The Pocket God team over at Bolt Creative has unveiled their latest Pocket God project, Procket God: Journey to Uranus, exclusively for the iPad. Instead of simply porting the original Pocket God game to the big screen, Bolt Creative made an entirely new entity, which will be a “set of mini-games centered around being able to take Pygmies to other worlds.” According to the Pocket Blog, “all the interactivity will focus on the strengths of the iPad, namely the bigger size, the extra screen real estate and multi-touch”.

Dave Castelnuovo, who formed Bolt Creative after being a developer for Sega, among other companies, said in a recent CNN interview that, “It’s a completely new game,” he said. “I don’t really believe in taking an existing title and cranking out an exact same clone of the game on every different console out there. If we have a really hardcore fan that has it on both iPad and iPhone, we want them to have a different experience.”

If Pocket God on the iPad takes off like the iPhone version and sells anywhere near 3 million copies, it will be hard not to consider the pygmies to be the App Store’s Mario or Sonic. Look for Pocket God: Journey to Uranus to launch sometime this fall. And don’t fret, Bolt Creative is still going to fully support the original Pocket God, and have an update called “A Pygmy A Day Keeps the Ape Away” coming very soon.

Be sure to check out the extra screen shots after the break.

[ Pocket God Coming To The Big Screen is a post from 148Apps ]

R-Type, one of the most influential shooters of all time, is coming to your favorite iDevice. Most people remember the game as a fun shooter that they would play every now and again, but I remember it as the most frustratingly difficult game outside of playing a Don Bluth game in the arcade.

IGN best said in a list of the top 10 toughest games to beat that “R-Type requires you to memorize the level layout (of course, you’ll have to memorize the attack patterns, too). And the only way to do this is through a system of trial and error. Play a level, die, play again but take a different path, get a little farther, die To make matters worse, your ship is the slowest, least maneuverable hunk of junk in the galaxy.”

As painful as the memories are, R-Type will inevitably be on my iPhone when it goes live. EA says that it will be a faithful recreation of the original, except for the three control options (D-Pad, Accelerometer, and touch). Check out their newly released screenshots… they might stir up some painful memories.

[ Prepare To Be Frustrated – R-Type Is Coming is a post from 148Apps ]

The third MobileBeat conference, VentureBeat’s two day conference for mobile industry executives, investors, startups, and developers is rapidly approaching. MobileBeat 2010 will take place in San Francisco’s Palace Hotel on July 12-13. It’s one of the must-attend events for the mobile industry and brings together innovators and investors for great networking opportunities and great discussions.

One of the biggest events during MobileBeat are the pitches from startups. Twenty startups are chosen to present to the crowd and pitch their company to the 500+ attending the conference. This year, the chosen startups will be presenting on the coolest ideas for the coming 4G world.

The goal of this years startup competition is to showcase the top 20 companies with the coolest mobile ideas for the coming 4G world. If you have a startup or product thats going to shake up the mobile ecosystem around 4G, this is the perfect opportunity to make your pitch to over 500 mobile industry executives, investors, journalists and fellow entrepreneurs.

Eighteen startups have already been chosen, but you can help chose the remaining two at the MobileBeat Startup Competition page. Voting is open through June 21st.

If you are interested in learning more, head on over to the MobileBeat site. 148Apps readers click here and use promo code “VB-148Apps” to get 15% off! Hurry though. Tickets are going fast.

148Apps is proud to be a media partner for MobileBeat 2010.

[ MobileBeat 2010 Coming July 12-13 is a post from 148Apps ]

Tension is building for the Apple Keynote, an annual event to kick off the 2010 WWDC. Let’s take a quick look at the things will will most certainly see, and some that we hope to see.

The Next iPhone

The worst kept secret in Apple history is the next generation iPhone. Most likely called the iPhone HD, this new design has people very divided. It’s a more boxy design with an aluminum band around the middle and a ceramic/glass back. Some love the design while others hate it.

What we do know is that it has a higher resolution screen at 640×960 (4x the pixels of previous iPhones). This should provide for crisper text and in general a smoother look. The next iPhone will also apparently have a higher resolution camera on the back with a flash (finally!). The camera is reported to be an 8 MP camera that also does 720p HD video recording.

The big addition will be a front facing camera to enable video chat. This will, I’m sure, be a big impressive demo on Monday.

There are also, likely, things we don’t know yet about the new iPhone. The device we’ve seen all over the place is likely holding some secrets back for Monday. There has been talk of the back responding to touch as well as the front. That could be interesting yet I struggle to figure out how it would be used.

Let’s hope there are some secrets. Otherwise it will be really hard to Steve to present the new iPhone with his usual ‘proud father’ new device presentation style.

OS 4

We already know about OS 4, but there reportedly quite a few tidbits that we don’t know about yet. Besides the release date of the final, there are likely features of the OS that we don’t know yet.

In addition, we don’t know how or when it will arrive on the iPad. If there are any iPad specific features, we’ll hopefully hear about those on Monday.

Heading for the clouds

It’s no secret that Apple has been working on cloud services for the iPhone and more broadly iTunes. The have been building a huge new data center on the east coast to support it. But the undertaking is huge. And I expect the keynote will be mainly focused on the iPhone.

Apple is rumored to be holding another event in June that might introduce cloud services and other such interesting services.

Mac Mini / Macbook Air / Desktop Macs

MacRumors is reporting supply shortages for the MacMini. This is generally an indication that a new version is coming. The timing seems logical that we might see updates to the MacMini and the rather aging Macbook Air and Desktop Macs.

Personally I think it’s just about as likely that Apple will turf the Macbook Air as update it. Differences aside, the iPad has taken the glory of the small form factor away.

Apple TV

This hobby project is getting really old now. Theories are that Apple will be releasing an update, this time based on the iPhone OS, not OSX. This would be a fantastic feature as it would open the platform to all of the iPhone OS apps. Apps for TV! This would compete directly with Google TV. The question is, is this a good business to be in?

While I’d like to think that we’ll see this Monday, I think it might be too early. But you never know.

We know one thing, this should be a very huge keynote. While we know a lot, we don’t know everything. The questions that remain and possibilities are huge.

Check back Monday, we’ll give you a few live blogs you can reference to follow the latest info from the keynote. In addition, we’ll tweet a few of the highlights at @148Apps and post a full recap and commentary sometime after the event.

[ image credit: Engadget ]

[ Apple Keynote Coming Monday — What Will We See? is a post from 148Apps ]

Its the age-old developer story. Guy makes game, guy sells rights to game, guy gets game back again and remakes it for the iPhone. Okay, weve never heard that story either but it is the story behind retro game Qwak thats heading to an iPhone near you.

This cute, old school adventure game was originally made for the BBC (thats a computer not a UK TV network) 22 years ago and was then re-launched on the Amiga by Team 17, the guys who made Worms, in 1993. Qwak has lain dormant for several years until its original creator, Jamie Woodhouse, decide to bring it back to life via the iPhone. Learning the iPhone SDK as he went, Jamie has now completed the iPhone version, which he hopes will be available on the App Store very soon.

Check out the video below and youll see how this labor of love could quickly become the next addictive iPhone smash.

Qwak … coming soon to your iPhone from Jamie Woodhouse on Vimeo.

[ Retro Gaming Action. Qwak For iPhone Coming Soon is a post from 148Apps ]