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We've been excited for the Parrot AR.Drone since we first heard about it early this year. After a few different hands-on opportunities at various conventions, it was hard to not see the amazing potential the device had once you got it outside of the little 10 foot by 10 foot tent that was home to its demonstrations. After spending an entire week with the Parrot AR.Drone, it does have some down sides, but is still the coolest RC toy I've had a chance to play with.

The Parrot AR.Drone is a quadricopter that is piloted using an iPhone, iPod touch, or even an iPad. When the device is powered up, it starts broadcasting its own WiFi network. Using the companion Free Flight [Free] app, you connect to this wireless network and begin controlling the unit. The network it creates isn't encrypted at all, but the AR.Drone does bind itself to the first device that connects to it to prevent other people from hijacking your flight session. Unpairing your phone is as simple as pressing a small button on the underside of the device.

Once you're connected to the AR.Drone via the Free Flight app, you're immediately shown whatever the front facing camera sees. The top left button cycles through what is displayed on the screen between the front facing camera, the bottom facing camera, or a mixture of both. With both displayed you can continue pressing the button to swap whether the front facing or bottom facing camera is shown in the corner or filling the screen.

Just below the camera cycling button is a button that allows you to edit the settings of the device. From here you can tweak nearly everything such as how quickly it will climb, how much it will bank on turns, how sensitive the iPhone controls are, and even the SSID the AR.Drone broadcasts. Also in the settings is what kind of shell you're currently using and whether or not you're flying outdoors.

Included with the Parrot AR.Drone is the large indoor shell which protects the propellers from bumping in to things as you fly it around your house as well as the much sleeker outdoor shell. Swapping these is easy, they fit over the front facing camera and are secured on the back with a magnet. Outdoor hulls are available in three different colors for $20 each, and a replacement indoor hull will run you $30.

The first thing you notice with the AR.Drone when you pull it out of the box is just how incredibly light and fragile the whole unit feels. The two different hulls and the body of the unit itself are made of EPP, or Expanded Polypropylene, a material that is widely used in most RC aircraft. It's able to bounce back and retain its shape, but just like other RC aircraft, I don't see the AR.Drone being able to handle much abuse. Thankfully, Parrot has an entire online store with every part you'd need to completely rebuilt your AR.Drone if you had to.

Flying the device itself is very easy, although doing anything more than just basic maneuvers requires a bit of getting used to. In the Free Flight app, tapping the button at the bottom of the screen causes the AR.Drone to either take off or land. From there, holding your thumb on a button on the bottom left side of the screen allows you to move the unit forward, back, or side to side by tilting the device you're running Free Flight on. Turning side to side and adjusting your altitude is accomplished using a virtual joystick of sorts on the right. If you get in trouble, an emergency button on the top of the screen immediately kills power to the propellers.

It's amazing just how much the AR.Drone does for you. It comes packed with some fairly advanced circuitry that will do everything it can to keep the device level. If you ever lose your connection to the AR.Drone WiFi, it just stops itself then slowly lands. Using sensor data from the bottom of the device, it can keep itself hover in place, even outside in a light breeze. Aside from actually running into something, the AR.Drone is also very difficult to crash, even when you're intentionally trying to get it to lose control. If it senses that it's about to tilt too far to one direction or otherwise lose control, it will abruptly correct itself.

It's really cool to see all these systems working in tandem, and if you've ever fiddled with other RC helicopters before, how idiot proof the AR.Drone is in comparison will amaze you. Unfortunately, because flying the device is such a cool experience, the first thing you immediately come to grips with is just how short the battery life is. On a full charge, I was able to fly the unit outside for around a half hour (or less depending on wind conditions) and indoors I was able to juice an additional 15 minutes or so out of the battery for a total flight time of about 45 minutes. Charging the battery back up takes an hour and a half.

Another unfortunate drawback to the AR.Drone is just how mediocre the cameras on the device are. The forward facing camera sports a resolution of 640×480, and Parrot claims it delivers this video feed at 15 FPS, but in my testing the frame rate was rarely anywhere near that, or very constant for that matter. The bottom camera is a much lower 176×144, but can display 60 FPS according to Parrot. In my testing, video from the bottom camera is a lot smoother, but it is very difficult to fly the unit using only the bottom facing camera. Because of this, more often than not I just flew the AR.Drone like I would any other RC toy in that I just watched it in the air and used my iPhone as an incredibly elaborate controller.

Without a shell on, the AR.Drone can lift very light loads, allowing for things like high definition helmet cams to be strapped to it for some better video. For instance, I found this video on YouTube of an AR.Drone with a Contour HD 1080p camera onboard:

Once you spend more time with the AR.Drone, other limitations begin to become increasingly noticeable. For instance, with the height limiter enabled in the options, the AR.Drone will only climb to around 20 feet off the ground which is as far as the sensors under the craft can detect. With the height limiter disabled, you can climb much higher, but flying the unit becomes incredibly difficult as it's no longer capable of hovering in place once you exceed the capabilities of its bottom-fancing sensors.

Testing the vertical capabilities of the device was the only time I had to use the emergency button. Once you take away the AR.Drone's ability to figure out where it is in relation to the ground, it loses its ability to correct its location. Flying the device on what I'd call a fairly calm day resulted in it almost being blown into some trees when a small breeze picked up. In comparison, in similar conditions closer to the ground the AR.Drone barely moved at all.

Also, since the whole device operates on WiFi, you're constrained by the range limitations of both the AR.Drone and the iPhone. Parrot is claiming you can operate the device from 150 feet away, which seemed a little optimistic in my testing. Thankfully, all the cool auto-pilolting stuff I mentioned earlier comes in to play when you lose your connection to the AR.Drone and it just flies in place waiting for you to get back in range and resume flight.

Overall the Parrot AR.Drone seems like a very 1.0 device with loads of potential both in future hardware revisions and in future development with the AR.Drone API. Improved battery technology, higher resolution cameras, and more powerful sensors to allow for higher flights are all things I would love to see in future models. Currently the only companion app available for the AR.Drone is the Free Flight app, but Parrot has promised other apps such as augmented reality games where two players with their own AR.Drones can have virtual dog fights, and other similar things. None of these were available at the time of this review, but I definitely can see the amazing potential for future software development.

Parrot is boasting a completely open API for developers to program their own apps to interface with the AR.Drone. While I'd love to think that there are going to be all kinds of different third party apps for the device, I really can't imagine many developers devoting resources to projects that not only require you to own an iPhone or iPod touch, but also a Parrot AR.Drone– Especially considering the mediocre uptake that iPad-only games have seen, and the iPad's market is likely exponentially larger than that of the Parrot AR.Drone.

However, if you're interested in RC aircraft and have dabbled in iPhone development, I really can't think of a much better toy to own than the AR.Drone. Throughout all my testing, I kept thinking "The AR.Drone would be cool if it did _______." If you're capable of utilizing the API to build an app that fills in the blank for whatever awesome functionality you come up with, $300 for the AR.Drone seems like a worthy investment for hobbyists.

While the Parrot AR.Drone is the coolest RC Toy I've ever played with, it's hard to give it a strong general recommendation given the current lack of software. It also would have been nice to see Parrot bundle a second battery in with the unit since additional batteries are pretty much required if you're serious about flying the device. If you're OK with waiting to see what additional apps get released, and you're patient enough to deal with 90 minute recharge cycles, flying the AR.Drone will likely be one of the most awesome things you'll ever do with your iPhone.

The Parrot AR.Drone is currently available at Brookstone for $299.99. They offer a number of accessories with it, including extra batteries for $29.95 and both two- and three-year service plans– although it's not entirely clear if crashing the device in to a tree constitutes as "normal wear and tear" in the eyes of Brookstone's warranty department.

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We got word this afternoon that the Parrot AR.Drone Quadricopter is going to be sold exclusively through Brookstone and is available for pre-order right now for $299.99. Brookstone plans on shipping orders on September 3rd, and the first 300 orders get a free flight bag. (Tempting, I know.) Currently, Brookstone is only willing to ship the Parrot AR.Drone to customers inside of the USA, and optionally available is a $49.95 bundle which includes a additional hull, battery, and an iPhone 3G/3GS case. They're also selling two and three year service plans for $39.99 or $49.99, although it's unclear whether or not breaking your AR.Drone by crashing it in to something is considered "normal wear and tear."

We got our first hands-on at CES 2010 earlier this year and thought it was incredibly cool-

The device is currently controlled using an iPhone/iPod Touch app which communicates through Wi-Fi to the AR.Drone itself. Simply tap on Launch and the AR.Drone takes off and hovers over a stationary spot. On screen controls are easy and effective.

Left/right buttons allow you to rotate 360 degrees in one spot, while up/down buttons control altitude. Pressing on a special button activates tilt-control on the iPhone/iPod Touch itself. This allow you to fly the device by naturally tilting the iPhone itself. Meanwhile, the on screen controls are overlayed with live video coming from the front-facing camera of the Drone itself.

In picking it up for the first time, I found it very easy to maneuver. The main thing I had to get used to was using the drone's point of view to steer, rather than my own. Check out our video:

The Parrot AR.Drone has some serious technology built in to it with its ability to auto-level itself, and pilot itself if it loses the connection with the device you're controlling it with. Remote control helicopters (which require much more skill to fly) sell for upwards of $1,000, making the $299.99 they're asking for everything the AR.Drone is capable of doing seem surprisingly appealing. For more information on the Parrot AR.Drone check out the web site and make sure to take a peek at their gallery of augmented reality games that you can play for the device.

I can't wait to get my hands on one.

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Back in January, we got pretty excited about the Parrot AR.Drone Quadicoptor. The Parrot AR.Drone remote control quadricopter is controlled by creating its own WiFi network that either an iPhone or an iPod Touch connects to. The Parrot AR.Drone is then maneuvered using the accelerometers of the iPhone combined with a video feed from the forward facing camera on the drone itself. A smart piloting system intelligently compensates for wind and other environmental conditions, and utilizing a second camera which faces the ground can perform a stationary flight on its own.

We had some hands-on time with it back at CES, and were impressed:

Of course, the big question on everyone's mind was "when" and "how much". Ars Technica reports that the Parrot AR.Drone will finally go on sale this September at a price of $299. The device itself is only so exciting on its own, but combined with its open SDK, Parrot is hoping that developers will take advantage of the device's controls and cameras to create augmented reality games. At least a couple of these titles are said to be available at launch.

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Without a doubt, one of the coolest things introduced at CES 2010 was Parrot's AR.Drone quadricoptor. We managed to track it down for some hands-on time and yes, it's really as cool as it looks from the developer's videos.

One of the biggest features behind the technology is the sensors and advanced processing behind the device which allow it to practically fly itself. Unlike other remote helicoptors, the AR.Drone uses a combination of downward looking camera, gyroscopes and other sensors to perform stationary flight and also compensate for other flight conditions. The result is a very easy to fly device.

The device is currently controlled using an iPhone/iPod Touch app which communicates through Wi-Fi to the AR.Drone itself. Simply tap on Launch and the AR.Drone takes off and hovers over a stationary spot. On screen controls are easy and effective.

Left/right buttons allow you to rotate 360 degrees in one spot, while up/down buttons control altitude. Pressing on a special button activates tilt-control on the iPhone/iPod Touch itself. This allow you to fly the device by naturally tilting the iPhone itself. Meanwhile, the on screen controls are overlayed with live video coming from the front-facing camera of the Drone itself.

In picking it up for the first time, I found it very easy to maneuver. The main thing I had to get used to was using the drone's point of view to steer, rather than my own. Check out our video:

As if that wasn't enough, Parrot also offers an open API to develop augmented reality games. Using the front facing camera, you can duel with another AR.Drone or attack virtual enemies in space. Parrot has developed a couple of games as demos but expects 3rd party developers to take much more advantage of the technologies.

The current development model only offers about 15 minutes of flight on about an hour's charge. Pricing and availability of the AR.Drone will be announced later this year. More details are available on the developer site.

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While we won't be on the floor of CES until tomorrow, the internet is already on fire with buzz surrounding the Parrot AR.Drone remote control quadricopter that is controlled by creating its own WiFi network that either an iPhone or an iPod Touch connects to. The Parrot AR.Drone is then maneuvered using the accelerometers of the iPhone combined with a video feed from the forward facing camera on the drone itself.

A smart piloting system intelligently compensates for wind and other environmental conditions, and utilizing a second camera which faces the ground can perform a flawless stationary flight on its own. If at any point you take your fingers off the iPhone autopilot engages stabilizing the drone, and if you quit the controller app or lose your connection to the Parrot AR.Drone's WiFi network the drone will stabilize itself and land all on its own.

As seen in the following video, the Parrot AR.Drone has two different hulls– A fully enclosed hull that protects the rotors from bumping in to walls and furniture indoors, and a hull for outdoors that sacrifices rotor protection for better maneuverability.

As if being able to fly around a drone using nothing more than your iPhone wasn't cool enough, an additional video on the Parrot AR.Drone web site demonstrates some augmented reality games you can play with the Parrot AR.Drone complete with picture in picture showing what the video feed and in-game HUD looks like. It apparently can even recognize shapes in 3D space to overlay different 3D models, such as the boss fight seen at the end of this video:

On top of all this, Parrot even has a developer zone featuring whitepapers that detail how to develop third party games that use the Parrot AR.Drone via an open API. All of these resources are available for free, and while the games shown in the above video were cool, I can't even imagine the potential if third party development support takes off.

Needless to say, we'll be keeping a close eye on the Parrot AR.Drone, and will post more information as it becomes available.

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There's no doubt that 2009 has been an amazing year for iPhone gaming, but in looking ahead to 2010, compiling a list of the things we're looking forward to the most proved to be just as challenging as listing the games we most enjoyed in the past. To wrap up our series of year-end "best of" articles, let's take a peek at things we're excited to see released or hear more about in 2010.

Without a doubt, the current elephant in the room of indie iPhone gaming would have to be the recent news of Unreal Engine 3 running on the iPhone 3GS and 3rd generation iPod touch. Details are still hazy at best as to how licensing this engine is going to work, as well as how much (or how little) effort it will take to port existing projects which utilize the Unreal Engine 3 to the iPhone. There are a ton of great games either already released or in the works that rely on Unreal Engine 3.

Interestingly enough, BioShock not only runs within Unreal Engine 3 on the PC, XBOX 360, and PS3, but in late May of 2008 was "coming soon" to the iPhone. It seems unlikely that over a year and a half later that we'll ever see something similar to the BREW demo, but if 2K Games was interested in bringing BioShock to the iPhone at one point… It may not be much of a stretch to think that if porting a existing Unreal Engine 3 game to the iPhone engine isn't that involved that we could be harvesting Little Sisters on the go in the undersea city of Rapture at some point in the future.

Similarly, in February of this year, Bethesda Softworks' Todd Howard indicated that one of Bethesda's next projects is an iPhone game. Bethesda is famous for its extensive RPG's, so it is somewhat conceivable that a project typical of Bethesda's scope is still in development. Howard is the executive producer responsible for both The Elder Scrolls series as well as Fallout 3, and with the fan following both game series have, anything they release on the App Store should do well.

In late August, Rockstar Games announced that Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars was coming to the iPhone. Originally slated for fall of 2009, little is known about the current state of the game. Given the subject matter of previous titles in the Grand Theft Auto series, it's not hard to imagine that Rockstar may have missed their target release timeframe by going back and forth with Apple attempting to get the game approved.

Originally announced at GDC this year, OnLive is a gaming-on-demand service which aims at applying the cloud computing model to gaming. Allegedly, all you will need is the OnLive "microconsole" and a fast enough internet connection to play the latest and greatest video games streamed over the internet. Apparently, OnLive also works on the iPhone. We didn't originally report on this due to the vaporware nature of OnLive in its current state, but if it does turn out to work as advertised, it could shake the foundations of mobile gaming.

Augmented reality games have shown great promise in tech demos, but currently all of the games that use the iPhone's camera, the 3GS compass, or both have seemed like more of a gimmick than an actual enjoyable game. New user input methods seem to always start out as feeling gimmicky, as anyone who waggled a Wii controller through Twilight Princess can attest to. As augmented reality matures on the platform throughout 2010, we could potentially see some extremely innovative projects that we never could have imagined.

The App Store went largely ignored by Activision following their release of Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 3D [$2.99], a game released very early in the life of the iPhone. We were surprised when Call of Duty: World at War: Zombies [$9.99] appeared out of the blue, especially with such a full featured online component, and one can only wonder what else Activision will surprise us with.

In other Activision news, a video (which has since been removed) of Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 running on the iPhone appeared on YouTube one day which was later confirmed to be real by iPhone developer LTI Gray Matter. At the time it wasn't clear if the port would ever see the light of day, and months later we still haven't seen or heard anything. We didn't know about Call of Duty until the day it was released, so here's hoping for Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 appearing out of nowhere sometime in 2010. (Another skateboarding game we're looking forward to is Mike V – Do or Die.)

As Gameloft continues smashing the top selling and top grossing charts with games inspired by console classics, it's hard to say how much longer their reign of the top of the App Store will remain unchallenged before even more of the original creators of said inspiration throw their hat in to the ring with their own original iPhone games. There are a great deal of big-name publishers that dominate the home console and PC market which have yet to launch a game on the App Store. As the market gets larger with every passing day, it's anyone's guess as to how much longer these same publishers and developers can ignore the platform.

Speaking of Gameloft, it should be interesting to watch how their partnership with Ubisoft evolves and translates in to iPhone games such as the previously released H.A.W.X. [$6.99] and the yet to be released Assassin's Creed 2. Gameloft is an independent sister company of Ubisoft who have a massive list of games that we'd love to see adapted to the iPhone.

During our recent interview with John Carmack, he mentioned the next Id game that will grace the iPhone will likely be Quake Classic, followed by the rest of the Quake series. He indicated that Id hopes to release a new iPhone game every 2-3 months, and judging by the quality of the previous Id games available on the App Store, the Quake games should be just as amazing.

While classic PC gamers may be puddy in Carmack's hands, everyone seems to love PopCap games. This year we saw Peggle [$1.99], Bookworm, [$1.99], Chuzzle [$1.99], and even a awesome update for Bejeweled 2 [$2.99] that allows you to compete in weekly high scoring competitions with your Facebook friends. We expect to see Plants vs Zombies in early 2010, and hope to see Peggle Nights along with many other PopCap classics in the future.

EA has had a fantastic year on the App Store, with too many great games to even list. All indications point to 2010 being just as chock full of big-name games, inevitable sequels, and other must-haves. Mirror's Edge and Spore Creatures will likely be available early in the year, and 2010 should be accompanied by EA's entire updated lineup of sports titles and other surprises such as the yet to be released SSX that was part of an early report of games they had in the works.

Capcom's Phoenix Wright is presumably coming to the American App Store, although it apparently has already been released in Japan with a questionable requirement of a constant connection to the internet as the game itself is only 2MB, with the rest of the content downloaded on the fly from Capcom's servers. It's unclear how much this will change (if at all) when the game is released internationally, but Phoenix Wright is near the top of my list of most anticipated games.

In a sea of mediocre Sega games, a previously unknown indie developer came from out of nowhere with a Sonic CD remake for the iPhone. Christian Whitehead revealed the iPhone Retro Engine and Retro Engine Development Kit which apparently greatly speeds the process of bringing these classics to the platform with phenomenal performance to boot– A significant change from Sega's previously released emulated titles which still don't perform very well even on 3rd generation hardware. We're not sure where the fate of this project lies currently, but we've got our fingers crossed that Sega and Whitehead have teamed up to work on some amazing super-secret project which may or may not have anything to do with Sonic CD.

Earlier this year some Unity developers threw together a decent clone of Portal that we were able to get our hands on. We haven't heard anything from them since, and while it's likely that they got a cease and desist letter from Valve and completely abandoned the project, we're still holding on to a hope that the game gets released in some form in the future.

Retro gamers have two big titles to look forward to a likely 2010 release: R-Type and Marble Madness. We don't really know anything beyond the information we've already posted, but both games would be an excellent fit to the controls of the iPhone as well as the existing retro game lineup available on the App Store.

We've also got our eye on quite a few indie titles which have been in the works and should be released next year. In no particular order, I want all of these games on my iPhone yesterday:

• Warpgate
• World of Goo
• A Skeleton Story
• Power Pill
• Riddim Ribbon
• Cogs
• 100 Rogues
• Galactic Keep: Dice Battles

Really, I could go on listing all the cool games that get posted in our upcoming forum for hours. This is hardly even a fraction of what we're looking forward to, there is so much on the horizon that it's impossible to mention everything without even taking in to account the future possibilities of both the rumored Apple tablet and 4th generation iPhone and iPod touch hardware improvements.

2010 is going to be incredible.

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With the year coming to a close, I feel confident in saying with as much authority as I can muster that 2009 has been an amazing year. Soon we will be posting the results of weeks of deliberation on what we feel were the best games, a holiday buyer's guide for people who opened an iPod touch or iPhone this Christmas, and other year-end stories highlighting the various games we feel are the "must-haves" of 2009– But it hardly seems right to summarize the year in a few simple lists of game titles, brief synopses and links to reviews when so many remarkable games were created and events transpired that were still highly noteworthy or influential but fall outside of the rigid boundaries of "best of" listings.

When the App Store first launched on July 10th, 2008, very few people, myself included, realized the full potential of a reasonably open platform with a $99 entry fee that allowed developers building games in their bedrooms to be on equal footing with industry giants. The success of the pioneers of the App Store created a gold rush of talent, with new eager developers hoping to see even a fraction of the success of the stories that motivated their migration to the platform. 2009 was filled with even more inspirational tales of developers quitting their day jobs and building full-fledged businesses off of the App Store.

2009 also marked the year that the indie developer dreams of Imangi Studios, Bolt Creative, InMotion Software, Tiger Style Games, and many others were fully realized with titles created out of basements and on kitchen tables without a single cent of outside financing that were able to compete with the likes of EA, Activision, Sega, Namco, and other giants of the gaming industry. Everything they created was their own, a feat nearly impossible on any other platform.

Before 2009, no iPhone gamers cared about or likely even knew the name Tim Langdell, a man who has now become infamous amongst the community for relentlessly disputing ancient trademarks and consistently keeping Mobigame's EDGE off the App Store. We were impressed by the game when we first posted about it on January 4th, before anyone even had a clue of the legal battles to come. Since its was taken down, EDGE has briefly appeared for download several times throughout the year, but even as 2009 is coming to a close the fate of this game still is unclear.

Five days following the release of EDGE, Pocket God [99¢] made its debut on the App Store. At the time, not even Bolt Creative realized the cult following that the game would soon have. We didn't even post about it until months later, as in its earliest form Pocket God barely resembled what you would call a game– But the Pocket God phenomenon was growing too large to even attempt to ignore. Since then the game has seen 29 episodes, each representing a substantial content update and according to the Independent Games Festival trailer, Pocket God has over 1.6 million worldwide fans– A number easily confirmed by the blitz of forum members swarming each and every Pocket God thread posted on our forums along with countless other Pocket God fan-made spinoff sites.

February was an even bigger month than January for iPhone games, with Rogue Touch's [99¢] release and its continued dominance throughout the year with the developer consistently implementing community feedback, solidifying its position as the best implementation of Rogue on the platform. iDracula [99¢ / Free] was also released, and was the first dual-stick shooter to rise to the #1 position on the overall paid app sales chart– Its success no doubt inspiring countless other developers to throw their hats in to the dual-stick shooter ring.

In a sea of tower defense games, February also saw geoDefense [$1.99 / Free], a game that challenged fans of the genre with its brutal difficulty level which was designed from the ground up to never create a situation where the player is able to sit back and watch as waves of creeps are slaughtered by their defenses. Since then, geoDefense Swarm [$1.99] appeared on the App Store, after much anticipation from the fan base of the original game, which had grown so hardcore that they even challenged developer David Whatley to post the source code controlling one of the game's towers to verify its functionality.

On March 5th, Flight Control [99¢] hit the App Store with a bang, in essence creating the line drawing chaos management genre which was spawned an army of games with similar gameplay elements or control mechanics. Games like Harbor Master [99¢ / Free] were among the first in expanding on the Flight Control formula, but none of the spinoffs even saw a fraction of the success of Flight Control, a game which has held a firm position near the top of the paid apps listing since its release with a fan following of celebrities such as Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore challenging each other via Twitter.

Doodle Jump [99¢] was also released in March, a simple tilting game which has since seen several updates and to this day still hasn't left the second screen of my iPhone 3G, along with being among the very first batch of essential apps and games that were synced to my iPhone 3GS shortly after unboxing it on the day of its release. Doodle Jump has become the gold standard that most simple games are compared to on TouchArcade, and it seems impossible for us to record a podcast without mentioning it at least once.

One of the most memorable games for me of April (aside from Ow My Balls! [99¢]) was Hysteria Project [$1.99], a game that combined live action footage with simple gameplay elements reminiscent of Sega CD or LaserDisc full motion video games. Ultimately the game fell flat due to a short playtime and nearly non-existent replay value, but I still have to admire the amount of talent, planning, and production that went in to creating the many video clips and impressive horror/thriller atmosphere. Hysteria Project seems to be abandoned now with updates released only addressing existing bugs and iTunes reviews flooded by users requesting additional content. Regardless, if you're a fan of games like Dragon's Lair [$4.99], you will likely appreciate the direction Bulkypix attempted to go with Hysteria Project.

May brought Manomio's port of Flashback [$1.99 / 99¢], a game which curiously enough was only an interpreter of the original game files based on the REminiscence engine by Gregory Montoir. On the first launch of the game it downloaded 3MB of the original DOS data files in order to play the game. No one knew it at the time, but this mechanism foreshadowed the dramatic release and re-release saga of their Commodore 64 Emulator [$2.99], an app which sparked countless debates over the merits of Apple's approval process as its fate on the App Store slowly unfolded.

Sega's Sonic The Hedgehog [$5.99] was also released around this time, and it didn't take long for clever members of the community to pick the game apart and discover that it was little more than Sega's own emulator– And with a minimal amount of tweaking could be made to play any Genesis ROM file. Emulation on the iPhone was punctuated in late December with the release of Nescaline, a NES emulator based on NES v3 available on Cydia. Only available for a few short hours, retro fans willing to cough up $6.99 during this time are now among a small group of gamers capable of running any NES game on their device without jailbreaking.

While we were at WWDC, the talk of the town seemed to be InMotion Software's I Dig It [App Store], an amazing game that came completely out of left field and seemed to captivate anyone who got passed an iPhone with it installed during the event. After each night of the conference when our own Blake Patterson insisted on taking us to his favorite bar in San Francisco, The Tempest, I'd run my battery completely out searching for diggins while drinking gin and tonics. I Dig It eventually hit #1 on the iTunes sales charts, and in the wake of its success, InMotion Software released I Dig It Expeditions [99¢ / Free]– A sequel and vast improvement on the original.

After a tease at the WWDC Launch Party that was co-hosted by TouchArcade and MacHeist, Doom Resurrection [$1.99] was available for download. Launched at the premium price of $9.99, Doom Resurrection utilized the same assets as Doom 3, and while there were many 3D games available on the App Store prior to its release, Doom Resurrection was likely the first title that truly opened the eyes of iPhone gamers allowing them to see the true graphical potential of the platform.

SGN's F.A.S.T. [Free] also went live on the App Store in late June, and was among the first games for the iPhone to offer seamless realtime action oriented multiplayer. Following its release at $9.99, F.A.S.T. has slowly had its price reduced and is now free and funded by in-game downloadable content– A feature available to developers following the release of the iPhone 3.0 OS on June 17th.

The iPhone 3GS hit the street on June 19th, packing a faster processor, more storage, a compass, and most important to gamers: OpenGL ES 2.0 capabilities. It would still be some time before this new functionality would realized by developers, and 2009 is coming to a close without the compass being used for anything more than gimmicky augmented reality tech demo games and with developers only barely scratching the surface of OpenGL ES 2.0– With a select few games even taking advantage of the additional shaders and other graphical effects available on the 3GS and later released 3rd generation iPod touch.

The entire month of July was overshadowed by the release of Enviro-Bear 2010 [99¢] an experience which polarized gamers in to two camps: Those who thought Enviro-Bear 2010 was the worst game that they ever played and couldn't understand why we would post about it, and those who agreed with me that it was the Citizen Kane of iPhone games. Featuring the most realistic simulation of a bear driving a car available on the platform, Enviro-Bear 2010 is still talked about on our forums and referenced in a few other games, most notably the recent Minigore [$1.99] update.

Also first available in July, Newtoy's Words With Friends [$1.99 / Free] joined Chess With Friends [$2.99 / Free] in providing the iPhone equivalent of correspondence gaming to the games of Chess and not-quite-Scrabble. CEO Paul Bettner later revealed some amazing usage statistics at GDC Austin in mid-September: the Newtoy games had 50,000 active players daily. While Pinch Media reported the average iPhone app user spent less than 5 minutes on an app per day, Chess With Friends and Words With Friends players spent an average time of 1.5 hours playing each day.

The most notable game to come out of August was by far Tiger Style's Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor [$2.99]. Released without a single preview, Spider instantly captivated our entire community. The allure of such a mysterious yet high quality game was irresistible as Bryce Manor itself held a mystery which the player could either follow their human curiosity choose to explore the story of the game, or simply enjoy the game as a spider catching bugs and completely ignore it. This was just many of the remarkably ingenious design decisions found in Spider, and the game's entire design process perfectly embodied the indie development spirit of the platform.

Beating EA to the punch by an entire month, Gameloft's NFL 2010 [$2.99 / Free] was the first fully licensed football game available on the iPhone which was soon followed by Madden NFL 10 [$5.99], a game we got an early preview of at the Penny-Arcade Expo in Seattle. Which is the better football game was hotly debated among sports fans on our forums, with both games competing in feature wars involving multiplayer, complete NFL rosters, stat tracking, and other things only hardcore sports fans cared about. Regardless, gaming franchise staples like Madden only further legitimized the iPhone as a gaming platform.

At the end of September, Hi, How Are you [99¢ / Free] hit the App Store, a game based on the life, art, and music of Daniel Johnston. When I first played the game, I had no clue who Daniel Johnston was, or why this game was so amazingly strange. All I knew was that it had a really cool cell shaded art style, and in researching the game I became aware of everything that was Daniel Johnston. As I explained in a blog post, this completely transformed the game for me. Much like the work of Daniel Johnson, Hi, How Are You is completely off the wall, and likely one of the most under-appreciated games on the App Store. In the few emails I sent back and forth with the developer, it seemed this realization was not at all uncommon and the game's single fault is that it may just simply be too strange.

In October, Canabalt [$2.99] was released, the iPhone port of a flash game playable online for free. Our community was wholly divided amongst players who were absolutely in love with Canabalt, and others who still leave comments on front page stories and post threads in our forums upset both with the positive reception it received and its $2.99 price point. Regardless of which side of the fence you sit on, it is a remarkable feat to be among among the few iPhone games that are not only noticed, but also talked about for months following their release. Canabalt was later updated with a few new obstacles and online leaderboards– Clearly quantifying exactly how bad I am at the game compared to the rest of the world.

Following Canabalt came another game with similar pixelated retro graphics: Hook Champ [$2.99 / Free]. Taking a similar swinging mechanic made popular by other games and introducing RPG elements in an equipment shop where virtually everything about your character can be upgraded, Hook Champ was an instant classic. Featuring among the best and most seamless integration of online leaderboards I've seen, Hook Champ provides a silly amount of replay value as each run through a level is timed, uploaded and compared to everyone else's performance.

October also saw what seemed to be one of the most substantial announcements from Apple since the unveiling of 3GS hardware: Changes to the downloadable content system on the App Store allowing free apps to have in-app purchasing. Previously, DLC was only available to developers who sold their apps, with the intention that free apps would always be free. Aside from substantially changing the dynamic of the top 100 lists, we also speculated that lite versions could be a thing of the past as developers migrated to free demo apps which were unlocked to the full version via an in-game microtransaction. Very few games ever actually implemented this purchase model, largely in part because appearing on the top 100 free list requires exponentially more downloads than what is required to chart on the top 100 paid listings.

What this new DLC change did usher in was games like ngmoco's Eliminate [Free], a free to play game with optional in-game purchases to buy energy, a sort of virtual currency used inside of the game. Touch Pets Dogs [Free] also utilizes a similar model, as do several of the Miraphonic Epic Wars games.

In November, Activision surprised us all with the release of Call of Duty: World at War: Zombies [$9.99], the cooperative online multiplayer enabled port of the zombie-slaying game mode from Call of Duty: World at War for home consoles– Leaving iPhone gamers wondering what could possibly come next out of the industry giant.

Wheeler's Treasure [$1.99] also hit the App Store, following a thread with beta testers absolutely raving about the game. Featuring flick controls, and a really strange game premise where you're chasing a wheel down a hill, Wheeler's Treasure is yet another example of an extremely high quality game that really could only exist on the iPhone. The developer has already implemented a few new power-ups in game based on (and named after) forum members who provided feedback, and Wheeler's Treasure joins Hook Champ as another game that has fabulously seamless online scoring, marked by headstones that appear in game based on the distance other players travelled before their wheel was destroyed.

November and December were met with a blitz of games from Gameloft, who at the start of the year went from releasing a few mediocre games to the nearly becoming undisputed king of iPhone game production. Aside from the remarkably complete port of the PlayStation/PC classic Driver [$6.99], Gameloft delivered several other games including N.O.V.A. – Near Orbit Vanguard Alliance [$6.99], a Sci-Fi first person shooter with four player online multiplayer and among the best graphics of any iPhone game released this year.

December also saw several fantastic classic games, starting off with Sword of Fargoal [$4.99], which is by far the most approachable roguelike and one of the best examples of a perfectly remade retro game. The previously released Space Ace [$4.99] was also joined by two other LaserDisc arcade classics: Cobra Command [$2.99] and Dragon's Lair [$4.99].

With 122,660 available apps on the App Store as of today, even this seemingly comprehensive listing of major events and releases barely even begins to scratch the surface. One could spend weeks analyzing the App Store notating the trends in sales, releases, genres, and borrowed/modified gameplay mechanics. The fact that this is even possible is amazing by itself, and when you consider that the App Store is only a year and a half old, it's hard to imagine what the year-end wrap-up of 2010 will include.

Notable things on the horizon include the Unreal Engine 3 coming to the iPhone, potentially unlocking countless ports of existing projects developed for the Unreal Engine as well as the unimaginable unannounced games from the industry leaders of the App Store. Looking at what Gameloft, ngmoco, Illusion Labs, and others have produced this year alone, it's impossible to even guess what they will have accomplished next year.

Apple seems to be updating the iPhone and iPod touch hardware on a yearly basis, and rumors are already rolling in on potential inclusions for next year's model. With the Nvidia Tegra-based Zune HD and numerous Android devices either released or due to be released soon, the iPhone's advantage currently lies in the power of its software rather than its hardware– A fantastic position to be in, especially as more apps are submitted to the iTunes App Store on a daily basis than the total number of apps available in the entire Android Marketplace. Not to mention you barely need two hands to count the number of games available for the Zune HD.

Depending on which rumors you believe, the legendary Apple tablet may also run a shared OS to the iPhone, and run the same games and apps available on the platform. If this turns out to be true, the gaming implications could be massive as a large problem with iPhone games is often how much of the screen is obscured by controls. It's still much too early to even begin to speculate what the future of the Apple tablet will hold, and you can drive yourself crazy attempting to piece together the opinions of industry insiders and analysts.

In regards to TouchArcade, we've grown substantially over 2009. At the beginning of the year Blake and Arnold were holding down the fort, I've since joined the team full time, and we've even acquired some new writers recently who are producing some fantastic reviews. At the various conventions and meetings we've attended throughout the year we've made some great friends, heard some amazing stories, and scored a lot of great previews. We've grown to just under 9 million page views a month, and since we started recording our podcast we've maintained a position in the top ten video game podcasts on iTunes. We even have some great things to come for TouchArcade, both in improving existing features of the site as well as a few top secret projects and partnerships in the works which will be revealed soon.

Our readers and excellent community are directly responsible for our success, and we'd like to thank you for your continued support. From everyone at TouchArcade, have a safe and happy holidays.

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