We have followed Big Pixel Studios for some time and loved their game Piyo Blocks and enjoyed a great developer Interview back in October 2009.  Since then they have had great success with Piyo Blocks 2 for both iphone and iPad.  Well they are back again, but this time they have put down their puzzle blocks and picked up a gung-ho cat.

Today they announced details of their new Japanese style dual-stick shooter title, Meow Meow Happy Fight. Set in modern-day Tokyo, a giant Happy Cat has travelled back in time from the year 2336 AD, where  everything is just too happy, to bring happiness and destruction to the cityʼs inhabitants!  With a massive 24 action-packed levels, 15 characters to unlock, 12 super power-ups and,  of course, 1 giant Happy Cat, this game really takes the dual-stick shooter to the next level. The slick character design, breathtaking backgrounds, and catchy Japanese music give an extra dimension to the game play.

“With Meow Meow Happy Fight weʼve created a game based around a simple mechanic, which gradually expands into something much more in-depth and skill demanding,” said Paul Virapen, Big Pixel Studios Managing Director. David Burpitt, Technical Director at Big Pixel Studios, added, “We put a big focus on the AI of opponents. They move, think and act as if they were controlled by real players, and can often out-smart you with a special
attack, or cheekily snatch a kill after you’ve put in all the hard work.” Connecting to OpenFeintʼs 29+ million gamers adds another layer of depth to Meow Meow Happy Fight. With a multitude of achievements to unlock, leaderboards, and social features, it will keep even the most avid of gamers coming back for more. “We’ve been passing our build of Meow Meow Happy Fight around the office and our guys can’t get enough. It’s a great game and is a fantastic addition to their great Piyo Blocks series,” said Eros Resmini, VP of Marketing and Developer Relations at Aurora Feint.

Meow Meow Happy Fight launches on August 5th in the App Store at the special introductory price of $0.99 (£0.59/€0.79) for a limited time, with the price going back up to $2.99 (£1.79/€2.39) shortly afterwards.

Check out the video below:

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Much like other versions of the game, screenshots barely do it justice. Liberty City in motion on the iPhone is amazing, and all the jagged edges in the screenshots quickly fade away when you’re racing down a street, under elevated train tracks, and through alleys as you escape the police. The realtime clock in-game also changes the lighting of the city, shifting from the orange glow of a sunset to the street lights turning on at night. It really looks awesome.

The basic premise of the game involves a man named Huang Lee, the son of a Triad gang boss who was recently sent to sleep with the fishes. He flies in to Liberty City with a heirloom sword his father won in a poker game, deciding to deliver it to his uncle. Of course things never go as planned, and not long after landing Huang finds himself in the middle of a gunfight and winds up getting kidnapped. After stealing the sword, the assailants assume Huang is dead, and looking to dispose of the body drive the car he’s in off the side of a pier. In the same vein of other GTA games, story isn’t really anything revolutionary, but it gets the job done.

Chinatown Wars is controlled very similar to Gameloft’s Gangstar, with virtual buttons and a joystick that handle all the driving, running, shooting, and other activities in game. The iPhone port of Chinatown Wars retains the stylus minigames that filled the DS version, appearing in a little popups where you do things like tap to smash the window of the car you were trapped in at the beginning of the game, slide your finger around to turn a screwdriver to start a car you’re stealing, etc.

When the Nintendo DS version was first released, I devoted hours to playing through the game. So far the iPhone port seems like a faithful reproduction with quite a few expletives. I obviously don’t have the full text scripts of both games to compare, but everything I’ve come across so far has fit with what you would expect out of a GTA game, and it would appear that very little if anything was actually censored for the App Store release.

Chinatown Wars seems to be a complete GTA experience. You have your apartment that serves as your character’s hub with a “Fruit” computer you can check emails on, a garage you can stash a car in, and when you’re on the road there is a full GPS system with a map of Liberty City that you can plot your destination on to easily get from one side of the city to the other. There’s all kinds of stat tracking that will tell you everything from how many bullets you’ve fired to how many fish you’ve fed and in-game options that offer all kinds of different tweaks to the interface and gameplay.

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We weren’t initially sure if this release was intentional, as we expected some amount of pre-release fanfare from Rockstar, but we are going to be working on a full review of this version of the game.

App Store Link: Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars, .99

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One of the most notable iPhone games in the early days of the App Store was Ethan Nicholas’ iShoot [App Store], a turn-based artillery game reminiscent of Scorched Earth. In January of last year iShoot took the #1 spot in the list of top 100 paid apps (and anything that could dethrone iFart Mobile has to be big news), enabling Nicholas to kiss his day job goodbye and focus entirely upon iPhone development. An easy decision, we’re guessing; Nicholas reportedly made over 0,000 on iShoot in its first five months.

But what was next for this successful first-time iPhone author?  Time passed and we began to wonder just what Nicholas had in store for iPhone gamers, when word came in October that he would be bringing an outdoor hunting game made in partnership with four-time Olympic medalist, Kim Rhode. Yesterday, Kim Rhode’s Outdoor Shooting [link] arrived in the App Store.

Kim Rhode’s Outdoor Shooting challenges you to go on the hunt for deer, bears, rabbits, and wild turkeys in a 3D, first-person sports shooter set among a variety of outdoor locales (unlocked as you make progress). And it’s not just about pistols and hunting rifles; your arsenal includes AK-47s and even a rocket launcher. And, while some of our readers won’t have a taste for a virtual hunting title (with bunnies), the genre is a popular one on other systems and similar iPhone titles, John Moffett’s iHunt [{content}.99] and Glu’s Deer Hunter 3D [.99], have been doing quite well, of late.

See our brief demo video for a look at the game (note that virtual animals are shot and killed in this footage — even bunnies).

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App Store Link: Kim Rhode’s Outdoor Shooting, .99

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The iPhone version is based on the series of Big Buck Hunter arcade machines which originally debuted all the way back in 2001. Since then, there have been several spin-off machines that have you hunting things like big horn sheep, elk, and even antelope. The arcade game is played using a shotgun aimed at the screen to shoot whatever it is you’re hunting and often can be found at bars right next to the Golden Tee machine.

The iPhone, obviously lacking any light gun accessories uses your fingers to do the shooting. This mobile version of the game plays remarkably similar to the arcade machine, although quite a bit of the allure of Big Buck Hunter has always been playing it while you’re out drinking with friends and there isn’t much the iPhone can do the emulate that.

In the following video I go over all the functionality of the game including shooting deer, the bonus stages, online leaderboards, and even the ability to use your GPS coordinates to find the nearest arcade machine:

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Big Buck Hunter has an absolutely massive following, and it’s great to see an iPhone port of the game that is actually fairly representative of the original instead of a quick cash-in on the series. Big Buck Hunter Pro is expected to be available soon, and while no price has been announced yet, I’m sure the iPhone game will be much cheaper than a single night of pumping quarters in to a real Big Buck Hunter machine.

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