Tech Blog

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It's been quite a while since I've done one of my iPhone/iPod touch round-ups ! I've actually still been downloading a lot of iPod touch games, but, um, not playing them. Why? Well, I kind of hate iTunes, I need to reorganize my whole music collection, and can't quite get up the urge to do it. I'll get through them eventually!

I need to, too, because this post is about a couple of upcoming games for iPhone and iPod touch--one I'm looking forward to, one I'm just confused by.

First up! Konami has announced that it is going to release a new Castlevania title on iPhone/iPod touch. That sounds super exciting, but it's a little stranger than that. It's going to be Castlevania Puzzle: Encore of the Night.

Yeah. A puzzle game. Not a franchise that I think really fits the puzzle genre, it's to be a "unique puzzle-RPG" where the players take the role of Alucard from Symphony of the Night in (I imagine) a storyline derived from the game. Absolutely no details have been revealed, but it looks heavily inspired by Capcom's Street Fighter-themed puzzler Puzzle Fighter, which is pretty good. And yet... I just don't know about this.

But as for this:

I am super excited . It's the upcoming Soccer Superstars from Gamevil, who you may know from Baseball Superstars ( iTunes link / $4.99). Baseball Superstars is a bit of a rip-off of Konami's original Power-Pro Baseball series, but it was first to the iPhone, and actually Konami's own Power-Pro game on iPod touch/iPhone actually completely lacks the ability to create and grow a character through an RPG-lite mode, one of the hallmarks of the series, so the decision is clear.

And I'm excited for Soccer Superstars because it's a football game with an RPG-mode! I love sports RPGs and I particularly like football, and there hasn't been a proper football-RPG released outside of Japan... forever, I think. It's the kind of game where you have a team and can train your stats and buy items, but also do things like send players out to sign autographs or go on dates! I love that stuff!

However, I'm a little worried; what if the international teams included don't include Scotland or Canada? I'll have to boycott it. Oh well, I suppose I can keep positive that they'll be included; I really can't wait.