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Alright, this is nuts.

Little Big Planet 2 was released for the PS3 in early 2011, and much like the original Little Big Planet, came loaded with an extensive custom level creation suite. These custom levels are available for download online, and while some of them are fairly creative, I haven't seen anything like this:

If you've got a PS3, Little Big Planet 2, and PSN happens to be up, you can download this LBP2 custom level by searching for either "Tilt to Live", or just searching by the name of its creator, "MRcheese911". Alternatively, you could just download Tilt to Live on the App Store. It's an absolutely fantastic game that we loved in our review that has only gotten better with updates.

Anyway, I've got to go pick my jaw up off the floor. I didn't even know it was possible to make custom levels like this.

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When we recorded our podcast yesterday (which will be released shortly), we said EA was one of the most progressive game publishers out there. It’s investing the most in the digital future, especially in the direct-to-consumer phone and social realm. This morning, it made us look like total geniuses with the announcement of “Origin,” a digital download direct-to-consumer service set to hit PC and mobile devices in the near future.

News of Origin is still in the early going, but here’s what we know. On the PC, it’ll offer a similar experience to that of Valve’s Steam platform. Like Steam, you’ll be able to grab digital versions of retail games through a chunk of UI that connects you to a store and your friends. Unlike Steam, you'll be able to order physical versions of games, too, much like you could via the old EA Store.

You can check out a beta build of the application here if you so desire.

On the mobile side, Origin will be a “mobile platform that gives you access to your profile and lets you connect and play with friends in EA’s leading smartphone titles,” according to the EA Web site. EA namedrops Scrabble [$2.99 / HD] and a mobile variant of Battlefield 3, though it’s up for grabs what other popular titles Origin will include on and after launch.

We’ve got some questions about the mobile branch of the service. The wording implies that it’s a straight-up third-party store, which is something we’re not sure if Apple will allow. But if it’s like, say, the Pogo Games [Free] app, EA will be in the free and clear, though then there’s a question of how fleshed out Origins’ games are destined to be.

EA makes it clear that it’s not going to talk anymore on the subject until E3 begins, so stay tuned until next week. E3 kicks off on June 7, 2011.

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Develop, a super industry publication that focuses mainly on development topics and inside baseball, has just released its annual “Develop 100” article, a listing that ranks the top 100 game developers of the year. Normally, we wouldn’t cover this kind of thing, but 2011’s list is remarkable in that it ranks several smartphone-focused studios at the tiptop of the gargantuan list brimming with behemoth houses with hundreds of staffers.

If you take a gander, you’ll see that 2D Boy, the creator of World of Goo [$2.99 / HD], is sitting at number two. Zepto Lab, the creator of Cut the Rope [$.99 / HD] sits at number three just below God of War developers SCE Santa Monica, while Media Vision, The Coding Monkeys, 1337 Game Design, and Rockstar Leeds round out the rest of the top ten. Respectively, these houses built Chaos Rings [$12.99 / HD], Carcassonne [$9.99], Dark Nebula [$.99], and Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars [$9.99 / HD].

Nintendo grabbed the number one position, if you’re wondering.

That’s a lot of surprises in just the top ten, so I did a little digging. The digital version of the list notes that, for the first time, Develop is using Metacritic data “for the backbone” of the rankings, which means that numbers at the end of reviews and not sales are dictating the listings.

If that sounds weird to you, we’re on the same page. Smartphone press and popular enthusiast games press are two different beasts and their respective games are wildly different in terms of scale, depth, complexity, mechanics, and markets. Also, Metacritic used in this way isn't the best measure of quality, either — niche games tend to only be reviewed by niche reviewers.

But anyway, at the end of the day here, we’ve got a listing that is composed of 50 or so iPad and iPod Touch developers included with studios like Rockstar North. I think that’s neat, though I’m not sure the metrics used here is something I can get behind.

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Fans of iOS RPGs have a new one coming soon to look forward to. Developer Minoraxis, most well-known for their Fruit Juice Tycoon series, is taking a stab at the KRPG realm with their upcoming title Fantastic Knight. The game will feature two different playable characters, the young prince Wenrick and the female warrior Erien, each with their own storylines that intertwine with one another.

The battling in Fantastic Knight will be the real-time hack ’n slash variety, with a deep skill system filled with both active and passive abilities to be explored and upgraded. There will also be a large number of weapons, armors, and items to collect and upgrade. One rather interesting inclusion in Fantastic Knight is what the developer calls the Forgotten Continent. It sounds like this will be some sort of survival mode or dungeon trial mode separate from the main campaign that tasks you with completing whole dungeons that have been scaled to your own level and skill set.

Fantastic Knight is already submitted to Apple and waiting for approval, so we should hopefully see it in the next couple of weeks. It will launch at $2.99 as a universal app with Retina Display support. There's a thread in our forums for discussion of the game, and we’ll take a look at Fantastic Knight as soon as it launches.

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Yesterday, I was quite excited to see Konami release an iOS version of their classic arcade beat ‘em up X-Men [$2.99], and I quickly downloaded the title as soon as it hit the US App Store. The good news is that this is a totally competent port of X-Men that’s just how your remember it from 1992, and it plays just fine using virtual controls. The bad news is that once the rose-colored glasses of nostalgia wear off, X-Men is a simplistic and repetitive game at its core compared to modern offerings.That doesn’t mean it isn’t any fun though, and it’s still a total blast to kick the snot out of legions of Magneto’s henchmen using your favorite X-man or woman.

X-Men was always at its best played cooperatively with friends, with the pinnacle being the dual-screen arcade cabinet that allowed for all 6 players to play together simultaneously. This feature has been faithfully retained in the iOS version thanks to local WiFi cooperative play. I don’t have enough devices to confirm whether you can play with all 6 players at once or not, but I did play through a 3 player game using an iPad 2, iPhone 4, and iPod touch. The connection was both easy to set up and reliable throughout the game, and cooperative multiplayer in X-Men is just as much fun as I remember it being.

Unfortunately, the solo gameplay doesn’t hold up quite as well. Since continuing from exactly where you end up dying is both unlimited and doesn’t cost any quarters, almost all of the risk or challenge is taken out of the game. It’s easy to just mindlessly mash through the game, continuing as much as you need until it’s all over. Sure, you can challenge yourself by restricting your own use of the continue option, but a more structured set of rules or goals would have been a nice addition. The inclusion of Game Center achievements and a leaderboard mitigates this somewhat.

Besides unlimited continues taking some of the fun out of the game, the actual brawler-style gameplay hasn’t aged so well either. Your offensive move set is extremely shallow, and X-Men doesn’t strive to be anything more than a mindless button-masher. The problem is that the visceral feel of physically mashing away at buttons on an arcade cabinet doesn’t translate so well to the flat surface of a touch screen.

One nice addition to the iOS version of X-Men is the ability to move the onscreen virtual controls wherever you like, though I wish I could adjust the opacity of them as well. It’s a universal game, and plays well on both the iPhone/iPod touch and iPad. There is the option to play the game in a cropped window that retains the original 4:3 aspect ratio of the arcade game, or a “16:9” option that fills out the entire screen of whichever device you’re using. I tend to go with the smaller window option as it retains the crispness of the pixel graphics, but it’s nice to have the option of full screen too.

If you were a fan of the X-Men game in arcades nearly two decades ago, then you should easily get your three dollars-worth out of the iOS version just on the nostalgia factor alone. If you aren’t familiar with the original game but enjoy a good arcade beat ‘em up, then X-Men should still do the trick, it’s just not the best the genre has to offer. The gameplay feels quite dated by today’s standards, though it’s not without its charms. If you have one or more iOS device-toting buddies with you, the experience improves dramatically in cooperative play.

I’m really happy that Konami decided to bring one of its classic arcade titles to the App Store, as are a ton of players in our forums, and I really hope that we continue to see more down the line. While the gameplay hasn’t aged so well and there isn’t an excessive amount of bells and whistles, the iOS X-Men is a totally decent conversion and an easy recommendation for fans of the original.

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In the Fall of 2009, developer Godzilab released a new physics puzzler called iBlast Moki into the App Store. Back before the App Store was littered with physics-based puzzle games, iBlast Moki brought fresh gameplay ideas, an intuitive touch interface, clever level designs, and a fantastic visual style that really set the high-water mark for the genre. iBlast Moki drew critical acclaim from practically every outlet that covered it, including our own glowing review.

Back in April of this year, Godzilab started hinting on their Facebook page that they were working on a sequel to the first iBlast Moki. Yesterday, they officially announced that iBlast Moki 2 is on its way to iOS with a tentative release set for July or August.

Nothing is known about the gameplay in this new entry, though I imagine it will build on the foundation of the first game. Also, they’ve hinted that there is a brand new gameplay component which has to do with the bomb-shaped Moki above, and that the game is running at a rock solid 60 fps, which is an improvement over the original.

If you for some reason missed out on iBlast Moki the first time around, it’s definitely worth a download while waiting for the sequel to drop. The game was recently updated with Retina Display support and Game Center, and just a couple of weeks ago the previously iPad-only version was updated to be universal. You can find links to the original iBlast Moki below.

We’ll keep our eyes open for more information on iBlast Moki 2 as we get closer to its planned Summer release.

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Coming completely out of nowhere, Konami has just released an iOS port of the classic 1992 arcade game X-Men. The game was just released in the New Zealand App Store a few hours ago, and will slowly filter out to the rest of the world during the course of the day, finally arriving in the US at 11pm Eastern time.

In case you didn’t already know, the thing to do back in the late 80s and early 90s was release side-scrolling beat ‘em up games. The genre really took off after the success of games like Double Dragon and Final Fight, but there were tons of other great beat ‘em ups during the era as well. X-Men is one of the great ones.

One of the great things about these games in the arcade was the ability to play simultaneously with your buddies. Hopefully the iOS X-Men utilizes some form of multiplayer to take advantage of up to 4-player co-op, whether it be locally via WiFi or Bluetooth, or – dare I say it – online through Game Center. Unfortunately the app description doesn't say.

Another thing to consider is how well the game will control using virtual buttons, though if the recent releases of Final Fight in Capcom Arcade [Free] and the remake of Double Dragon [$3.99] are any indication, then there is hope that the controls will be just fine.

At any rate, I’m stoked to get X-Men on my iPhone and iPad (it’s universal). Of course, that brings up the question of whether this opens the door for Konami to release The Simpsons Arcade Game or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, two other beloved beat ‘em ups from that era. Only time will tell, and at the very least X-Men is a great place to start.

You can check out early impressions from international gamers in our forums, and the New Zealand App Store link is below. We’ll take X-Men for a spin when it hits the US App Store later tonight and let you know how it turned out.

International App Store Link: X-Men, $2.99 (Universal)

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Little known fact about the Araknasaur: its eggs are delicious. And the evil CEO of the Robot Seafood Corporation wants them for breakfast. He wants them so badly, he's willing to bring the full might of his aquatic robot army to bear against the Araknasaurian hero of Velocispider [$0.99], a Universal retro arcade shooter that's as ridiculous as it sounds. It's created by Retro Dreamer, creators of Linkoids [2.99/Lite] and Sneezies. [$0.99/Lite/HD]

Velocispider is a fixed-view shooter with ultra-simple tilt controls. You fire continuously upwards at the Aquabots as they come to kill you and steal your eggs. They start out in Space Invaders-style formations, but switch up often and come at you from all angles. Some randomly drop power-ups that improve your shots, restore a life or give you extra points.  You can charge up a powerful shot by holding down anywhere on the screen. I killed a lot of Aquabots before I learned about the charge shot, but it makes destroying bosses much easier. The tilt movement can be a little touchy and caused me occasional trouble. I wouldn't say an alternate control method is necessary, but it might be a nice addition for a future update.

The game is broken up into 20 individual waves. They unlock as you complete them so you can start from your highest completed wave, but that's just a convenience to help you progress through the game. The real challenge is playing through without dying by losing all three of your lives or all three of your eggs. At its heart, Velocispider is a high score competition, with Game Center leaderboards that will be topped by those who can get through all twenty waves in a single play-through. It's that challenge that will keep you coming back for another shot long after you've seen all that the game has to offer.

But enough about the technical stuff. Velocispider is a ton of fun, but the mechanics aren't what caught my eye. The game is gorgeous, in a pixel art and chiptune sort of way. The art is full of character, and that character is super ridiculous. I can't decide if I love the drop sharks (manta rays?) or the bomber whales more. The game also has a great soundtrack, though I wouldn't mind if a few more tracks were mixed in.

The story is the exact sort of campy over-the-top tale you'd expect from a game like this. There's not much to it, but I looked forward to the moments between each wave that illustrate the evil CEO's growing desperation and failing grasp on reality. Sadly, you might miss a few of them if you're doing well, since they only show up before boss waves or when you start playing.

If you're anything like me, the thrill of fighting off waves of aquatic-robot monsters with a well armed half-spider, half-velociraptor Araknasaur makes Velocispider an easy buy. Fortunately, it's also a challenging arcade game that will keep you scrabbling for a high score. Players seem to be enjoying the game in our forums too, so give Velocispider a look and let's go shoot some squid.

TouchArcade Rating:

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Monster Hunter: Dynamic Hunting is a competent hack-and-slash title from the studio that brought the actual mega franchise to market. That’s a good sign. But, while all the mechanics are serviceable, in the early parts of the game, combat seems to suffer from weird design decisions that slow the frantic pace of battle it tries to conjure.

Over-the-shoulder perspective fighting games are nothing new on the App Store. Chair Entertainment, however, possesses the crown thanks to Infinity Blade [$2.99], a sharp and fast-moving action joint that prioritizes sword control. In that, you can hack wherever you desire and the movements will translate to the screen. Hunting doesn’t do this. You can only swipe your sword in two directions: north and south and east and west.

This is… odd because Hunting wants you to hit specific parts of the humungous monsters that it puts in front of you. In this sense, the game sort of requires accuracy, but the lack of fine sword movement makes this lofty requirement hard to fulfill. Instead of dancing around a monster and hacking at its ankles, I’ve instead been rolling almost aimlessly in circles until I accidentally slash at a behemoth’s legs.

To be fair, the early game, at least, isn’t so concerned with where you hit the monster, so long as you make contact. That makes this concern moot to an extent, but I think you can understand some of the frustration I’ve been experiencing — I want to drill monster’s in their obvious ‘open’ places, but I can’t because I’m fumbling with a system not really built for you to exploit such fine details.

In addition to slashing, you can also pull off some defensive moves. By placing two tips on the screen, you’ll go into a guard pose. By swiping those two fingers, you’ll roll. If you slash after successfully pulling one of these moves off, you’ll perform a counter-attack, which are some of the most devastating moves in the game.

The study of monster habits is integral to the Monster Hunter experience, so that little fact nugget doesn’t come as much of a surprise. You’re supposed to know your foe and then act on its quirks or hesitations. And when you can conquer the sword and really get into the diving, guarding, and countering the game feels great — it clicks.

The loot and grind components are fantastic drivers in the early going. You don’t level up in this specific joint, but you do earn loot from monsters each time you defeat them, which can then be used to make even better weapons and armor. Some of the enemies in the game are absolutely vicious, so it relies on this hooking you. As you beat more monsters, you can unlock more weapons to build, so I’m looking at this as the “leveling” component.

I think there is a hearty caveat that I should note about the guard and counter mechanics, though, and it ties into the game’s hearty UI. The entire bottom quarter of the screen is obscured by your health bar and the like, so when you place two fingers, you’re really eating up screen space and obscuring possible counter cues that may arise.

We’ll be doing a full review on Hunting in the near future and I encourage you to give that write-up a look. For this impressions piece, I’ve taken a narrow glance at the battle system in first "chapter," so you're not getting the full story here.

Who knows? Maybe there's a pivot point that can sway my opinion of the battle or maybe there's good justification for the rigidness and design decisions. Definitely check back with us later to get the full run-down of what Hunting as a complete product.

App Store Link: Monster Hunter Dynamic Hunting, $4.99 – Available in the USA at 11:00 PM Eastern, earlier in other regions.

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Hudson is doing a fantastic job of keeping a fresh batch of new games pouring into their excellent TurboGrafx-16 emulator app called the TurboGrafx-16 Gamebox [Free]. The app launched last December with a decent selection of titles, all of which could be purchased from within the app for $2.99 apiece with one rotating title per day available for a free timed trial. We really enjoyed the TurboGrafx-16 Gamebox in our original review, and within a couple of months a new selection of titles was added improving the game further.

Earlier this month, yet another update hit adding another 5 brand new games to the package, including the classic pinball game Devil’s Crush and the third entry in the Bonk’s Adventure series. Now, just a few weeks later we already have another new update to the Gamebox adding 5 more new games.

Likely the most recognizable of the titles is the vertically scrolling top-down shooter Raiden. Raiden was an absolute classic in the arcades a couple of decades ago, and remains one of my very favorite shmups of all time. The TurboGrafx-16 version is obviously highly scaled down from the arcade original, but while it lacks the graphical oomph it still contains excellent gameplay. Performance-wise, Raiden can slow down a bit when action gets intense on screen, but overall it’s pretty solid.

A far more exciting addition to the Gamebox, at least for me personally, is Dragon’s Curse. You may know it by its former name, Wonder Boy III: The Dragon’s Trap, as it was called on the Sega Master System back in 1989. This was one of my all-time favorite action/puzzle/platforming games back then, and it still holds up extremely well today.

It has a Metroidvania vibe where you must take on the roles of different animals that each have unique abilities that allow you to access new areas of a huge non-linear world. There's a number of different weapons, armors, and items to buy which adds a nice RPG element to the gameplay. Dragon’s Curse is colorful, clever, and just plain fun, and I’m really excited to have the game in my pocket to play through for the umpteenth time.

The three other titles in this latest update to TurboGrafx-16 Gamebox aren’t as familiar to me, but they may hold a special place in your own heart. These titles are: Shockman, Moto Roader, and Out Live. There’s plenty of other classic TurboGrafx-16 games I’m still waiting on too, like Keith Courage, Super Star Soldier, and Legendary Axe, so hopefully Hudson continues to crank out the updates. Currently, I think they’re doing a pretty darn good job, and the TurboGrafx-16 Gamebox continues to be a shining example of how to do emulators right on iOS.

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