At the Let's Rock event this week, Apple pushed the new iPod touch hard (and iPhone too, obviously) as a viable gaming platform. Steve even went so far as to call it the best portable gaming platform out there. Strong words for DS and PSP fans, but the crop of games popping up in the App Store continues to build steam. This week we'll take a look at games both current and upcoming, as well as some other standout favorites as always. Shall we? Real Soccer: Real Soccer got a quick play during the Let's Rock event and hit the store this week. For $10 you can play as 198 real teams in 12 different stadiums with FIFA 96-era graphics, all using an on-scree D-pad and A+B button. The other demo at Let's Rock, Need For Speed: Undercover, is still under development and will drop in November. Real Soccer is $10 TouchGrind: Due to be released in October, we got a look this week at Touchgrind, a novel skateboard game which is billing itself as the "first true multitouch game" let's you do tricks and flips with a mini deck, racking up points for combos. From the demo video, it looks pretty great, especially if you were as obsessed with the old Tony Hawk PS1 games as my friends and I were. Air Sharing: Air Sharing looks like it may be the king so far of the file storage apps-our friends over at Lifehacker gave it a shakedown and liked what they saw. It uses WebDAV to show up as a shared folder on Mac, Windows or Linux systems which allows you to save files to your iPhone's flash memory, and provides a URL for devices on the same network to connect to and download the files to another machine. And best of all, unlike many of the other iPhone file vaults, it's free. Until September 22, that is, so grab it. Roller Coaster Physics: Really cool idea for an app that records G-forces from your accelerometers and displays the results on a trend line. It's designed to be used to measure exactly how much force is causing your stomach to drop at Six Flags, but I don't see why you couldn't use it in a car or anything else, when you want to monitor G-forces. And it's free. Civil Aircraft Identification Guide: These guys had me in mind. As an aviation geek I love spotting jets at the airport, but as anyone else who shares my hobby knows, sometimes telling your 737s from you A319s (look for the slanted section of the tail fin on the 37, but still) is tough. Airplane ID gives you top and side views with stats on 40 of the major airliners. Cool stuff. $2 More Games in Brief:
  • EA's Spore Origins hit the store this Sunday - check out our hands-on video here. $10
  • Asphalt 4: Elite Racing will be Need For Speed's number one competitor: as it's been camped out on the top ten most popular apps list. This driving sim gives you on-screen D-pad or accelerometer steering, and lets up to four players join in multiplayer games on the same Wi-Fi network. $10
  • And of course Light Saber Unleashed (formerly Phone Saber). This one isn't a DS killer, but thank God it's back.
  • And as commenter Marcelo points out, Cro-Mag Rally (Mario Kart for cavemen) is on sale for $2 this week, down from $10. Good deal.
This list is in no way definitive. If you've spotted a great app that hit the store this week, give us a heads up or, better yet, your firsthand impressions in the comments. And for even more apps: see our previous weekly roundups here, and check out our original iPhone App Review Marathon. Have a good long weekend everybody.