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There are, I think, four people left on Earth who don’t own the following titles from PopCap Games: Plants vs. Zombies [$2.99 / HD] and Peggle [$2.99]. If you don’t, shame on you sirs. If you do already have them, here’s some good news — Peggle now supports the Retina Display and PVZ now has the Zen Garden. Both of these respective updates are available for free right now.

The news of the Peggle update broke yesterday afternoon, just about right when the update when live on the App Store. This update fixes, really, the only issue I had with the original game, which is to say, its muddy, out-dated visuals.

The Zen Garden is a different beast. It functions just like how it does in PVZ proper. It’s an interactive garden that gives you cash in return for your green thumbs. You earn plants in the campaign or by purchasing them from Crazy Dave. As you earn more cash, you’ll be able to unlock additional gardens, which in return, will give you more cash to buy all the high-priced action plants in PVZ.

New mini-games, as well as Game Center-linked achievements have been added to PVZ alongside the Zen Garden. That’s quite an update, eh?

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On July 23, 1981, Galaga, one of the most well-loved scrolling shooters of all time, made its arcade debut. In celebration of its coming 30-year anniversary, Namco has released the Galaga 30th Collection [App Store], which brings Galaxian, Galaga, Gaplus (aka Galaga 3), and Galaga '88 to iOS.

The collection is a free Universal download (for iPhone and iPad) that includes Galaxian (which is actually the first game in the Galaga series) and offers the other aforementioned titles as in-app purchases individually ($9.97 combined) or as a discounted single game-pack download at a price of $7.99. Each of the titles features reworked graphics that lend a more modern feel to the retro and an optional scan-line filter and score-tracking HUD.

There's not a whole lot to say about the gameplay that hasn't been said for the past 30 years. These are all highly enjoyable and well-loved shooters that feature excellent balance and white-knuckle action. The iOS adaptations of these games, of course, feature iOS-style controls, and of several sorts. There is a mode with two left / right sliders at the bottom of the screen, one for movement and one for movement plus autofire; a left / right slider mode with a tap to the game screen to fire, and a control mode featuring a left / right virtual stick and a fire button along the bottom. The virtual stick mode moves your ship at a speed similar to the arcade originals, while the slider modes move your ship as fast as your finger can zip back and forth across the screen.

An accumulating / depleting fast-fire battery has been added to the games in the collection, which heighten the pace of the game. It's an addition that actually feels pretty nice. I warmed up to it quickly.

Galaga, Gaplus and Galaga '88 all feature a Score Attack mode that is a race against the clock to see how high a score you can achieve, in addition to the Normal Game mode. Another enhancement found in the iOS ports is the ability to supercharge your ship by buying upgrades with Galaga Points earned as you play. All of the titles in the collection feature Game Center achievements and rankings.

Galaga 30th Collection includes a pretty epic intro movie sequence that will have longtime fans smiling, but sadly it adds some real bulk to the download, which weighs in at a hefty 135MB.

My only real gripe with the title is the total absence of the original arcade graphics as a settings option. As a huge retro fan, I would definitely be playing with the original graphics, were they available.

The star of this collection is definitely the highly acclaimed Galaga '88, but none of the games in the Galaga series disappoint in the least — in the arcade or under iOS. The touch control options presented here are some of the best I've seen for an iOS arcade conversion, and Galaga 30th Collection really is worth a spot on any arcade shooter fan's iOS device.

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Coming off the successful launch of Touchgrind BMX [$4.99], which we reviewed last month, I met with the folks from Illusion Labs here at WWDC 2011 to discuss their plans for the series moving forward. Speaking of that successful launch, Illusion Labs has revealed that Touchgrind BMX sold over 100,000 copies in just its first 10 days in the App Store, making it their fastest selling title to date. Combined with the original Touchgrind [$4.99/HD], the total sales for the series exceeds 1.5 million units. That’s no small potatoes!

As for the future of Touchgrind BMX, there are a few nice things in the works. Just last week, an update was released which added some much-needed Retina Display support for the game, but unfortunately it was at the expense of a smooth frame rate. Illusion Labs is furiously working the kinks out of this, and the new build I was able to play showed a vastly improved frame rate with Retina Display visuals enabled. They’ll continue to refine this and then plan to drop the optimization update in the next couple of weeks. Following the improved Retina Display update, the hinted at new level Polar Ridge will be released along with full Game Center support.

But it doesn’t stop there. Once all of these new features are finally launched, the next step will be adding a TV-Out feature to Touchgrind BMX that will allow the game to be played on a big screen while being controlled on your iOS device. They demonstrated this functionality to me by using a portable projector and projecting the game right onto the wall in front of me. It looks absolutely awesome, and plays just as good. The iOS screen takes the form of a bike silhouette and controls exactly as the game normally would. Here’s a developer video showcasing the functionality projected onto a big screen:

Pretty cool stuff, but that’s still not the end of the Touchgrind-related news. Way back in January of 2010, Illusion Labs demonstrated a proof-of-concept video that showed the original Touchgrind being played on a MacBook using the multitouch-enabled trackpad. They never actually released the game for Mac due to not really having a solid distribution channel, but when the Mac App Store was announced last October the Touchgrind MacBook demo was one of the first things that came to our minds.

Now, at long last, Illusion Labs is releasing the original Touchgrind on the Mac App Store. The best part? It will be launching for free. You heard that right, for free. Illusion Labs isn’t known dropping prices or giving away things for free, but this is something they wanted to do for their fans as a thank you for making Touchgrind such a success. You’ll be able to grab Touchgrind for your Mac sometime in July. The announced features for Touchgrind BMX will slowly release over the course of the next several weeks or so, and I can’t wait to see what else Illusion Labs has up their sleeve for the future.

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Baseball Superstars has been a favorite around these parts for years now, with entries to the franchise released each fall. So it's surprising to see Baseball Superstars II Pro [$0.99] released a little over half a year after the series' last major outing.

Each update to the series brings new features and improvements, and this one is no different. It's a huge upgrade from the earliest games in the series, but when compared to last year's model, it's a bit less impressive. Don't get me wrong—this one is better than Baseball Superstars 2011 [$0.99 / Free] across the board. But if you've spent some time in Gamevil's series already, you'll find a shinier, prettier game, but not one that's much different from what you've already seen.

If, on the other hand, you're new to the series, this is the one to grab. The visuals have been given a major overhaul. Each sprite is more detailed, as are the environments. The other players no longer look oddly squashed, and animation upgrades have them looking a lot smoother as they run around the field. With configurable weather, light and particle effects, it's by far the best looking entry in the series.

If you've never played before, here's the (abridged) run down. Baseball Superstars II Pro is a Sports/RPG hybrid. You create baseball players and run them through My League mode, which spans a career and tells a story, or create teams and run them through Season mode. Either way, you're responsible for training your players, buying and managing items, handling stats and actually playing the game. Playing involves carefully timed and placed taps for batting, pitching and stealing bases. The game also has missions, tournaments, home run challenges and online multiplayer to keep things interesting. Once you take into account the load of unlockable teams, items, players, and Game Center achievements, you'll probably never need to leave the house again.

Whether or not you'll enjoy it depends less on whether you're into sports games (I'm not, and I love it) than if you're okay with the potential for IAP. There's a lot of it. Many of the available items and skills cost G Points. You can earn G Points several different ways in the game, or you can skip ahead and buy them. If you're a completionist, you're going to run into roadblocks where you'll need to either grind or pay. If you're a casual player, you can easily go without paying extra money. You're also going to need to be okay with some silliness. The translation and story are a bit dodgy. Also, you can buy ridiculous equipment in these games, and super players add a big element of chance.

Speaking of super players, they've been improved this time around. Now you can recruit them and add them to rosters more easily. Your teammates are also a little smarter. Batting hasn't changed much, but pitching is a lot nicer. Rather than tapping a single point in the hit box, you're given a zoomed-in plate to target. The pitching gauge is also much easier to use, and it's on by default now. This should give newbie pitchers a big leg up. Custom pitches add a little variety, too.

The interface has seen a pretty major overhaul, and while some things are a bit more straightforward (especially player recruitment), the main menu is probably going to overwhelm every new player that hops in. Here's some help: Mission Mode will give you a chance to safely learn the basics, and you should play My League on Easy to start.

Since this is pretty much a shiny, cleaned up version of last year's game, whether it will catch the fancy of existing Baseball Superstars fans depends on whether 7 months is a long enough gap to leave you wanting to start fresh. With the sheer volume of content these games offer, some of you may still be working through the last iteration. For folks who haven't hopped on the bandwagon Baseball Superstars II Pro is a sure bet. It takes the best baseball RPG series on iOS and makes it even better—sounds like yet another home run to me.

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At GDC in 2009, OnLive was originally unveiled with an incredible amount of entirely reasonable skepticism. The prospect of a service that removed the high-end gaming console and/or PC from the equation and instead did all the heavy lifting in a remote datacenter before streaming your game in HD via the internet was difficult to imagine at the time. Hell, when you stop and think about it, it's still hard to imagine today.

It's here though, and after a quick signup you can be on your way to effortlessly streaming a (as of this writing) collection of 100 different PC and console games. In fact, if you're still at all skeptical about OnLive, I highly encourage you to give it a spin. You'll be inside of a game in less than five minutes, and you can see for yourself just how well it works. The only real requirement is an internet connection that allows you to ping under 80ms to the OnLive servers and enough bandwidth to receive a HD stream. If you've got that, you're good to go.

Currently, only the OnLive Viewer is available for the iPad, but in the not too distant future we'll be able to play the entire OnLive catalog on the iPad. Players will be able to choose between a less-than-ideal set of virtual controls, or purchasing a bluetooth controller to pair with the iPad. I got a chance to fiddle with both today, and while the on-screen controls are functional, the controller is definitely the way to go.

Check out how it all works in the following video:

The folks are OnLive aren't ready to commit to release dates, controller cost, and other details, but it's said to be coming "soon" and the controller is going to be "reasonably priced." Since the whole OnLive Micro Console currently sells for $99, and has been given away for free with a few pre-order promotions, I'd find it hard to believe that the iPad-friendly controller would cost any more than $50– But that's pure speculation on my part.

As I mentioned on Twitter earlier today, it feels like this changes everything. I couldn't believe how well the whole setup worked, and with Apple's new HDMI adapter, plugging your iOS device into your TV via HDMI to play a game in HD resolutions streamed from the internet just feels like the future. The iOS OnLive client even has support for touch and gesture-based controls, it's just up for developers to build games around them.

What an incredible time to be alive.

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The Apple Design Awards are an annual event hosted at WWDC that seeks to recognize the best of the best applications and games across whatever Apple platforms Apple wants to elevate. In 2010 the Mac was snubbed, but in 2011 Apple flipped the script and gave it a place amongst the other two relevant platforms: the iPad and the iPhone.

The results of 2011’s awards show are now public. In the interest of our interests, we’ll be highlighting just the games that took the fancy little trophy Apple gave to winners. A few listing can be seen at sites like, say, TUAW.

iPhone

Cut the Rope [$.99 / HD] – Chillingo
Infinity Blade [$5.99] – Chair Entertainment

Mac

Anomaly: Warzone Earth [$6.99], – 11-Bit Studios

iPad

Osmos [$2.99 / HD], – Hemisphere Games

Infinity Blade and Cut the Rope are two fantastic titles that really stress the strengths of the platform. Both feel native and original and benefit from the unique platform. These are well-deserved winners, for sure.

Anomaly: Warzone Earth is a firm example of what you can do with a limited budget and a great idea. It’s a gorgeous “in reverse” tower defense title in which you’re charged with taking down towers with a small group of minions. Warzone Earth is geeked out with all sorts of fun sub-systems and unique points of design. This was a solid choice, too.

Osmos, on the other hand, is a laid-back experience that doesn’t require much from the owner. It’s an ambient game that looks beautiful and plays just as well on the iPad as it does on the PC and the Mac. Good one on Apple for recognizing this.

According to TUAW, the winners in these categories have are receiving a Macbook Air, an iPad 2, and an iPod Touch in addition to their trophy. I wonder if anyone at Chair is in a position to need free tech. From the sound of it, Apple should have given them flippers to swim through the pool of cash below the office.

[via TUAW]

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On June 6 Nintendo pushed out its e-Shop update to all 3DS owners with connected devices. From head to toe, this is a more streamlined digital marketplace than the one featured on the 3DS’ predecessor. But while there’s a lot of good, rational stuff in the e-Shop, the marketplace as a whole still doesn’t stack up well against the App Store.

The App Store, whether you love or hate its bulkiness and constant deluge of releases large and small and bad or good, is a better experience. Tools like “What’s Hot,” “Staff Favorites,” and “New and Noteworthy” do an acceptable job at pointing at the next big thing. Its search is simple, sharp, and intuitive and its genre or hook-based splash pages are often valid little storefronts themselves.

To its credit, the e-Shop has similar tools, but they’re all contained within a blade-based UI that is, already, cumbersome and flooded to the extent that it’s hard to find the good or the unique in the store. For example, Plants vs. Zombies [$2.99 / HD] is available now, but where is it? This is a fantastic joint on the DS platform as well and it’s sadly not being featured in the front of the store or in an easily discoverable place, as it should be.

Oh wait — it’s tucked beyond all the first-party releases, which conveniently for Nintendo, are all featured prominently at the front of the e-Shop.

The e-Shop has a “Staff Pick of the Week.” This week it’s Cave Story. Behind this listing a few panels back there’s a “Charts” category, as well as a “Recent Arrivals.” To the right is a mess of featured games followed by a senseless “Games Shown at E3” category.

Finally, after this, there’s the “Virtual Console” category and a mess of genre-based or non-specific listings. “Puzzle Games” and “Card Games” make sense, but then there’s the “2-Player Games” category, “4-Player Games,” the “Essential Games” listing and so on, which are all choked with a mishmash of releases. PVZ is in this latter category.

All of these blades give consumers more options to look through and further breakdowns, which if anything, is better than what the DSi offered. There’s also a welcome search bar at the bottom of the screen… but you have to know what’s out to find it.

Nintendo has ditched the points contrivance. Now, games cost real money and not Nintendo Banana Dollars which you get in exchange for real currency. Also, it looks like developers will have a lot more control over price points; I'm noting quite a few $1.99 downloads.

Those are cool changes, but I think the e-Shop needs work. It needs better, more concise categorization. It also needs to dump the blade interface in favor of something that uses both screens on the device. Right now, the bottom screen is the only one that reveals meaningful data. That’s a waste of screen real estate. I’d also like to see the first-party marketing stuff take a hike; “Games of E3” and “3DS Games Coming Soon” are taking up precious space that could be used for more categorization.

The mouse and keyboard interface of the App Store will always be better. I get that. But the e-Shop is just two days old and has, maybe, just over three hundred releases that are already hard to find. What’s this going to be like six months from now?

The existence of some of these more streamlined e-Shop features indicated that Nintendo is listening to consumer feedback. I just wonder if it’ll keep listening, or if we’ll need to wait until the next handheld to find the downloadable games we all want to play.

On a related note, the e-Shop is offering a "3D Classic" version of Excitebike free of charge until late this July. It’s the original 2D and with the 3D slider, you can change the perspective of the background. It tilts. You can find this at the front of the store. The Legend of Zelda Link's Awakening DX is also available for purchase. It's an awesome game and it continues to look and play great on the 3DS. This is also at the front of the store.

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There's no way to beat around the bush on this. Even though many developers have gotten onboard the universal app train, a select few have implemented any cloud-based game save storage system to allow you to sync progress across devices. Of course most server-based free to play games already do this, but in your typical super-casual 99¢ time-waster, your progress is largely locked onto the device that you're playing it on. I can't really fault developers for this, as implementing such a system would largely be overkill for most games, and maintaining the entire online infrastructure to track cross-device progress in a game like Dungeon Raid [$2.99 / Free] would be silly for the developer to do by themselves. For them, there's not much benefit. It would take a heck of a lot of engineering, and servers cost can be substantial– But that's where Apple comes in.

Monday's keynote introduced us to iCloud, an entirely free cloud-based storage system usable by everyone who owns a recent iOS device, and every developer who wants to use it. So, while it might have been entirely unrealistic for the Dungeon Raid developer to do all this himself, Apple has made it nice and easy.

I've spent most of the day today discussing the prospects of iCloud with many of the developers around WWDC and really one word can describe the temperature of each conversation: Excitement. According to developers who have attended various iCloud-centric WWDC sessions, implementing iCloud-based storage of game saves will be nearly as trivial as dealing with gave saves stored locally on the device is now. This means that as developers inevitably work on tweaking their various apps and games to make them more iOS 5 friendly over the next few months, they'll also likely switch their storage methods over to iCloud, as there's little reason for them not to.

It's still early though, and we're really just scratching the surface of what's possible on the first day of WWDC. One thing I wasn't able to get a very solid answer on was how this was all going to work between standard and HD versions of games. For instance, right now Game Center works like this: If you release your game as a universal app, you can share Game Center leaderboards and achievements for that game across all iOS devices. However, if you release the same game as a separate standard and HD version, Game Center treats those as entirely different apps, and as such, keeps leaderboards and achievements for each app individually.

It's an interesting problem, and no one is sure right now if there's a real solution. Apple obviously seems to want developers to focus on universal apps, but developers vastly prefer two different apps due to pricing flexibility, chart advantages, and several other very valid reasons. If Apple is sticking with the same restrictions as they have for Game Center leaderboards, I hope this just spurs developers to continue the trend we've started to see in offering universal compatibility in the HD version.

This truly seems to be the best of both worlds, as developers can still retain pricing flexibility for two different apps, while providing universal compatibility and cross-device iCloud save syncing while still providing a lower-priced option for those who only own an iPhone or iPod touch.

Another potential snag might be in how game saves are reconciled across multiple devices that might not always be connected to the internet. For example, if you've got a non-3G iPad and an iPod touch, and play the same game on both before returning to a friendly WiFi network. Each game will have different amounts of progress, and the developers I've spoken to so far aren't really sure how things will shake out once these two different game saves hit the iCloud.

Surely this is something Apple has considered, and I'm almost positive we'll find out the answer to all these questions and more in the next few weeks as developers delve into iOS 5. One thing is for certain, holy cow am I happy that cloud-based game save storage will practically be a standard feature in the not too distant future.

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Craneballs Studios, the folks responsible for the popular Blimp [Free/HD] titles and the recent arcade shooter Overkill [Free], are readying a release into the super casual high scoring genre. Called Super Rope, it takes the endless vertical jumping formula and replaces jumping with climbing ropes using a simple swiping gesture that works really well.

The larger aim of Super Rope is to try and appeal to both the casual audience and the dedicated high score chasers. It accomplishes this by offering a few different difficulty levels. On easy, the game moves at a slow enough pace that even a young child can play along just fine, but on the harder settings things start to move quickly and it will require some quick reaction times in order to do well.

I had a chance to try out Super Rope at WWDC this week and quite liked the swiping controls and the rope climbing gameplay:

Super Rope should be launching at the end of June or the first week of July. The game will be free and come with one character and one environment, with 4 additional characters and environments each which can be unlocked by earning stars in the game or via IAP star bundles. The 5 characters in the game will have different special items and abilities, and the plan is to continuously offer new content to unlock down the road following release.

It will also include Game Center integration with at least 80 achievements and leaderboards to compete on. We’ll check out more of Super Rope when it hits the App Store in the coming weeks.

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This WWDC has been an odd event so far, with yesterday thoroughly focused on the keynote WWDC gaming-centric sessions occupying most developers' time. Regardless, we've tracked down a few developers that have given us a look at their upcoming games. The first of which was Imangi Studios, creators of Harbor Master [$1.99 / Free / HD]. There's still a few weeks of worth left to be done on their next title, Temple Run, but we're liking what we've seen so far.

Temple Run is an endless runner, but the catch is that the game is played in a third person chase view which adds some more gameplay elements than just jumping. You tilt to collect coins, and in addition to jumping to avoid things, you also need to swipe to turn as well as slide other obstacles. Check out the incredibly self explanatory video:

As a major fan of the endless running genre as a whole, I like what Imangi has done with Temple Run. They hope to get it released by the end of the month, and of course, it will come with a full array of Game Center leaderboards, achievements, and all that fun stuff.

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