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Thought we’d squirt this information to you real fast-like: The Game Bakers‘ Squids [$1.99], a real-time strategy RPG with some of the best art we’ve seen on iPad and iPhone, has been updated with four new missions, four additional helmets, more pearls, and a new recruit named Jammer. Jammer, as described by The Game Bakers, is “fast, very fast.”

New content is cool and all, but we’re guessing fans will dig some of the technical and game-side tweaks. Starting with this update, users can download the game’s music from an in-game menu option. Also, now if players use an item and fail a mission, Squids no longer steals that item from you. Making war fair, these guys.

[Thanks, Oats!]

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EA is continuing down its dark path with The Simpsons: Tapped Out, a free-to-play game that puts you in the shoes of Springfield’s re-designer after Homer blows up the iconic place inadvertently. In an exclusive interview with CNET, EA laid out the premise and it shed a bit of light on the re-building effort, which is set to require the usage of the game’s purchasable in-game currency, doughnuts. Awesomely, the title will use both voice and text provided via the TV series’ actors and writers. Expect some commentary on the genre, as well as the usual goofy stuff.

Sound great, but it’s best keep your expectations in check: EA treats its free-to-play users just about as well as Zynga does. Games like Theme Park, and now the re-designed Tetris, are specifically designed to exploit the people who love the idea of the IP the most. It’s a weird and sudden turn of philosophy for a publisher that, just about a year ago, seemed much more interested in doing meaningful things like pushing the quality bar with games like Dead Space and challenging others to make titles with as much depth as a Madden or FIFA.

That said, here’s what EA’s Bernard Kim told CNET:

“People that don’t want to pay can still enjoy the title. People who are more impatient can throw a little bit of money at it.”

We’ll have to see about that. Tapped Out is expected to hit iPad and iPhone “in the coming works,” and it’ll just be one of many free-to-play titles from EA to come. In another article, CNET estimates that we’ll see a dozen or so by this March.

[via CNET, image via smtexas]

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Besides Illusion Labs’ Touchgrind [$4.99/HD] and a fairly solid port of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 [99¢], the skateboarding genre hasn’t seen a whole lot of love on the App Store. Don’t get me wrong, there have been some decent skateboarding games released, but nothing that ever felt like it gave you a full on experience like what you would be able to get on a home console. Jet Car Stunts [$1.99/Lite] developer True Axis is hoping to change that with there just-announced True Skate game which is heading to the App Store soon. Check out the first rendered artwork for True Skate below.

There aren’t a lot of details for True Skate just yet, but True Axis explains that the game is similar to Touchgrind but uses a pulled back perspective so you can actually see where you’re going. I love Touchgrind a lot, but its strictly top-down perspective made it pretty awkward to effectively put together strings of tricks or adequately aim for the various obstacles in the skate park. True Skate is also said to boast more realistic physics, and should be “much easier” to pull off lots of different tricks, according to True Axis.

True Skate will launch with the one level which you can see in the screens above, presumably with more planned for future updates. It will be coming out later this year for “cheap” on the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. We’re extremely eager to check it out and will have some more details soon, and until then you can check out some discussion of True Skate in our forums.

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There’s always room for another point-and-click on iPad and iPhone as far as we’re concerned, so we’re pretty pumped about today’s big news: Lume, Story Book Games award-baiting and artistically gifted PC adventure game, is coming to iOS later this week. There’s been no official word on if this port will be packing any original tablet- or phone-specific content, but according to Story Book, it’ll at least feature new sounds and a higher resolution.

That’s important, too. Lume has a gorgeous paper and cardboard art style that just … pops off the screen as you play. An even higher resolution could only make it better, right? We’ve embedded a video of the PC version below for your viewing pleasure and vow to bring you a better look down the road.

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We don’t talk about Nintendo much. The publisher does its best to pretend that the App Store doesn’t exist. On the rare occasions when it does acknowledge the existence of iPod Touches and iPhones, it’s just either to (a) re-state that it isn’t interested in moving into the mobile space or (b) take a shot at the App Store’s pricing model.

On the other hand, you can’t have a conversation about an unofficial Pokemon app without at least referencing the company. On Friday, a clone of Pokemon Yellow hit the App Store, and even though it doesn’t work at all, people have been scrambling over the thousand or so one-star reviews in order to give it a spin. It’s the number three paid app, in fact.

Undoubtedly, most people downloading this know that this game isn’t official. But, this isn’t stopping them from giving it a spin. Bigger picture, this is a great example of how many consumers want Nintendo games on their phones, and how they’ll try to get it anyway they can. Usually, we talk about this in the context of people going nuts over a highly derivative title, like a 2D platformer with plumbers and squishy monsters. This scenario is different.

To be clear, Pokemon Yellow is beating out Angry Birds, Fruit Ninja, Cut the Rope, and the world’s latest darling, Clear. Money is being made here, and it’s the significant variety. Oh, how we wish this could be used to lure the Big N to the Store. We wish we could just scream, “Hey, guys, look at this, you could be making this instead of some guy who couldn’t even release a clone correctly! Let’s do this!”

That’s dreaming crazy dreams. This won’t persuade it to join mobile. It’s too married to hardware, too convinced that continuing to release new platforms and supporting them with the Zelda, Pokemon, and Mario are the only way to be profitable. It’s a bummer, really.

Nintendo or the Pokemon Company doesn’t seem to be too concerned with pulling Pokemon apps, by the way. There are more than a handful on the store, all unsanctioned, and from what we can tell, unchanged since their initial appearances. The chart positioning is ultimately going to get Apple’s attention, however. We expect Pokemon Yellow to disappear within hours of this posting.

Pokemon Yellow on Gameboy.

We gave this a download, and can happily report that it crashes out immediately after its splash screen crops up. Users in its reviews have reported that it crashes on every device under the sun, so please don’t even try this out.

We actually wouldn’t be too surprised to learn if the game’s code even had anything to it beyond that splash screen and a buggy bit of UI. It makes more sense, if you know that you’re going to get your app pulled, to spend as little time as possible on it. Why bother with more than a splash screen?

We’ll keep our eyes on Pokemon Yellow and the game’s developer, who has a blog right here and has a history of publishing broken apps pitched as clones, as evidenced by its publisher page on iTunes.

Again, though, don’t download this, or hey, even the other Pokemon app that cropped up recently. These people are preying on you, and when you download these blindly or in some silly hope that they’ll magically work, they win.

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I’m going to let you in on a little secret: we’re pretty big fans of SpellTower [$1.99], the clever iOS word game from Zach Gage. Actually, that’s not really a secret at all now that I think about it. We gave SpellTower a full 5 stars in our review when the game launched in November, and an update the following month added Universal support and Game Center achievements, making an already great thing even greater. In fact, we thought so much of SpellTower that we included it in our Game of the Year picks for 2011.

So yeah, it’s no secret that SpellTower is pretty good and stuff. About the only thing the game is missing is some sort of multiplayer mode, but over the weekend Zach Gage posted a quick teaser video showing just that: a local competitive multiplayer mode. Matching words will send letter blocks over to your competitor’s screen, and the grey shading in the backgrounds shows where the other person’s current tile stack is at.

This particular multiplayer mode works over Bluetooth and can be played on any combination of iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad devices. Meaning, iPad players can get down with iPhone or iPod touch players. Zach also teases that this is just one aspect of the planned forthcoming update, and that there are other non-multiplayer new modes in the works too. When talking about new game modes, Zach cheerily states “Expect a few choices when the update hits.” There’s no solid release date for the SpellTower update just yet, but we’ll be sure to let you know when it hits.

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More classic arcade action is coming to iPhone and iPad soon. Earlier this week, THQ sneakily announced WWE WrestleFest, a modern re-imagining of the 1990s arcade classic, which alongside other co-op greats like X-Men, dominated a big chunk of our quarter-pumping days. Its vivid colors, silky smooth animation, and belligerent play could be described as mildly hypnotic, to say the least.

Alongside smoother, more impressive graphics, expect to see a mixed cast of new and old characters. Legends like Jake the Snake Roberts, Macho Man, and The Undertaker have been confirmed as playable characters alongside guys like CM Punk, John Cena, The Rock, and the “Apex Predator” Randy Orton.

[via Kotaku, pastapadre, and sescoops]

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In January 2010 we learned that Hironobu Sakaguchi, who created Final Fantasy and had a hand in several other landmark Square titles, was working on an iPhone project while also creating what would eventually be The Last Story for Wii. Since then there hasn’t been much info on exactly what was going on with this intriguing mobile project.

When questioned over Twitter for information regarding what he was currently working on, Sakaguchi answered that he had “around 3 titles” in the works for iOS, according to Andriasang.

Sakaguchi hasn’t offered any further details or clarification on what he means by multiple titles. In this age, it isn’t hard to imagine him talking about some sort of episodic content, or 3 sort of bit-sized kind of experiences scaled for on-the-go play.

Andriasang notes that Sakaguchi is currently traveling Europe promoting the release of The Last Story in that region and returns to Japan on March 1st, when perhaps we can find out more about these mysterious iOS projects.

[Via Andriasang]

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Here’s a sale that we definitely didn’t expect to see so soon. Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto 3 and Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars have both dropped to a dollar. This sale just went into effect, and strangely enough it seems that the iPhone-specific version of Chinatown Wars is still $9.99. It doesn’t make much sense for Rockstar to only drop the price of the HD version, so maybe check back in a little bit to see if the price of the small screen version drops as well. (We’ll update this post if/when it does.)

We’ve reviewed both GTA3 as well as Chinatown Wars. We loved both games, as they provide a level of depth seldom seen on the App Store. They both control about as well as you’d expect a console game mapped to virtual controls to play, which in my opinion is totally workable.

Seriously, don’t miss these games while they’re 99¢. Both have potentially hundreds of hours of gameplay if you find yourself getting sucked into the main story, the side missions, and just generally bumming around in the world. I couldn’t even guess the number of cumulative days I’ve spent in various GTA games racking up the highest wanted level I can and seeing how long I can survive.

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