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Back at E3 we first heard rumblings from Rovio regarding finally updating the iPad version of Angry Birds [iPhone: 99¢ / Free - iPad: $4.99]. It landed on the App Store not too long ago, bringing a bucket full of content that owners of the iPhone version have already been enjoying.

These additions include the new boomerang bird, 45 new levels across 3 different themes, golden eggs, some new menus, and Crystal updates with new achievements. Of course, we've still yet to really see any iPad specific feature that makes the HD version worth picking up other than higher resolution graphics, but we're always keeping our fingers crossed for something cool coming in the future.

If this is the first you've heard of Angry Birds, and haven't been curious enough to download it after seeing it at or near the top of the iTunes top ten charts for quite some time now, take a look at our review. Angry Birds is a catapult game where you fling one of an array of different birds, each with a unique ability, at a set of pigs on the opposite side of the screen. With an excellent physics engine, Angry Birds is a game of precision and planning as you fling each bird to decimate the opposing pig forces.

The iPhone version is highly recommended, but until they implement some iPad-specific feature set that set it apart from its 99¢ counterpart aside from higher resolution graphics, I'd just stick with running the iPhone version at 2x. Of course, if you already own the HD version, don't waste any time mashing "Update" in iTunes. There have been some reports of the new update crashing in the Angry Birds HD thread in our forums and Rovio posted suggesting to reboot your iPad if you have issues. I haven't run in to any problems myself, but it's just something to be aware of.

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Coatsink software's Pinch game is one that had shown up on our radar back in May when it was first released. What drew us to the game was the relatively natural use of multi-touch to control the game to combine and separate objects.

Pinch is a level-based puzzler that requires you to getting specific colored orbs (called Norbs) to the end goal. In your way are a series of switches, one-way ramps, trenches, and more. The primary mechanic of the game is combining and separating the Norbs in order to pass make it past the obstacles. Some trenches, for example, require you to have multiple Norbs combined into a larger one, while certain doors will only allow certain colors to pass through.

Put them together and you get a nice puzzle game that takes advantage of the iPhone's multi touch capabilities:

The first version of the game seemed relatively short, but the developer has since added a number of new harder levels bringing the total up to 72 at this time. The graphics are simple and we wished the controls were a little smoother at times. At present the playfield needs to be panned around with swipes and you are unable to pinch/zoom the entire level to get an overview. It appears most of these issues, however, will be addressed in a coming update.

In the meanwhile, the game is definitely worth a try. There is a free Lite version also available.

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In early May we first posted about Crescent Moon Games getting involved in the development of Aralon: Sword and Shadow, an RPG by Galoobeth Games that had been in development long before Crescent Moon even started on their previous RPG, Ravensword: The Fallen King [$4.99 / Free]. In essence, Aralon had been the project of two developers who were extremely passionate about building an immersive RPG with levels of detail seldom seen on mobile platforms… But neither of them were artists. Aralon was filled with what amounted to mediocre character animations, place holder art, and 3D models that were beyond basic.

Crescent Moon saw the potential this game had if the graphical front-end could be brought up to par with all of the various subsystems powering the game world that Galoobeth had spent so much time working on. With artist Mark Jones, Aralon had the last piece of the puzzle it was missing to be the game it needed to be.

This is what the world of Aralon was going to look like:

And this is what Aralon will look like now, running at the Retina Display resolution of the iPhone 4:

The night and day difference continues through the rest of the screenshots we were provided:

The time that's being put in to the complete artistic makeover of the game has allowed Galoobeth to add even more to Aralon than they were originally even planning on launching with. For instance, the game now has a complete pet system where any NPC (even a human) can be charmed and serve as your pet. The game now includes well over 30 hours of gameplay, what has been described to us as a "massive" world that players can completely explore, hundreds of items, mounts, four playable classes across three races, and other gameplay mechanics such as faction systems, herb gathering, crafting, and more.

Aralon: Sword and Shadow is planned for a fall release, and if they manage to deliver on the things they're promising, Crescent Moon and Galoobeth games will likely have a hit on their hands. For more on Aralon, take a look at our previous post on the game or the thread on our forums. If you like seeing these kind of drastic before and after shots, swing on by this thread on our forums where other developers are posting shots of their placeholder art compared to their final release art as well.

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Three games came out recently which are all fun in their own way, but not really deep enough to warrant their own individual reviews. This isn't necessarily a bad thing by any means, as some of my absolute favorite iPhone games are the ones you only play for 30 seconds at a time. So if you're looking for a new game to play while you're waiting for your microwave popcorn to finish popping, consider any of these:

iHook, 99¢ – With controls that feel a little bit like Rocket Jockey for the PC, you pilot a tiny space ship through 20 different levels. Each level is host to a set of pylons you must grab on to with your hook (by tapping) in order to change the trajectory of your ship. Tapping again disengages your hook and sends you flying in whatever direction you were headed when you let go, and tapping your ship makes you turn around and head the opposite direction.

Completing the included levels involves flying around and picking up enough of the fuel tanks strewn about to open the exit portal. From there, you make your way to the exit, and go on to the next level. It's a simple gameplay concept that should be simple enough to execute, but it doesn't take long before iHook starts throwing out narrow corridors, bombs, moving barricades and other obstacles which left me crashing my ship and retrying levels more times than I'd care to admit. Thankfully, there are checkpoints.

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Infection:Zombies, 99¢ – Yes, yes, I know, few things on the App Store are more played out at this point than zombies, but a few things sets Infection:Zombies apart. First off, instead of simply slaying zombies, you play as a zombie and are tasked with converting as many humans to undead as possible. People on our forums are loving it, and what really sold me on the game was the ability to upgrade your zombie's stats between levels, as the concept of upgrading a zombie just seems beyond ridiculous to me.

Initially you can only play as Micky the zombie, but other zombies are unlocked as you infect more humans with different starting stats that either move faster or do more damage when attacking. Gameplay consists of tilting your device to move your zombie around, bumping in to humans to either eat their brains or optionally infect them. Infected zombies join you in your fight and infect other humans on screen until there is no one left living. Simple, a little repetitive, but oddly enjoyable.

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Crazy Parachute, 99¢ – In Crazy Parachute, you play as one of four skydivers who jump from a blimp on the count of three and plummet towards the ground collecting power ups and avoiding obstacles on the way. Three other AI controlled players are doing the same thing, and the first person to the bottom wins. The game is controlled by tapping to jump initially, tilting, then tapping again to open your parachute.

With each completed level you jump from higher and higher, and the gameplay mechanic of timing when to open your chute really reminds me of my old days playing Pilotwings on the Super Nintendo. Because you're racing, you want to open it at the absolute last second, but open it too late and you're going to find yourself cratering in to the ground… Which is what I usually find myself doing, getting far too greedy and waiting way too long to pull the rip cord. I could see Crazy Parachute multiplayer being a ton of fun, a game mode which is sadly nowhere to be found in the initial release.

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Giana Sisters [$4.99] was originally released all the way back in 1987 for the Amiga, C64, and similar platforms of the era. Surrounded by legal troubles due to its similarity with Super Mario Bros., the game was pulled almost as soon as it was released– Making original copies of the game highly valued by vintage video game collectors. In 2005, Giana Sisters made the jump to mobile phones, and a few years later found a home on the Nintendo DS following an extensive graphical overhaul.

Earlier this year, the sisters hopped platforms once again to the iPhone, and on July 9th will be jumping, tossing fireballs, and smashing bricks on the iPad. Developers Bad Monkee sent us a bunch of screenshots, and we're really excited to see the game in motion on our iPads.

We really liked Giana Sisters in our review, and later went on to award it a solid four star rating when we did our Best iPhone Games February 2010 round up. If this is the first you've heard of the game, if you like platformers with a classic feel, Giana Sisters is really worth checking out. If you own an iPad, hold off until the 9th to pick up the HD version.

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Earlier this month at Apple's WWDC 2010 in San Francisco, we had a chance to sit down with Julian Farrior and Dale Thoms of Backflip Studios, who brought us Ragdoll Blaster and Paper Toss, among others. The group has shown real App Store savvy, with eight of their 12 titles reaching the top five overall ranking. What's more, they're presently serving one million unique players per day.

In our time together, the folks from Backflip demonstrated four new titles — three free games along with the paid arcade shooter Tunnel Shoot, a collaboration between Backflip Studios and Team Phobic (Bounce On, Bounce On 2). We liked what we saw of them all, but it was the last that really had us excited — and now it's here. Tunnel Shoot [link] has recently gone live in the App Store.

Now, right off the bat — aside from anything relating to gameplay — Backflip / Team Phobic impress with Tunnel Shoot in that it's a Universal iOS game that graphically renders natively to all three iOS platform devices: the iPhone / iPod touch, the iPhone 4, and the iPad. Everybody wins, here.

Tunnel Shoot is, perhaps unsurprisingly, a tunnel shooter in the vein of N2O: Nitrous Oxide for the Playstation (and is somewhat reminiscent of the iPhone's own Boost 3D). The goal of the game is to survive as long as possible, travelling down a neon-vector tunnel while dodging obstacles, blasting enemies, and collecting green gems for points. You're placed in tilt-control of your craft — there are several to choose from, all of which can be visually customized — with a tap / hold mechanic for firing your blaster and bombs.

Your ship's blasters, when first activated, fire bursts of three bolts per shot, but as you hold down the fire "button," that soon drops to two bolts, and then to just a stream of single bolts. Let up on the button and your blasters quickly recharge and it's back to three bolts per shot. (Read: don't just lay on the fire button, folks.) You start off with one bomb which, when activated, flies down the tunnel destroying all enemies in its path. More are accumulated along the way. Your damage bar replenishes over time, and fairly quickly. A nice touch is that when you get blown up, the force of the explosion sends a destructive shockwave down the tunnel before you respawn.

The farther you go, the harder things get. After you get a little ways into the game, the obstacle layouts become rather complex. The arrangement of oncoming pylons and walls becomes difficult to visually comprehend between their appearance on the screen and their crushing impact with your ship. Here, I experience a definite advantage in playing on the iPad and, to a lesser extent, the iPhone 4 as compared to the earlier iOS devices. It's just easier to make out distant structures on larger and / or higher resolution displays. That said — the game is great on the older devices. I've, in fact, spent the most time with it on my 3GS.

As mentioned earlier, the game utilizes accelerometer-based tilt controls for steering. Tilt controls for fast paced shooters can often come up short, given their generally slower reaction time and lesser precision as compared to onscreen swipes. That's really not a problem in Tunnel Shoot as, although the action is intense, the velocity at which you're hurtling down the tunnel is a bit slower than that of some, similar games. I don't mean to indicate that it's some sort of "sluggish" or "laggy" affair, it's just that you're being challenged to dodge hither and yon, choosing your path and placing your shots wisely, as opposed to emphasis being on go, go, go!

The long and short of it is that Tunnel Shoot is a stylized shooter that feels very well implemented, delivers real challenge, supports all iOS devices natively, and costs $0.99. The only gripe I've got is that there's no real explanation as to the specifics, in-game — how the multi-blaster works, that green gems are good, that your damage repairs over time, etc. Nonetheless, it should be an instant buy for anyone that even approximates a shooter fan — especially if you've got multiple devices.

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As we mentioned late last month, everybody's favorite little yellow dot-eating friend just turned 30. Namco marked the occasion with a sale on most of their App Store PAC-MAN titles. Earlier this month the studio further celebrated the occasion with the release of PAC-Match Party for the iPhone [App Store], a PAC-MAN themed match-three title. This weekend an iPad version of the game, PAC-Match Party HD [App Store] landed in the App Store.

Now, if I had a nickel for every match-three title in the App Store, well, I'd have quite a few nickels. But PAC-Match Party stands out from the crowd thanks to a few nice innovations — and it's not just the retro gamer nut in me, giddy about the PAC-MAN tile set and spacey retro soundtrack. No, it's a pretty solid game, retro aside — as far as match-threes go.

Being a match-three title, the core mechanic is swapping tiles on the playfield to line up three-of-a-kind eliminations. But the whole thing is set against a ghost chasing PAC-MAN in the playfield border. Every match causes PAC-MAN to gobble a dot and move one space away from the ghost in pursuit. It's just a fancy way to present a timed match, but it's nicely done. What's more, a column of bonus tokens appears to the right of the playfield that, when tapped, performs certain power moves such as a row + column elimination and a sort of ghost attack.

The iPhone version of the game features a 5×8 play grid, while the iPad version sports a 10×8 arrangement, taking advantage of the device's larger display.

My only real complaint about the title is that, when next-move hints are enabled, they appear after just five seconds of idle time. That's offering up the goods pretty quickly. They can be disabled, happily, but it would be nice if the wait period there were 2-3x longer.

Those wanting to get a feel for the title can check out the free, Flash-based web version that lives here.

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Last month we previewed the isometric 8-bit graphics puzzler eBoy FixPix [App Store] from eBoy / Delicious Toys. Heavy on the pixel art (in a very good way), the game challenges you to tilt your iPhone to and fro in order to arrange the various layers of the onscreen scene into a coherent view, in an exercise that should be linked in Webster's entry for the word "parallax." Tilt, tilt, score! is the name of the game here. It's one that gets definite points for uniqueness. The game went live in the App Store a few weeks back and somehow slipped past our radar.

I played through the game this morning and found it to be a charming title that's half puzzle game, half graphical toy. To win the game you must "fix" 100 scenes, but you are able to skip ones that are too mind-bogglingly difficult. (I noted that some of the skipped scenes did not repeat in my play-through, so there are more than 100 scenes provided in the app.) It's up to you to form the lovely pixellated scenes into full coherency, which is at times a particularly challenging task, and the reward is seeing the scene properly rendered.

I, personally, love 8-bit art and am highly impressed by what's presented here. Those who are not enamored of the style might find the experience wanting, however, as the game can be played from start to finish in under half an hour. I was pleased to see a link to some of the included 8-bit art as wallpaper on the victory screen.

Have a look at the developer's gameplay video to get a feel for the experience.

You can decide for yourself whether this is a game or a work of art. Whatever the case, eBoy FixPix is a very unique iPhone experience and I urge readers to have a look.

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Many who grew up on "home computers" in the '80s, and retro gaming fans in general, have been enjoying Manomio's Commodore 64 emulator on the iPhone. A new app that appeared in the App Store this morning should have particular appeal to our European readers who match that description. ZX Nostalgia [App Store], from Manuel Cabello, is a Sinclair ZX Spectrum emulator that comes bundled with 14 games that, according to the developer, run at full ZX Spectrum speed on all models of the iPhone and iPod touch.

ZX Nostalgia sports a minimal, multitouch interface that provides interaction with the bundled games via screen taps (for in-game menu selection), virtual joystick, and a fire / action button. Games are selected for execution in the emulator by way of a simple menu and can be played in both portrait and landscape mode, depending on the device's orientation.

The following games are included:

• Ad Astra
• Android Two
• Barmy Burgers
• Bugaboo the Flea
• Chuckie Egg
• Deathchase
• Fantastic Voyage
• Fred
• Horace Goes Skiing
• Manic Miner
• Rescate del Tesoro
• Starstrike 3D
• Trashman
• Wheelie

It's a rather solid list of games, with a few true classics in the mix. Unfortunately, it's unclear what the developer's plans are concerning the potential addition of more games down the road. A screenshot of the game's App Store page shows an "ADD" button on the game list screen that is not present in the release version, and there's scant contact info for the developer on the web, so that's a big question mark right now.

ZX Nostalgia does a rather nice job of running the included games, with a very functional control system to boot. Readers who have already grabbed the title are impressed. If you've ever been faced with the dreaded "R Tape loading error," then this one's probably for you.

(ZX Nostalgia is not the first Spectrum emulator to appear in the App Store. ZXGamer was released last year, but offered abysmal performance and was pulled after it became apparent that it was a WebKit-based rip of another's emulator.)

The ZX Spectrum is an 8-bit home computer that was released by Sinclair Research in the UK in 1982. It is based on the Z-80 processor running at 3.5MHz and features a 256×192 pixel display in 16 colors (with notable restrictions). The Spectrum was available with either 16K or 48K of RAM and was followed up by several models offering more memory, enhanced audio, and such. The American gamer who was around to see home computers in the '80s probably best remembers Sinclair Research from the Timex Sinclair 1000, an extremely inexpensive, black & white 4K computer sold in America, itself a take on the European Sinclair Zx81. A later attempt was made to actually bring a modified version of the ZX Spectrum to the US in the form of the Timex Sinclair 2068, but it failed badly for a number of reasons and is remembered by few.

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Back in early March of this year, a port of Street Fighter IV was released for the iPhone to much positive fanfare. The graphics and sounds were incredible, but the biggest doubt on everyone's mind leading up to release was how well the game could work with virtual touch screen controls. In the end, SFIV for iPhone turned out to be a highly playable and fun affair. Rather than the controls, the biggest complaint from gamers regarding this otherwise excellent fighter was the slim roster of characters. Featuring just 8 playable combatants (the same number of the original SFII mind you), many fan favorites from from the Street Fighter universe were notably absent.

A little more than a month later, Capcom took a step to address those complaints by announcing the addition of Cammy to the roster in a forthcoming update. But the weeks passed by with no sign of Cammy, and fans of the series grew increasingly impatient and even skeptical that Capcom would follow through on their promise. Then earlier this month, they announced that another new character – Zangief – would be entering the fray as well. With such a long span of time since their previous announcement, gamers who had been anticipating the arrival of Cammy weren't feeling especially confident that they'd be playing either character anytime soon.

Thankfully those concerns proved erroneous, as earlier this week the update featuring both characters finally arrived on the App Store. And it's pretty much exactly what you would expect – it's the Cammy and Zangief you know and love now playable in Street Fighter IV for iPhone. While not exactly surprising, they are a welcome free addition to arguably the best 2D fighter available. They fit right into the roster and feature just about all of the moves of their console counterparts. Hopefully this leads to more and more characters being added down the line, and were E. Honda to enter the mix then the original cast of characters would finally be complete. Like many others, I'm personally keeping my fingers crossed for an Akuma appearance someday.

This update was free, but it remains to be seen if future updates will be too. If you're a fan of Street Fighter IV for iPhone, then make sure you download this latest update and give Cammy and Zangief a spin for yourself.

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