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The folks over at XBLAFans have received a tip about a possible upcoming port of The Simpsons Arcade Game coming to Xbox Live Arcade, and if recent history is any indication, there’s a good possibility that it could be coming to the App Store as well.

Twitterer @lifelower notes that the Australian ratings board has rated The Simspsons Arcade Game and attached Backbone Entertainment as the author. As you may already know, Backbone Entertainment is like a golden god of porting old arcade and console titles to the various digital mediums of today, and are already responsible for bringing two classic Konami brawlers to consoles in recent years with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in 2007 and X-Men late last year.

Now, consider that about 6 months after the release of X-Men on XBLA and PSN, a port of that port was brought to the App Store as a Universal game for both iPhones and iPads. The X-Men game did considerably well on the App Store too, which would lead me to believe that should one of their other highly regarded brawlers of the 90s arcade era, The Simpsons Arcade Game, come to XBLA then it would make good financial sense to see the game come to iOS as well.

Plus, iOS has already proven to be a great platform for old-school side-scrolling brawlers with Final Fight [$2.99], a great remake of Double Dragon [$1.99], 64th Street [$1.99], the Streets of Rage trilogy, and many more. As a huge fan of The Simpsons Arcade Game (and just The Simpsons in general), I would love to be able to have the game on my iOS devices, and while were at it that totally goes for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles too (why hasn’t this happened yet?!).

One wrinkle in my rampant speculation is that, as you may recall, we’ve already seen a Simpsons game on the App Store. Electronic Arts released The Simpsons Arcade [99¢/Lite] almost two years ago in December of 2009. It was a side-scrolling brawler similar to the arcade original, but wasn’t actually based on that game at all. It’s a pretty fun game to be honest, if not a bit repetitive, but it’s certainly not the same as having a port of the original arcade game. I have no idea if there is any sort of licensing issues with The Simpsons brand that might prevent a port of Konami’s game making it to the App Store, but it’s a possibility.

We’ll certainly be keeping our eyes out for a more official announcement that The Simpsons Arcade Game is coming to the console downloadable space, and if it is, I’ll be keeping my fingers and toes crossed that it eventually hits the App Store as well. In the meantime, check out this feature XBLAFans ran this past May discussing what they’d like to see in an updated The Simpsons Arcade Game port.

[Via XBLAFans]

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Luke Schneider’s awesome take on Space Invaders, Super Crossfire [$.99 / UHD], is now bigger than ever thanks to an early November update. Version 1.1 specifically adds a new “dark mode” that includes 150 harder waves complete with new backgrounds and a “new perspective” on the game’s story. Super Crossfire is also now more stable than ever; Schneider went back and dropped in some performance improvements for older generation phones, nipped a nasty save bug, and addressed several minor problems.

The most exciting addition for us is the one that couldn’t be noted officially: Super Crossfire HD now supports the iCade. Just switch to “ARCADE” in the configuration and you’re good to go. It’s nice to see some new iCade games out there, eh?

Oh! And if you’re particularly interested in the HD version — and you should be since we’re huge fans of it and are never wrong about these things — know that its price has been reduced. For a spell, the game is being offered at $.99 instead of its usual $2.99. Neat!

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It’s sort of a slow news day, and it’s no secret around here that we love cats, so chew on this: Halfbrick’s movie tie-in follow-up to Fruit Ninja, Fruit Ninja: Puss in Boots just had a solid update land that you should totally wrap your proverbial claws around. We thought it was great in our review, and the new bandito mode makes Puss In Boots well worth the price of admission:

Bandito mode is new, and very cool. Fight your way through a gauntlet of randomly chosen challenges. The challenges are all about slicing, of course, but they mix the situation up. You may need to slice 15 apples in amongst an intricate and ever-changing pattern of bombs, or 20 lemons while a giant bomb bounces around the screen. There’s quite a variety. Each challenge is on a tight time limit — fail or hit a bomb and you’ll lose one of your three lives.

Those lives need to keep you through 12 challenges across three areas that also serve as difficulty levels. Each challenge you complete adds to your score, ranking you on speed, precision, and just how thoroughly you can obliterate your goal. Your total score for the mode hits the leaderboards when you finish the final bonus challenge, which a cute departure from the game that I won’t spoil here.

Aside from some bug fixes and additional customization options (new swords), the meat of this update is 10 new challenges in bandito mode. Bandito mode was already our favorite addition, and seeing such a massive content boost for it is always welcome. If you were holding out on picking up Fruit Ninja: Puss in Boots to wait and see if Halfbrick was going to give it their normal update love, I’d say it’s safe to download now.

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Playing Junk Jack [$2.99] for the first time, you may experience a strong sense of déjà vu. It brought to mind my first delve into Minecraft, with the feeling of overwhelming choice, the lack of any clear idea what to do next, the need to visit YouTube and wikis to learn exactly why I was punching all those trees. But while there are any number of blatant Minecraft knockoffs on the App Store, Junk Jack distinguishes itself in nearly every category — but one.

One of Minecraft’s biggest weaknesses (one that’s improved over the course of its development) is its lack of direction, and Junk Jack takes that flaw and runs with it. For a game designed around crafting, building and exploration, Junk Jack is aggressive in its lack of assistance, leaving you without even a way to keep track of your craft notes (schematics) until you find the right note for the job. Luckily, developer Pixbits has already acknowledged that problem and is working up a fix as we speak, so we can focus on this game’s charm and potential.

It has charm in spades. While it isn’t the first 2D sandbox building game out there, it is a particularly attractive one, sporting crisp pixel art and gorgeous lighting effects. Then there’s the excellent chiptune soundtrack by Bright Primate. Combined, you get the sense that you’re building one of your favorite classic games.

But don’t go into Junk Jack looking for a classic game experience. At the moment it’s an untouched sandbox. Aside from a selection of Game Center achievements, there are no set goals to the game – just explore, build, and create whatever you can imagine.

Exploration is both better and worse than it is in Minecraft. Above ground, you won’t find many truly unique or interesting vistas. Since the game is limited to two planes and a fixed size, crazy mountains or overhangs would largely just get in your way. Under ground, however, there’s lots to find. New schematics are everywhere you dig, and boxes full of tools, treasures and materials are scattered throughout the depths. I’m still finding strange new areas, biomes I haven’t seen before living deep underground. Still, there’s no risk of getting truly lost.

Building has its ups and downs too. With only two planes (background and foreground), there are plenty of things you can’t build. Don’t expect full-scale replicas of the Millennium Falcon to pop up in Junk Jack. But the things you can build can be filled with all sorts of neat little things. Not only can you create all manner of furniture and decor with a familiar grid-based crafting system, but you also find treasures and statues and artifacts in your journeys, and you can display them proudly in your home.

Speaking of which, Pixbits has done something interesting with its save system. Say you build a gorgeous home underground, and you want to keep it pristine. You can load up one of the other two world slots and strip mine it, because your inventory travels between worlds. This opens up a lot of possibilities for creating linked worlds, but it does seriously limit your ability to share a single copy of the game with, say, your kids.

There is one outstanding caveat to my love of Junk Jack, and that’s its controls. They aren’t terrible, but they take some getting used to. You can swipe/drag to walk in any direction, and swipe up to jump. You can’t do both those things at the same time, though, so jumping is pretty much pointless, though a diagonal swipe jump can sometimes get you where you need to go. Managing your inventory is also harder than necessary, requiring a lot of care and precision while selections hide under your fingertips.

But the real problem is tapping: prepare to do a lot of it. Digging requires aggressively mashing your finger on the spot you want to clear, at least until you have high quality tools. My wrist isn’t thanking me for playing this game.

If you can adapt to the controls, you’re left with a game of great potential. Pixbits plans to keep building on the foundation they’ve laid, so hopefully we can expect to see quests, farming and cooking soon. I’ll also keep my fingers crossed for bigger worlds with ever more to discover. Even as it stands, though, Junk Jack is outstanding. Just make sure to take a guide, or look to our discussion thread for help — it’s a complicated world in there.

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In early September, RedLynx brought us the sequel to 2009’s innovative line-drawing racer DrawRace [$2.99] with the Chillingo published DrawRace 2 [99¢/HD]. This new entry in the series brought an extra level of sophistication with its realistic visuals and physics system, but kept the unique line-drawing aspect that made the original such a standout title.

You can read all about this in our review of DrawRace 2, but if you’ve still had reservations about if this unique type of game was for you or not, then today you have another alternative. RedLynx and Chillingo have just released DrawRace 2 Free Multiplayer [Free/HD] as a way to let you take the game for a test drive before deciding if it’s your cup of tea.

As the name implies, DrawRace 2 Free Multiplayer focuses on the hot seat local multiplayer mode found in the full game. Two players can square off on the same device by each taking their turn drawing their race lines, then when the action starts, each player has their own turbo button situated in one corner of the screen. It’s a fun way to get other people in on playing even when you only have one device around. Following a link inside the game which leads to a Facebook “Like” page will unlock the ability to play with 3 or 4 players in this hot seat mode as well.

If you’re not really the social type, but just want to give DrawRace 2 a try, then that’s not a problem. You can simply play the hot seat mode by yourself, taking the turn for all the players yourself. It’s actually a pretty nice way to practice while giving yourself multiple tries to draw the perfect run. At the very least, it gives you a hands-on experience with the unique line-drawing mechanic, which is one of those things that’s hard to explain but easy to pick up on when you’re actually trying it yourself.

The free version offers 3 different course to try and 3 different vehicles. If you like the gameplay, the full version of DrawRace 2 offers a ton of campaign content to play through, as well as both local and online multiplayer modes, plus many more vehicles and tracks. If you’ve been sitting on the fence with DrawRace 2, definitely give the free multiplayer version a try to see what you’ve been missing out on.

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Hey, guys, Atari is resurrecting Asteroids and making it a free-to-play game — no, really. The other afternoon, Atari sent us its first word on Asteroids: Gunner, a re-imagined take on the classic arcade space rock-obliterator that combines new dual-stick controls, fancy 3D visuals, wave-based play, power-ups, ship upgrades and the usual free-to-play trimmings including IAP ad removal and IAP unlocks.

Obviously, this isn’t the Asteroids we grew up with, but this is definitely the kind of game that’s doing particularly well now and the kind of game that fits Atari’s new metric-driven direction. If you’re especially interested in diving into Gunner, but want to get your expectations in line beforehand, go give the Slide2Play preview for it a read. Spoiler: Gunner sounds like a well-rounded and easy to pick-up-and-play action game built for all audiences.

Here’s some screens:

Gunner is set to hit this coming November 10 at $0, so the wait isn’t much longer. Oh! And for this generious price, you’ll get the first 50 levels.

[Via Destructoid]

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At first glance, Sad Robot [Free] doesn’t seem to offer anything that hasn’t already been done on iOS. This is simple obstacle-avoidance arcade game that offers pseudo cave-flyer gameplay. Similarly, the retro-inspired graphics have been seen countless times during the resurgence of retro in the iOS games universe. But while Sad Robot’s components are not unique, they’re executed well and form a cohesive whole that has some equally good core action to offer.

In the game you control a humanoid as he goes from galaxy to galaxy dodging obstacles while collecting coins and power-ups. Mechanically, Sad Robot plays like most other vertical cave-flyers, with the difficulty always starting slow and ramping up the longer you stay alive. There really isn’t much else to the core experience, although the game does manage to pace itself in such a way that each run doesn’t appear to be too easy or hard. However, Sad Robot is probably not for gamers looking for substantial depth.

Sad Robot manages to supplement its simple core gameplay with a few elements to extend its shelf life. In addition to the standard high score leaderboard, it has both an experience system as well as a coin/inventory system. The experience system doesn’t appear to have any affect the gameplay and is used mainly as a self-progression tool. The coin collection, however, is a bit more substantive. In addition to using coins to purchase additional robots, each with different attributes, you can also use coins to purchase and upgrade power-ups.

Oh, and while the upgrades don’t substantially change the gameplay, they do offer enough of an advantage to keep you coming back to collect coins. There’s an option to purchase additional coins in-game, but it’s certainly not necessary as you can quickly collect lots of coins with a few playthroughs.

Like most other games in its genre, Sad Robot relies heavily on the precision of its controls and it offers both tilt-based and touch options. While the game defaults to the tilt controls, I found the touch-based controls to much more manageable (once you take a few minutes to get acquainted with the quirks). My preference was mainly based on the lack of calibration with the tilt controls, which made it hard for me to find my sweet spot controlling. However, I’ve also heard reports of the tilt controls being manageable without calibration, so it may just be my experience. Creator Colorbox has stated that an update fixing the controls is in the works, so this issue may be settled soon.  Regardless, Sad Robot’s control scheme does work in its current incarnation, which is important part of its gameplay.

I feel compelled to give a special mention to the music, which I thought was amazing. There is only one song, Pornophonique’s Sad Robot. While not composed for this game, the song is surprisingly appropriate (and, based on developer comments, a chief inspiration while creating the game). Since there’s only one song, and it starts over again with each new game, monotony can become a problem after playing the game many times. However, I personally never got tired of it, as the song continued to enhance my experience every single time. This is one of those elements that really makes or breaks the overall presentation of a title, and I think Sad Robot succeeds from a music standpoint.

As mentioned earlier, Sad Robot is truly an example of the sum of its parts being greater than each element taken separately. Both the graphics and music do a great job in enhancing the experience of what is otherwise a simple game. Everything just flows well in a sort of existential way, which is a feeling I do not get often while playing games. If you have any interest in arcade games with retro graphics, Sad Robot is definitely worth a download, even more so since it’s currently being offered for free.

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The day is almost here, folks: game creator extraordinaire Phil Hassey’s chicken-themed successor to his award-winning strategy game Galcon [$1.99] hits this November 16. Hassey shot us a kind note this morning confirming the release of Chickon and fleshing out what we know about the game. According to him it’s “very much like” Galcon, but paradoxically “very different” and, as you’d assume, sillier.

As you’ll see in the assets we have below, Chickon replaces Galcon’s planets with nests, it’s ammunition with chickens, and its enemies with, uh, robotic chickens. There’s also a ton of special abilities you’ll be to utilize in battle, including bombs and nuclear warheads. You’d think radioactivity and poultry don’t go together, but stop by a KFC sometime. You’ll learn things. Hard things.

We’ll be giving this a spin in the coming days and reporting to you about our experience with the game. While you wait, check out Hassey’s latest video starring a large man in a chicken costume doing crazy things (plus gameplay nods):

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On November 10, FDG Entertainment, makers of Beyond Ynth [$1.99 / HD] and Cover Orange [$.99 / HD], is planning to release its next big thing: a puzzle game going by the name of Blueprint 3D. That name might not be the imaginative one in the world, but it appears as though the is poised to offer a lot of amusement, if not some possible head-scratching challenge.

In a nutshell, Blueprint 3D is one a rotation-based puzzler with a natural world twist. In the game, you start out with a chaotic blueprint that you’ll need to manipulate and torture until the mess of lines form a coherent picture. As its name implies, you’ll be working with all the planes of reality available to mortal men, which sets this apart to some degree on a mechanical level and also introduces the possibility of some crazy puzzles. But if anything, it’ll rock a lot of content: 240 levels and seven themes, including architecture, medieval, and electronics, have been confirmed to be in the release version.

Not many of these games nail their look and tone, so this this’ll definitely be something we’ll follow as it hits the App Store in a couple of days. Speaking of that, expect to pay $.99 on the iPhone and iPod Touch or $2.99 on the iPad.

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