Johnny Two Shoes talks High Speed Chase 2.0

There are, of course, many reasons behind the success of iPhone and iPod touch. One that’s often underestimated is the manner in which creative types with fresh ideas, who haven't previously developed games or who made Flash games, have adopted it.

The makers of hits such as Rolando and Pocket God took this route to success, for example.

Starting its journey down the same yellow brick road is London-based Johnny Two Shoes. Set up by Max Scott-Slade and his brother, and Max's girlfriend, it's built its reputation with a series of community-focused webgames, as well as Flash advergames for the likes of EA, Coca-Cola and Range Rover.

It released its first iPhone game - High Speed Chase - back in November 2008, based on a previous web version.

Interestingly though, at the same time the company also released The Heist, a spin-off web game with a similar basic top-down driving mechanic that has since become its most property clocking up over 20 million plays.

Since then, however, The Heist has become more of gang management game (The Heist 2 is due soon), while High Speed Chase became an all-action vehicle combat experience.

Which brings us to now.

Originally designed as a 1.2 update to the game, additional features such as bunny hopping, pick ups, and more update options in terms of eight weapons, as well as health and performance, has resulted in the emergence of High Speed Chase 2.0.

It's also a much more polished game with virtual joypad control added to the tilt option.

"When we thought about iPhone development, we were initially perturbed that it didn't support Flash, but despite this the original High Speed Chase only took us three weeks to make. We didn't have any previous experience of developing for iPhone, either," Max reveals.

You can see our hands on demo of HSC 2.0's gameplay here.

The company has plans concerning where to direct its App Store activities in future too.

"Our web games are very community-focused. Other developers have iPhone-only social features but we're going to be looking at supporting web and iPhone versions of the same game in future," says Max, of the next to-be-announced project.

Watch this space then, and in the meantime High Speed Chase 2.0 is out now priced 99c or 59p.