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We were pretty excited about Capcom’s latest iOS offering of their venerable fighting game franchise, Street Fighter IV Volt [$4.99], when we reviewed the title back in June. It offered everything that was great about the original iPhone release plus a few new characters and many new features, most significantly the ability to battle it out with people from all over the world online.

Having online play was fantastic, if not a little rough due to latency issues, but one aspect about it didn’t seem to be very well thought out. When playing online, there was no penalty for quitting out of a match. This seems like a good idea given the mobile nature of the game and the potential for distractions like texts or phone calls interrupting a match. But it also gave way to people quitting when they’re on the wrong side of a beating, and screwing you out of a win while not being subjected to any sort of penalty.

The newest update for Street Fighter IV Volt looks to address this problem. Now, quitting out of an online match for whatever reason counts as a loss, and it will deduct points from your BP which are like the experience points for online play. Also, players found to be habitually quitting early from matches may have their matchmaking experience limited in some form, though there aren’t any details on exactly how you’re limited when this happens.

Not to be forgotten about in this update are the two new characters that we learned last month were being added to the roster, Sakura and Makoto. Both fighters fit nicely into the current selection of characters, though strangely some of Makoto’s animations seem abnormally choppy. I’m not sure if that’s intentional or just a graphical glitch, but it doesn’t seem to affect her performance in the game.

If you’ve been enjoying Street Fighter IV Volt but have been getting fed up with people taking the coward’s way out online, then hopefully this newest update will help smooth out the experience some. Of course, even if you don’t partake in online battles, you’ll want to grab this latest update for the two additional characters, and if you've been on the fence about picking up the game it's not a bad time to consider grabbing it as it's currently on sale for $4.99.

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Com2uS loves to party, apparently. The App Store publisher and owner of the trademark ‘tower defense’ isn’t above cutting the costs of its games in celebration of every single calendar holiday. But it also drums up weird reasons to price slash its games when there isn’t one on hand. Take now, for example. The publisher is 13 years old now and because of that, it has decided to drop a bunch of its games to 99 cents. Neat, I guess!

• Caligo Chaser – $2.99 → $.99
• Chocolate Tycoon – $1.99 → $.99
• Crazy Hotdogs – $1.99 → $.99
• Heavy Gunner 3D – $2.99 → $.99
• Heavy Gunner 3D HD – $2.99 → $.99
• Homerun Battle 3D – $4.99 → $.99
• Homerun Battle 3D HD – $4.99 → $.99
• Inotia 3: Children of Carnia – $4.99 → $.99 [Universal]
• Third Blade – $2.99 → $.99
• Trapped: Undead Infection – $1.99 → $.99
• Puzzle Family Starpack – $1.99 → $.99

Just as a little FYI, these deals started appearing before the weekend and they only extend into this afternoon. That makes today the last day you’ll be able to enjoy these prices… until Com2uS finds something else to celebrate. My cat's birthday is coming up soon, actually. Surely, Hannibal's name day is worth some good ol' fashion impromptu savings, right? You can thank me later.

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The line-drawing genre has long been dominated by Firemint's outstanding Flight Control [$0.99 / HD]. It is the standard by which all similar games are inevitably judged, and with good reason — it's the granddaddy of the genre. But maybe there's room for new games in the market, and in our hearts. It's been over two years since Flight Control was released. Could it be time for a break, time to see other line-drawing games?

If so, you won't go wrong with Chillingo and Infinite Degree's Pollen Count [$0.99 / HD]. It's a game that didn't sell me with screenshots or trailers — the art is a bit clumsy — but it comes through where it counts.

By drawing a line on screen from bee A to point B, you direct your bees to collect pollen from flowers and deliver it to the hive. They need to reach both targets without running into anything en route. Though the obvious comparison is Flight Control, this is more in line with Harbour Master [$1.99] – you're moving cargo from place to place with a limited amount of space to deal with. In this case, there are only a few flowers to go around, and often bees are forced to wait in the wings. Managing the scarcity of the flowers adds a layer of strategy to a familiar formula.

Pollen Count distinguishes itself in progression. Rather than throwing down a set of maps for players to challenge themselves on, Infinite Degree has put together a series of unlockable levels that give the game a more traditional difficulty curve. To unlock them, you need to earn at least one star in the previous level. This usually isn't easy, and even the most experienced Flight Control fans will find earning a full three stars a challenge on most levels. Unlocking stages also gives less experienced players something to work toward, if the top of the leaderboard looks completely out of reach.

So how do you keep 24 levels fresh when you're dealing with a single-screen drawing game? Pollen Count handles that challenge by bringing in obstacles, powerups and other clever elements. Spiders, birds and zombees are all out to get your bees. While you're busy guiding them to avoiding those enemies and deliver pollen, you'll find environmental obstacles to deal with. And some bees are just plain picky about the flowers they'll harvest. It all contributes to keeping the game from getting stale.

If you want more, Pollen Count includes Crystal and Game Center achievements to earn and leaderboards to challenge. The iPad version also includes local multiplayer, both co-op and versus, with configurable levels. If you're really dedicated, you can unlock two special modes — a zom-bee survival mode and an odd 3D racing mode called 999mph — but neither offers leaderboards.

I wouldn't write Pollen Count off as nothing more than a clone. It makes great use of an established mechanic, and I'd have a hard time holding that against it. Running with an existing idea is an App Store tradition by now — the important thing is that it's been done well and it's been done respectfully. Pollen Count is a little rough around the edges, but it has the vital element covered: fun, and lots of it. Check it out, and give our discussion thread a buzz.

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We originally checked out the first Hungry Shark way back in April of last year, and found it to be a really enjoyable arcade game. You played the role of a shark swimming through several interesting sea environments chomping on lesser sea creatures and humans alike in an effort to satiate your hunger and increase your size. Hungry Shark got more than twice as big with a gigantic Part 2 update that was released a couple of months later, and earlier this year in February they brought the series into the HD realm along with another completely new environment to play through with Hungry Shark Part 3.

Back in June, Hungry Shark developer Future Games of London quietly released new versions of Part 1 and Part 2 with the HD graphics treatment as well as some bonuses available as in-app purchases. All of the various Hungry Shark games have been available for free for a while barring Part 3 and the all-encompassing Hungry Shark Trilogy HD for iPad. To celebrate Shark Week this week, they have temporarily made Part 3 free as well and dropped the iPad game down from $4.99 to 99¢.

There may be a confusingly large number of Hungry Shark games to choose from, but as long as you can figure out which features you need then these games are a ton of fun and totally worth grabbing for free. If you have a Retina Display device, you’ll want to pick up Part 1+ or Part 2+ to take advantage of the high resolution graphics. Owners of 1st and 2nd generation devices will want to grab the original Part 1 or Part 2. If you’re looking to play on the iPad, then the HD trilogy is a steal for just a buck, as it includes all 3 episodes in one app and has high resolution assets. Whichever versions apply to you, make sure to at least pick up one of the Hungry Shark games and assert your oceanic dominance while watching all the cool shows during Shark Week this week.

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If you haven't been following general gaming news lately, Nintendo recently shocked 3DS early adopters with a significant price cut to the system in the wake of troubling hardware sales figures in their recent earnings report. Globally, both Wii and DS sales are down 50%, which wouldn't be that big of a deal if the 3DS was flying off shelves. However, in the previous quarter, Nintendo has only managed to move 710,000 3DS units, worldwide. Total, they've sold less than 1 million units in the USA, which traditionally has always been a massive market for the gaming juggernaut. Taking full responsibility for the 3DS, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata has taken a 50% pay cut with other executives taking similar 20-30% pay cuts.

But surely you're asking yourself, "Why is this relevant on TouchArcade," as you mentally prepare your scathing comment to this story. Well, as we discuss in this week's podcast (which will be posted shortly) we're reaching a point where comparing the portable iOS family to dedicated gaming devices is totally appropriate. The era of the App Store where games were described as "good" with the requisite suffix of "for a cell phone game" is over. This last year has been filled with incredible game release after incredible game release. Unity and similar engines are advancing at incredible rates, and through the Unreal Engine we're even starting to see games simultaneously releasing on the PC as well as iOS devices.

So let's look at what's going on with the big N. The 3DS launched with what initially seemed like a strong game lineup that was oddly devoid of first party titles, which historically have amounted to the "system sellers" of the Nintendo hardware family. In fact, the closest thing to a "system seller" to many core gamers was the port of Ocarina of Time, a 1998 Nintendo 64 game, which came months after the launch and wasn't even developed in house. Since then, the 3DS has been plagued with delays and cancellations from third party developers, instilling even further doubt in the platform.

Further yet, Nintendo has taken an incredibly puzzling stance towards indie developers, with Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime flat out saying that they have no intention of doing business with "garage developers." Comparatively, Apple has fully embraced the so called "garage developer," and for $99 a year has facilitated titles like Tiny Wings [99¢] and Doodle Jump [99¢] that have gone on to make millions upon millions of dollars while still providing a place for high-end show pieces like Infinity Blade [$4.99] to thrive.

The era of "traditional" portable gaming as dictated by Nintendo's vision seems like it could be coming to a close if they don't begin to adapt to what the instant accessibility of both development and distribution of current mobile games has provided gamers. While the 3DS's new $170 price tag is undoubtedly cheaper than even a refurbished iPod touch, the $40 price point of 3DS games flat out feels archaic in comparison. Wired's Chris Kohler raises a point that I could not agree with more: Once you've gotten a taste of the App Store, $40 is not a price point where you'll ever say to yourself, "Eh, what the hell, I'll try it."

Furthermore, as a kid, that price point means getting games only on special occasion. Birthdays, Christmases, or even as Kohler suggests, "maybe after getting a root canal if you cry enough." Comparatively, a pair of $20 iTunes gift cards could potentially buy 40 different games. Not only that, but non-stop freebie promotions has turned the iPod Touch into a portable gaming system with so much content that's available for free that it's an impossible task to download and play it all.

Nintendo is even dissuading customers further from buying these full-priced 3DS titles by bolstering their eShop with a full array of NES and Gameboy Advance games which likely will all sell for less than $10. Furthermore, they even seem to be distancing themselves from 3D with Nintendo's chief game maker Shigeru Miyamoto quoted as saying that playing with 3D disabled is "a perfectly acceptable way to play the games."

With previously successful hardware platform sales down 50%, their new flagship portable struggling to gain any significant marketshare and Nintendo executives taking pay cuts, it's safe to say that Nintendo is in dire straits. As Kotaku's Stephen Totilo puts it, "the 3DS era may not be over, but the era of untouchable Nintendo handhelds is now a thing of the past." Despite all this, Nintendo's Iwata has reiterated that Nintendo has no plans to sell its games to other non-Nintendo platforms.

Sega said the same thing.

I'm not sure anyone (including Nintendo) truly can predict the fate of the 3DS and Nintendo's future portable hardware, but it seems like this is the time for Nintendo to react to the App Store instead of dismissing it at every opportunity. As the lines between smartphones and "dedicated" gaming handhelds blur to near non-existence, Nintendo is going to need to take drastic measures. The 3DS price drop seems to be the first, and as a life-long Nintendo fan I can't wait to see what they do next.

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Sega is throwing down a random Summer Sale for a selection of their titles over the next 48 hours. The star of this sale is obviously Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing, Sega’s take on the Mario Kart formula. We absolutely loved the game in our review, and it’s a great deal for its sale price of $1.99. The Super Monkey Ball games are also a nice pickup if you don’t have them already, especially the iPad version which was at one time $15 if you can believe it. Then Sega’s mobile Football Manager game gets its first price cut ever, dropping by 50%. Finally, if you’re a fan of Sega’s Genesis emulators, they have a couple of those for a buck as well.

• Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing, $4.99 → $1.99 (Universal)

• Super Monkey Ball, $2.99 → 99¢

• Super Monkey Ball 2, $2.99 → 99¢

• Super Monkey Ball 2: Sakura Edition for iPad, $4.99 → 99¢

• Football Manager Handheld 2011, $9.99 → $4.99 (Universal)

• Shinobi III: Return of the Ninja Master, $1.99 → 99¢

• Virtua Fighter 2, $1.99 → 99¢

Remember to stay up to date with the roller coaster ride that is App Store pricing by setting up an account with AppShopper.com where you can set up a wish list for games you have an eye on and receive email alerts when price drops or updates happen. You can also accomplish this on the go with the free and universal iOS app for AppShopper [Free] with push notifications. Finally, we have an entire forum area set up just to highlight the various sales or freebies going on, oftentimes spotted by our forum members before anywhere else on the internet.

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When Silver Tree Media's Cordy [Free] was released for Android a couple months ago, it got some good buzz based on its visuals alone. Now it's finally on iOS, coming in two flavors via in-app purchase: a universal HD version for $4.99 or a standard SD version for $1.99. Cordy is a 2.5D platformer with a lot of charm, and even if the gameplay doesn't offer up too many new ideas, the artistic design alone is well worth taking a look at.

While a quick glance at Cordy is going to bring to mind two console games, Little Big Planet and iomillo, the gameplay is far more rooted in the likes of Sonic the Hedgehog. You control Cordy with left, right and jump buttons as you attempt to gather a set number of batteries to complete a stage. The physics of Cordy's jump are a bit off, feeling both floaty and uncontrollable at the same, so it's a good thing the game doesn't try to incorporate any precision sections and instead lets you just hop around clumsily.

You'll also eventually get an additional button that serves as an all-purpose context sensitive control. Here you'll be moving blocks, swinging across caverns and controlling other tricks. The free version of the game comes with only four levels, but you'll unlock a total of 27 with the in-app purchase. There are also plenty of other egregiously priced IAP's, including color options and various hats.

The levels are diversified based more on the gameplay gimmick of each section than a visual style. Between the four different worlds, each comes packed with a different trick up its sleeve. For the most part, it's a series of retro styled activities – move a box here to get there, jump on a spring to get there, put an object in a thing to unlock a thing. That's not a bad thing, but if you're looking for innovation and environmental diversity, Cordy's not interested in either.

What it does do well is combine the speed-sensitive gameplay of Sonic the Hedgehog and light puzzle elements into one. Since Cordy's running gains momentum, you'll find yourself cruising up and down little hills to time a jump at the right moment to get the most distance. The same goes for the springboard sections, which feel like they're pulled straight out of the blue hedgehog's playbook. As far as puzzling is concerned, the game keeps it lightweight and exploration based. You have to find all of the batteries to finish the level and to do so you'll need to dig into the environment to root them all out. In this instance, it would be nice to have some type of map or objective system in place. It's rare you'll need to backtrack because you miss one, but it does happen and can cause occasionally force you to restart a level.

For the collectable freaks, there is a three-star system in place based on several different goals for each level. There's a star earned each for completing a level in time, one for collecting a set of gears, and one just for finishing the level. You can go back to get each star any time you want, which is basically required as it's next to impossible to get all three in a single run.

Here's a trailer from the Android version of Cordy which looks just about identical to the iOS game:

It's the visuals of Cordy that are going to turn the most heads though. Since the world isn't populated with many enemies, the game spends most of its time on the look. Each level can work in a variety of ways, either sticking to a simple, two-dimensional plane, or by flipping you around in a somewhat 3D fashion. It'll even toss you across different planes by the end of it. It sticks to the same palette throughout, and although it looks great, it might be nice to have something other than green grass to run on. That said, there are two different versions of the game and the main difference between the HD and the SD is the draw distance. Play on an iPad in HD and you can see far off into the distance, with fully animated clouds and balloons and the like. Play in SD and you'll get a drab, static background.

Cordy doesn't bring a whole lot of innovation to the table, but, even with some slightly off physics, it's a game that makes a lasting visual impression first and plays well-enough second. The 27 levels will take a bit of time to get through and if you're interested in going back and getting all the stars you'll have plenty to do here. If you appreciate the exploration elements of a platformer and aren't concerned too much with combat, Cordy will be a great experience.

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In case you didn't know, Unity provides the glue that makes a considerable amount of iOS games work. It's a game engine, development environment, and multi-platform publishing tool rolled into one easy to use package. (You can read all about it here.) The magic behind Unity is what brings the world of Aralon [$4.99] to life, and what allows you to level up in Order & Chaos Online [$6.99]. Similarly, it's what allows Gameloft to take Order & Chaos and seamlessly turn it into a Facebook game. The engine isn't limited to 3D either, it's what's behind fantastic 2D platformers like Max and the Magic Marker [99¢] and too many other games to list.

Recently, Unity 3.4 was released which brings a whole boat load of new features, functionality, and other tweaks. So many, in fact, that it's hard to pick out which to highlight. Personally, I'm excited for better water effects, because who doesn't love water effects? Also, finally having gyroscope support is going to be great. The best part about these kind of engine upgrades, is that most of the tweaks and enhancements are essentially "free" just as part as developers upgrading to the new version, and testing to make sure that nothing breaks in the process.

If you're a Unity developer, download 3.4 and give it a shot. If you're a gamer, keep an eye out for upcoming Unity titles that benefit from the mile long feature list of the 3.4 upgrade.

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Back in January of last year, Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars stormed onto the App Store and showcased just how robust a gaming experience could be possible on the iPhone. You essentially got a full-fledged GTA experience, comparable to and in some ways exceeding the versions released for the Nintendo DS and Sony PSP, for roughly a third the price. Even more than a year and a half later, it still stands as one of the best games on the iOS platform.

Chinatown Wars was easily worth its price of $9.99 when it released, and was a complete steal during the few price drops its seen in its lifetime, most recently being $4.99 this past February. But today, Rockstar is dropping Chinatown Wars to its lowest price ever. Currently you can pick up the title for just $2.99 for both the regular and HD versions of the game.

Really, $2.99 might as well be 99¢ for a title of this caliber. There is so many hours of gameplay in this game that for 3 dollars there really isn’t a better ratio of content to price available. Not to mention the ridiculous amount of time you can waste just getting lost causing mischief in the sandbox world of Chinatown Wars. If you really need more convincing, check out our exhaustive original review as well as our look at the iPad native version. But at this price, if you haven’t jumped on GTA: Chinatown Wars yet for whatever reason, now’s the time to do it.

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Taito’s Groove Coaster [99¢] is an experiential music and rhythm game that mixes fun, upbeat, and jazzy tracks with a psychedelic and retro-informed visual aesthetic. At its truly mechanical core, it’s just a tap game that has you drum on your iPad whenever a bubble crops up on a neon rail, sorta like a one-note Rock Band. While that’s not necessarily entertaining in the year 2011, Groove Coaster’s constituent parts manage to overpower its simplicity, making for a game that’s a pleasure to pick up and thrum alongside, lack of depth and flaws be darned.

It’s easy to be wooed by Groove Coaster’s striking vector graphics presentation in the same way that it was hard to look beyond another Taito title’s visuals in Space Invaders: Infinity Gene [$4.99]. But even without the trains of retro baggage behind Groove Coaster, it manages to feel aged, yet refined and re-imagined in the same way. It’s a unique approach that really adds a certain flavor to the action and adds to the experiential edge of the project.

The thick wire-frame rail guiding all the action, by the way, isn’t static: it zigs, it zags, it ducks, and it circles alongside a given music track’s ebb and flow. Your cursor, which can be an assortment of objects including Taito-branded characters, helplessly runs along these tracks, speeding up and slowing down with the beat as thematic particle effects, ranging from flowery explosions to plain ol’ particle-vomit, crop up all over the place. Groove Coaster is a music game, sure, but it’s also a visual treat in addition to an audio one.

In this vein, the backgrounds and their respective effects are cool, too, especially as they morph and throb thematically as songs change tempo.

It’s not all great — there’s an exceptionally fundamental flaw nestled within the visual design. Sometimes, instead of ratcheting up the intensity of a song and the beats you need to hit, Groove Coaster uses its presentation to conceal your cursor and thus hamper your ability to hit the glowing “beat” orbs. This comes off as a tactic to obscure its fairly rudimentary play, and a needless one at that. So, what? This game is easy to play. Who cares?

I’m not sure how to classify the music used in the game. There’s a mix of J-Pop, new wave, house, and other fast-paced highly electronic stuff. Most of it, actually, appears to be pulled from other Taito titles, but they all seem to fit with the visual stylings. In particular, Arkanoid DS’ “Happy Smiling – More Happy Mix” sticks out in my head as on of the best songs, as its thematic qualities and the music line up pretty well.

Most songs introduce some neat visual elements and mechanics to the fold. “Happy Smiling,” for example, is the first level to add a merry-go-round of beats that swirls and rotates as you hit (or miss) each one. As you move up in difficulty, new “beats” are added that make you do things like swipe and flick, or even hold and jiggle your finger. All of the songs seem to have a new mechanic, which makes for some compelling replay opportunities.

Oddly, but somehow fittingly, Groove Coaster features a fairly advanced “perks” system. As you beat levels in the game, you increase your own experience level. As you do, you unlock new avatars and upgrades that net you bigger bonuses or special in-game perks. It’s a pretty standard carrot-on-the-stick approach, but it’s effective. Additionally, you can purchase IAP items and avatars that do the same things these bonuses do, except they really push it to the max. I’ll stress that the IAP options feel entirely, well, optional.

Groove Coaster is a good game with a fundamental flaw. It also has a few nit-picky problems, too, like it’s spectacularly abrupt ending and horrible “How To,” but the strength of its presentation, music, and RPG-lite systems make up for anything that could sour the experience. I’m generally not too into music games, and for what it’s worth, I’m suggesting this one to whoever will listen. It’s fun, it’s sharp, and it’s an experience.

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