics, with use of OpenGL|ES 2.0 shaders for special effects as Bloom, Shockwaves, etc. (if hardware supports it, such as iPhone 3GS version).

And the screenshots:

This game looks amazing so far and we can’t wait for it to drop – we’re probably going to lose a lot of productivity for it. Thanks a lot, StormBASIC. Here’s a gameplay video to entice you even more:

A new trailer for Guerilla Bob from Angry Mob Games and published by Chillingo has been released and shows one important detail – the involvement of John Gore from Minigore. In fact, he’s the end boss!

Check out the trailer:

Guerilla Bob will apparently be submitted this week, so we definitely look forward to it hitting stores.

Via: TouchArcade

UPDATE: Chillingo just sent us the background story behind Guerilla Bob.

Guerrilla Bob Story
It all started with two best friends. Bob and John Gore have been friends since they were 10, and continued to be best buddies through high school, and then through college.

Eventually, Bob decided to enroll in the army, while John Gore chose a life of crime and money.

Bob got great achievements and got promotion after promotion, until he got to be a national hero.

Jealous of his success, John Gore set him up so that Bob would look like a corrupt soldier. So Bob was kicked out of the army.

With nothing left to do, Bob decided to get REVENGE, and became a rebel.
From then on, he would go by the name Guerrilla Bob. One day, Bob found that the army had a plan to nuke the place where his old friend John Gore had his troops. He sabotaged the plan, so he’d go in by himself and hunt them down one by one.

Sounds like a great brand that complements Minigore so well. They’re doing some final Crystal testing with it, and will be submitted soon!