Best of FingerGaming: From Real Racing to Hybrid: Eternal Whisper

[Every week, Gamasutra sums up sister iPhone site FingerGaming's top news and reviews for Apple's nascent -- and increasingly exciting -- portable games platform, as written by editor in chief Danny Cowan and authors Louise Yang and Jonathan Glover.] This week, FingerGaming highlights notable titles like Real Racing, and details the upcoming release of Hybrid: Eternal Whisper. Featured reviews for this week cover INKoming! and Emergency Dangerous. - Apple Reveals iPhone 3GS, Drops iPhone 3G Price to $99 "Claiming that the 'S' signifies the addition of 'speed,' Apple notes that application loading and performance will be significantly faster on the 3GS than on the 3G. Gaming performance will also be improved on the 3GS, thanks to the implementation of the OpenGL ES 2.0 standard." - Interview: Gamevil USA President Kyu Lee Talks Upcoming RPG Hybrid: Eternal Whisper "Here, Game Developer magazine editor in chief Brandon Sheffield interviews Gamevil USA's president Kyu Lee about the company's experience with the iPhone so far. Lee also reveals the first few details about Gamevil's next iPhone project, an action-RPG tentatively titled Hybrid: Eternal Whisper." - Top Free Game App Downloads for the Week "Paper Toss surges in popularity after recently becoming a free download, and takes the top spot in this week's chart. The Bejeweled-like Falling Gems takes second in today's rankings, as last week's chart champion Rollercoaster Rush drops to third place." - Review: INKoming! "INKoming! is yet another entry in the already crowded tower defense genre on the iPhone/Touch. The basis of the game this time is to protect your homework from hordes of enemies by building structures which use ink as a resource." - iPhone 3GS OpenGL ES 2.0 Support Could Splinter App Store Library "Games developed using OpenGL ES 2.0's 3D graphics API have the potential to feature richer visuals and smoother gameplay performance. However, applications developed using the new OpenGL ES 2.0 functionality won't merely suffer a performance hit on non-3GS hardware -- they'll be entirely incompatible." - Review: Emergency Dangerous "Players start off with two firemen to order around. Each stage consists of a multi-floored building with a couple of locked doors and other obstacles scattered on each floor and a number of people to rescue." - Report: iPhone Sales Account for 10% of North American Mobile Games Revenue "Screen Digest's report finds that the iPhone leads overall sales numbers across all smartphone platforms, earning more than $100 million in revenue and accounting for 10% of all mobile games sales in North America in the second half of 2008." - Firemint's Real Racing Zooms Onto iPhone "Boasting an impressive 3D racing engine (which won Firemint the Technical Achievement award at IGF Mobile), Real Racing features 36 selectable cars, 12 tracks, and three racing divisions." - Interview: App Treasures "As the App Store continues to be flooded with content, visibility in the marketplace is becoming a serious problem for all but the luckiest or most resourceful of developers. App Treasures is attempting to combat this via a shared brand." - Top Paid Game Apps for the Week "The Sims 3 finishes at the top of the App Store sales charts for the second week in a row, fending off competition from Sally's Spa, which recently dropped in price to 99 cents."