Back in the arcade fighting game heyday of the ‘90s, 2D heavyweights like Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat had to contend with a new brand of brawler on the block: the 3D fighter. Games like Virtua Fighter and Tekken forewent 2D sprites and single-plane gameplay in favor of 3D polygonal character models and a full range of movement within the combat arenas. Happily, it turned out that there was room for both kinds of fighters to coexist, with gamers enjoying 2D and 3D fighting games in harmony.

One of the most popular 3D fighting franchises to come out of this era was Namco’s Soul Edge, and more prominently its sequel SoulCalibur, both of which were noteworthy for their focus on weapon-based combat. SoulCalibur hit arcades in 1998, and was then ported to the Sega Dreamcast to launch alongside that system in 1999. The Dreamcast version was remarkable, featuring even better graphics than the arcade version and a wealth of additional modes and characters. In 2008 SoulCalibur was again resurrected for Xbox Live Arcade, boasting a high definition makeover but lacking any sort of online play.

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Back in October we told you that Namco's classic 3D arcade fighter SoulCalibur was coming to iOS, and now it looks like we have a release date for the game. According to Andriasang (and noted by Joystiq), Namco Bandai will be releasing the iOS SoulCalibur as a Universal app this coming week on the 19th.

SoulCalibur on iOS will feature 19 different fighters and lots of game modes, including arcade, time attack, survival, extra survival, practice and museum modes. Sadly, there is no sign of team battle mode or any kind of multiplayer mode, which is pretty odd for a fighting game. The lack of online multiplayer isn't really surprising, but I sure hope we see some sort of local multiplayer option in an update in the future.

But even with the lack of multiplayer, SoulCalibur is an absolute classic that I spent countless hours with on my Dreamcast and I'm really looking forward to playing again on my iPhone and iPad. There will be Game Center support for 3 of the above modes, so there will be somewhat of a competitive aspect. Unfortunately, it looks like at release only owners of 4th generation devices or either version of the iPad will be able to run the game. Hopefully the hardware requirements will be able to be lowered down the line at some point.

We'll be sure to give SoulCalibur a spin and see how it's stood the test of time when it hits the App Store this week, and you can check out our forums for further discussion of the game.

Update: Here's a trailer for the game:

[Via Andriasang and Joystiq]

Back in late October we posted an update on Elite Systems' coming Elite Collection (iPhone) and Elite Collection HD (iPad) apps, which will offer a bundled collection of classic Commodore 8-bit home computer games, as well as an in-app game store for purchasing additional singles and bundled arrangements of games. At that time, Elite indicated that these applications would be delayed due to a trademark complication. We're now happy to report the studio has informed us that the titles will land in the App Store on Friday, December 16th, and at a one-week promotional launch price of $0.99 each. [ UPDATE: Apologies to readers in our overlooking the fact that the stated release date does not apply to the Americas. These titles will see release there in mid-to-late January. ]

As we detailed earlier in October, the Elite Collection apps will come bundled with the following titles:

• Elite Collection Vol. #1:
  • featuring ALTERNATE REALITY: THE CITY and also including
  • Black Magic
  • Alternate Reality: The Dungeon
• Elite Collection Vol. #2:
  • featuring URIDIUM and also including
  • Buggy Boy (a.k.a. Speed Buggy)
  • First Samurai
• Elite Collection Vol. #3:
  • featuring BUNDESLIGA MANAGER and also including
  • Denaris
  • Enforcer: Fullmetal Megablaster
• Additional 8-bit "Singles":
  • Battleships (a.k.a. Battleship)
  • Frank Bruno's Boxing
  • Batty

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Earlier this week, Warner Bros. and Mortal Kombat developer NeatherRealm Studios surprised everybody by dropping Batman Arkham City Lockdown [$5.99], an iOS spinoff of the critically acclaimed console series, into the App Store. Batman Arkham City Lockdown is a streamlined take on its console big brother games, placing you in the role of Batman as he faces off against a stable of Gotham City's infamous villains in one-on-one battles. The presentation and overall "Batman-ness" of the game are absolutely fantastic, and although the combat is a bit rigid and flat, Arkham City Lockdown offers a fun mobile version of The Dark Knight's superhero escapades.

Immediately upon starting up the game, you're thrust into a fight with one of the Joker's thugs which acts as a tutorial in the ways of combat. The controls are fairly straightforward: Tapping the screen allows you to dodge an incoming blow, swiping the screen left or right throws those respective punches, swiping up does an uppercut, and swiping down just when an enemy is about to strike does a deflection move resulting in a dizzied opponent.

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We thought the My Xbox Live app would be the surprise of the afternoon, but Warner Bros incoming Batman Arkham City tie-in for iOS is contesting. Earlier today, the New Zealand App Store was updated with a bunch of new apps that we'll see tonight, and Batman Arkham City Lockdown is one of those. In brief, it's an Infinity Blade-style one-on-one fighter that has you, as the Batman, eventually beating up the Joker, Two-Face, "and more" dudes from that universe across several different gritty Gotham environments.

As you'll notice from the screens, there's a little more to the experience. Gadgets and gizmos and upgrades are apparently a threat, as well as "unique gameplay" elements in its boss fights. I wouldn't be surprised if it had a touch more, er, viciousness than your run-of-the-mill Batman game, too, since the guys behind Mortal Kombat, NetherRealm, are behind it and all.

Lockdown should release tonight at around 11PM EST (at $5.99), so we'll be able to get a much better picture then. For other release news, look out for our upcoming post that spills the beans on everything notable hitting tonight.

[Via Joystiq, via IGN]

There's hype building publicity stunts, then there's hype building publicity stunts. Pre-release excitement for Chair's upcoming Infinity Blade 2 is already at an all time high, which apparently has left Chair's PR department scratching their collective heads to come up with what else they could do to promote a game that's already on cruise control for greatness.

I'm guessing this eureka moment coincided with late night fitness-centric infomercials, resulting in a promotion that's so silly we couldn't help but post about it. Anyway, Chair has partnered up with musclebound bro Nate Green who is known for The Hero Handbook, a free fitness-oriented self-help eBook. Nate (who can be seen above working out at the local playground) put together a list of exercises which should help prepare even the weakest of hands for Infinity Blade 2.

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Chair's Infinity Blade [$2.99] hit the App Store late last year and was met with nearly flawless critical reception. We couldn't help but give it five stars in our review, saying "It doesn't get much more 'must-have' than this." We then went on to name-drop Infinity Blade all over our Best iPhone Games category, listing it highly in every buyer's guide, and every other opportunity we could think of to tell people to download it.

At the iPhone 4S press event, Chair announced Infinity Blade 2, and I'm not sure it's possible for another iOS title (aside from a potential Infinity Blade 3) to have this much pre-launch hype. It's well deserved, too. The original was fantastic, and really, all Chair would have needed to do is phone in a sequel with new monsters, new equipment, and maybe even a new setting and we all would have been happy. Instead, what they've done, it take nearly every element of the original and turned it up to eleven.

One of the few criticisms people had of Infinity Blade was the oddly cyclical nature of the game, which wasn't held up by any more than a vague shell of a story involving your entire bloodline serving the single purpose of throwing themselves at the God King. Penny Arcade nailed it in a comic, and Infinity Blade was a much better experience if you didn't focus on just how silly it was that you decided to take up the sword after your father, grand father, great grandfather, great great grandfather and however many "greats" you needed to add to get back to the original knight who foolishly decided to make this your family's purpose.

Infinity Blade 2 feels like it has an actual story, and this time it's told through actual voiceovers. It picks up where the first left off, and you've got the God King's Infinity Blade in your hands, and are off to find "The Worker of Secrets" now that every deathless in the world is interested in taking the Infinity Blade from you. The initial hook involves searching for Saydhi, an information dealer. Thankfully, Saydhi seems to love duels, and offers up prizes for winning. I won't spoil more than that (and this hardly counts as spoilers since it all transpires in the first cut scene) but the way things branch out from there is substantially more interesting than the original even though you'll be doing a similar series of loops through the game.

Combat, the main draw of Infinity Blade seems to be greatly improved. Chair must have either tweaked the combat animations themselves, how the swipe input is handled, or both as it feels like you have an even more direct control link to your character. This shines even further in the new combat options which become available, allowing you to trade your shield to either dual wield or carry a massive two handed weapon.

The three fighting styles feel substantially different, and help greatly in making the game feel not quite as repetitive. With two weapons in hand, you attack much faster and blocking with your shield is replaced with being able to duck. Two handed weapons are much slower, and your defensive abilities are swapped with blocking using the actual weapon itself. It's really cool how it all works out.

The item store is back, and just like the first game you'll be trading your gold for gear at regular intervals. A new gem system allows for higher levels of customization though, and it won't take long before your equipped set of gear has all sorts of slots that you can socket gems into which can do basic things like boost stats all the way up to imbuing your items with various magical properties. If coming across gold in battles is a problem, Infinity Blade 2 offers a similar IAP purchase system to buy more gold if you want. Although, like the original, there's really no reason to and buying gold to get the best items seems to just remove any drive to actually play the game since equipment upgrades play such a big role.

Outside of fights, the gameplay is nearly identical with a world you can explore in an on-rails fashion, panning the camera around and tapping to move to the next location. Hidden items are back, encouraging you to stop to look around on every screen so you don't miss anything. You'll want to, too, because Infinity Blade 2 looks gorgeous. While you might be rewarded with items for doing it, you'll also be taking in the scenery just to marvel at the graphics your iPhone is capable of pumping out.

The rest of the game can easily be summed up with, "It's Infinity Blade, but more." There are more enemy types to fight, more visual effects, more flexibility, more customization, and they managed to do all this while removing how repetitive the original felt after blasting through the game a few times. It's everything I wanted in a sequel, and I can't wait for it to be released.

Infinity Blade 2 will be available on December 1st as a universal app for $6.99. We'll have a full review then, so stay tuned.

Capcom's 'alright' iPhone and iPod Touch take on Devil May Cry 4 has received an update alongside a price reduction. For a limited time, Devil May Cry 4 Refrain [$.99] is (obviously) $.99 instead of its usual $4.99. The coinciding update adds an unlockable "Devil Trigger" for both of the game's characters. The catch? It's only available after completion.

If you're sitting there wondering what a Devil Trigger is, enjoy this academic breakdown of the mechanic by the dudes who run the unofficial Devil May Cry wiki. They take their jobs very seriously:

"Devil Trigger (often abbreviated as D.T.) is a special technique possessed by demons and half-demons which allows them to release their full power. While in Devil Trigger, the user will assume their true form. In this form, many of the character's attributes are amplified, and the character may have access to upgrades or even additions to their normal abilities like flying or hovering.

When playing on higher difficulties, enemies can enter a Devil Trigger-like state[1] after a certain time limit (which is fixed for each enemy). This causes enemies to strengthen their attributes as well as making them attack more often and more powerful."

We took a good, long look at Refrain earlier this year and it's probably in your interests to check that write-up out before you click "buy." It'll help get your expectations in line, at the very least. Spoiler: Refrain is a competent re-make of the original game, featuring simpler combos and a few core issues due to its mobile nature.

We're closing in on another holiday, guys, and that means one thing: sales. This week, Sega was the first to open up its library in celebration of Halloween. Until October 31, you can save up to 80-percent on some of it's more... unimpressive iOS efforts, including Gunstar Heroes and Virtua Fighter 2. I'm not sure if the hook for this was to scare us with lower prices or questionable games, but hey, a sale is a sale.

Here's the full list:

• Brick People - $1.99 → $.99
• Brick People for iPad - $2.99 → $.99
• ChuChu Rocket - $2.99 → $.99
• ChuChu Rocket! HD for iPad - $4.99 → $.99
• Gunstar Heroes - $2.99 → $0.99
• Virtua Fighter 2 - $1.99 → $0.99

Nothing says spooky like ChuChu Rocket, right? In all seriousness, though, we're pretty stoked that Sega is slashing the price of this one in particular. It's a cool, fast-moving puzzle game that actually plays well on the iPad. You can catch our original review here, if the less-than-a-dollar price point isn't luring you in immediately. Here's our words of caution on Brick People by the way.

Gameloft doesn't miss sales opportunities, so it's not much of a surprise to see a very select number of its titles get a price-slashing treatment this week in celebration of Make Kids Fat Night. Starting now and for a 'limited time,' you can save a bunch of dollars on decidedly un-spooky titles like Gameloft Action Pack, its MMO Order & Chaos Online, and Shrek Forever After: the Movie: the Game.

Here's the full list for perusing pleasure:

• Order & Chaos Online - $6.99 → $.99
• Gameloft Action Pack - $4.99 → $.99
• Shrek Forever After: The Game - $4.99 → $.99
• Shrek Forever After: The Game HD - $4.99 → $.99
• Iron Man 2 - $4.99 → $.99
• Iron Man 2 for iPad - $4.99 → $.99
• Driver - $2.99 → $.99
• Skater Nation - $2.99 → $.99

We're not 100-percent behind any of these, but we will note that the Gameloft Action Pack has a total of three decent titles bundled inside of it: Gameloft's answer to God of War, Hero of Sparta, its WWII shooter Brothers in Arms: Hour of Heroes, and its Mortal Kombat-ish homage, Blades of Fury. You could do worse with your dollar. For example: you could buy candy.

Hey, guys, Soul Calibur is coming to iOS. The original Soul Calibur, that is, and not one of the new-fangled ones.

Joystiq recently caught up with a Namco Bandai at an event and received this confirmation, as well as a release window of "soon." And, well, that's it.

Soul Calibur has seen two port jobs since its release in 1998. It'll be fun to see if this one will roll out with iOS-centric controls and functionality like the Street Fighter iOS games. They seem to hit register pretty well with that series' faithful and we all know how choosey they can (rightfully sometimes) be.

[via Joystiq]

On the heels of the pyrotechnic announcement for Infinity Blade 2, Chair Entertainment has dropped another content update for the original Infinity Blade [$5.99]. Content Pack #4, as it’s been oh-so-cleverly dubbed, gives you new rings, swords, helmets, and shields to level up and use against its brand new enemy the “RookBane.” Chair describes the ‘Bane as “fierce and deadly,” which kinda calls into question the character of the game’s other monsters. I mean, what are these guys, chopped liver?

If you’re one of the two or three people who are really into Infinity Blade’s lore, know that this update also packs in a “sneak peek” at the game’s book, "Infinity Blade: Awakening." The whole thing is available right now, actually, on the App Store for $2.99.

That's not a RookBane, btw.

A small little side-note here, but it appears as if Infinity Blade 2 will launch with its share of new equipment and items in addition to the pre-existing stuff in Infinity Blade. I’m not sure if this applies to new items added in updates, but if it does, this update rolls in a lot of content that you’ll see again this December.

[Via TUAW]

Chair Entertainment’s Infinity Blade 2 will be a lot more than a facelift. From our side of the aisle, it appears as though the team is attempting to widen the scope and breadth of the original experience, all the while giving players something they didn’t have a lot of in the first game: choice. In a must-read interview with IGN UK, Chair co-founder and technical dude Geremy Mustard revealed that the game will launch with over 100 new weapons and items, boast a significantly larger world with more intricately constructed environments, feature way more enemies and optional side-paths, and it’ll roll out with fun battle additions like, say, dual- and two-handed fighting styles and weapons.

"The player will explore many different environments in this game," Mustard told IGN. "You'll see some stuff that looks familiar, but the castle in this game is very different. We'll also be exploring environments in a more Asian-themed landscape."

“With each environment, we wanted to create these water cooler moments -- these areas where players can look back and converse about that battle that took place in front of that huge tower or by that really cool clock,” he continued. "There's always something in the environment that will keep your focus and lead you through the level."

We got our first look at Infinity Blade 2’s December-bound feature set at Apple’s press event the other afternoon and came away ridiculously impressed with the technical majesty. Can this game come any faster, please? Pretty please with sugar on top?

[Via IGN]

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 Elite Collection is Elite Systems' initiative to expand their ongoing retro rebirth efforts by utilizing a new proprietary system -- a facilitator, of sorts -- that was designed in such a way as to not incorporate, reference, or in any way rely upon third-party property and that is able to deliver, to iOS, games that originated on platforms other than just the ZX Spectrum (Elite's original source platform) in near-100% original form. For more details on these titles (including videos), see our preview.

Elite will soon be following up these three initial titles with an additional six Elite Collection releases.

Real Steel [$4.99] was released to the App Store this month by Indian developers, Jump Games as a tie-in to the boxing movie of the same name. The film is due to be released on October 7th, and as far as we can tell from trailers, combines Wolverine and Kate from Lost with an $80 million dollar budget and a likely drunken bet in the Hollywood production rings that they could get people to pay money to sit through a movie based on Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots.

If you don't generally follow upcoming releases of robot-centric movies with lots of explosions, this trailer will get you up to speed:

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