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I'd say the best possible way to start any morning is with a massive cup of Dunkin Donuts coffee and a downloading whole pile of App Store freebies. There are quite a few free games available today, but some of these promotions have been running for a couple days now. Given the temporary nature of most freebie sales, I'd say there's a decent chance of some of these games returning to their original price very soon so be sure to grab any/all of the games you're interested in ASAP.

Babo Crash HD – If you like puzzle games where you're able to pull off massive chains of blocks being cleared, intentionally or unintentionally, Babo Crash HD is right up your alley. It follows the familiar Bejeweled style gameplay model with gems you swap around to form matches of three or more. What sets Babo Crash HD apart is the ridiculous array of power-ups in the game that can clear out entire swaths of gems at a time. Free, fun, and universal– What's not to like about that?

Crystal Quest – Originally released in 1987, Crystal Quest was one of the first game to support the color display of the Macintosh II and since then has been ported to a number of different platforms including the iPhone. Gameplay is fairly basic and amounts to surviving through waves of enemies and collecting crystals. It feels a little dated, but if you were around for the original Macintosh release this should be an awesome blast from the past.

DinoSmash Online – An extremely cool online deathmatch game which piles up to 16 players in to a 2D map filled with platforms to jump around (or use your grappling hook) on and weapons to pick up. It was recently updated to support the Retina Display of the iPhone 4, and the game seems to play well on both WiFi and 3G networks. Also, the title screen music absolutely owns and DinoSmash Online is worth downloading just to listen to it, even if you have no intention of ever playing the game.

Dr. Nano – 3D Artery Adventure – We first got a peek at this game back at PAX East, and while the controls feel a little clunky the game is based around the amusing premise of shrinking yourself small enough to solve medical problems in the human body by running around and shooting them… You might even learn something about human anatomy in the process.

Max Vector – This is a Game Salad game so gameplay is a little basic and performance is on the mediocre side, but Max Vector has so much awesome retro flare to it that it's worth checking out for that alone. The graphics and music are awesome, and like any good shooter, it has a heap of screen-filling bosses to spam massive amounts of bullets at.

Mecho Wars – A turn based strategy game with some cool gameplay mechanics such as a day and night cycles which does things like freeze water so your troops can walk across it, forcing you to take time of day in to account with both your attacks and defenses. Mecho Wars has a full single player campaign as well as four different OpenFeint-powered online multiplayer modes.

Piyo Blocks – This match three is loaded with bright pixel art and a ton of personality. Piyo Blocks features three different game modes, along with full OpenFeint integration for online leaderboards, achievements, and all that other fun stuff. Doing well hinges on pulling off massive combos, and it's fairly rewarding when you get your score multiplier going like crazy.

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As we alerted our readers earlier today, Osmos is heading to iPhone and has just appeared to go live in the US App Store. The game is supposed to be largely identical to the iPad version released last month, with some slight tweaking to accommodte the smaller screen of the iPhone, and after spending some time with the game I can confirm this to be true. Osmos plays beautifully on the iPhone, and is an experience that should not be missed. Here are some excerpts from our review of the iPad version, as they sum up the iPhone version as well:

Osmos has a wide variety of different level types, which all revolve around one common theme: Be the biggest. You control a tiny organism called a "mote". By tapping in a direction, you expel mass towards where you tapped, and your mote goes zooming off the other direction. With each tap you lose a little bit of your mass, so it doesn't take long before you're making extremely calculated taps to get exactly where you want to go with minimal loss of size. Your mote can absorb any mote that it smaller than it, but it also can be absorbed by any mote that is larger than it. You can also zoom in or out using a pinching gesture.

Initially levels simply ask you to be the biggest, but it doesn't take long until Osmos throws other level types at you such as levels where everything is orbiting around a central mass and you must carefully expel your own mass to change your orbit to absorb other motes as well as levels that require you to capture a specific mote.

In all, eight different levels types are included, which all have their own unique mechanic centralized around the physics engine powering Osmos. You can even speed up or slow down time by swiping the screen, a function that becomes very handy in later levels when you need time for precise movements. Following the completion of Odyssey mode, arcade mode is unlocked which allows you to play any level type on whatever difficulty level you choose. OpenFeint is even bundled in for tracking the various in-game achievements.

The iPhone version of Osmos includes support for fast app switching and the iPhone 4's Retina Display. The graphics look phenomenal on the iPhone 4, with razor sharp text and extremely crisp in game graphics. Some of the levels have been adjusted for the iPhone screen and create a somewhat different and slightly more difficult experience. If you don't own an iPad and have been curious about Osmos, now is your chance to get in on the fun. The game has received a ridiculous amount of praise for both the Mac/PC and iPad versions, and this new iPhone edition is no different. This is one of those games that must really be experienced by everyone, and can now be enjoyed by iPad and iPhone owners alike.

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Early last month we posted about Cyan's plans to bring the childrens' adventure game The Manhole: Masterpiece Edition [$1.99] to the App Store. The game just became available for download this morning, and I must admit, approaching the game for the first time as an adult is a little odd. The Manhole really has no goal other than exploring the fantasy world laid out in front of you after you climb a beanstalk which grows out of a manhole. As a gamer I'm almost trained to try to figure out where to go, or what to do, or what item I need to solve a puzzle, or countless other things. It's just really strange to be thrown in to a game universe where you don't do any of those things, and instead, you just see what there is to see.

The original version of the game was released in 1988 using HyperCard, an early hypermedia authoring system that anyone who used an early Macintosh is likely familiar with. The game was then re-released a few times over the years and finally ended up on CD-ROM as The Manhole: CD-ROM Masterpiece Edition which is where the App Store version is derived from. The Manhole on iOS devices plays very similar to Cyan's Myst [$4.99 / Free] in that it's basically a highly interactive slide show of pre-rendered scenes.

The Manhole sports a full soundtrack and voiceovers for the various odd characters you will come across while exploring such as a poetry reading pig, a cool dude of a dragon, and many others. Check out the following video of the Windows version of the game, which seems to be nearly identical to the iPhone game aside from the obvious differences between the touch and mouse interface:

I don't think The Manhole will appeal to anyone who doesn't have fond memories of playing the game when it was originally released. Friends of mine who loved the game when they were younger are enjoying The Manhole as a fantastic piece of nostalgia, but I don't have any special ties to the game and while I can appreciate it for the piece of gaming history that it is The Manhole isn't doing much for me.

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If roleplaying games are your cup of tea, I would find it to be impossible to believe that you've never heard of Atlus, or if the name isn't immediately recognizable, surely you've played an Atlus game at some point in your life. Originally founded in 1986, this Tokyo-based developer (and publisher) have been responsible for quite a number of games on nearly every console going all the way back to the NES. Like many Japanese developers, games of theirs we see in the USA are filtered through an American subsidiary and the games released by Atlus USA are only a small sampling of what is actually available in the East. Their most recognizable US releases are likely the Tactics Ogre series (which I'd love to see on the App Store) and Disgaea: Hour of Darkness.

Published via Nate Games, a somewhat confusing spinoff of South Korean telecommunications operator SK Telecom comes the even more confusing iPhone port of the PSP game Crimson Gem Saga [$9.99]. Crimson Gem Saga is actually the sequel to an RPG called Astonishia Story, originally published in South Korea by SK Telecom as Astonishia Story 2, then as Garnet Chronicle in Japan, and finally as Crimson Gem Saga in North America. The reasoning behind all this odd name swapping is that even though the story is actually continued from Astonishia Story, quite a few of the game's mechanics were changed, and somehow, somewhere, someone thought three different titles for the same game would make this less confusing.

Despite this twisted web of renaming and publishing, Crimson Gem Saga actually was reviewed quite well when it was originally released on the PSP. Sporting a metascore of 78 and a user score of 8.2 over on Metacritic, the gaming media seemed to enjoy the turn-based gameplay even though the game itself doesn't do anything particularly new or exciting in either the gameplay or storytelling departments.

We're still working on our review of the game, as any game that boasts over 30 hours of gameplay is going to take some time to review, but initial impressions in our forums seem mostly positive with the main issues centralizing around the somewhat expected clunky nature of the port as the game went from the physical controls of the PSP to the virtual controls of the iPhone. Clumsy controls aside, Crimson Gem Saga on the iPhone is the same game available currently on the PSP which sells for three times as much.

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