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When Chaotic Box released Silverfish [$1.99] for the iPhone in November of last year, it got all kinds of love from both the front page and the forums here at TouchArcade. Plans for an iPad version were stalled for a time, but then the developer got his hands on an iCade. Apparently the jones to play his baby in cabinet form was the nudge he needed to get the wheels back in motion, and the iPad/iCade game libraries are now all the more richer for it.

For those unfamiliar with the title (or unwilling to read the iPhone review), Silverfish is a cat-and-mouse avoidance game. Take the minimalist art and aquatic theme of thatgamecompany’s flOw, give it a liberal dose of amphetamines, then replace the circular motions with 4-direction Pac-Man-esque controls, and you’re getting warm. Whether you’re fleeing from your enemies or turning the tables on them, some of the finest and most frantic action on the App Store is on offer here. The release of Silverfish MAX [$2.99] only adds to this game’s arcade appeal.

This iPad-centric version is more than a simple up-scaling of graphics. The game is re-drawn for the larger screen, and the actual playing field is also increased by more than a quarter over the original. This change impacts spawn patterns for both enemies and power pods. 25% might seem like a negligible tweak, but it changes the experience enough that the developer felt it necessary to make separate leaderboards for this version. More detail in the effects and models makes the visuals crispier than ever.

While the flick control scheme of the original was already preferable to the d-pad option, the additional real estate of the iPad screen makes playing the game with flick controls even more precise. When things got hectic on the iPhone, I found that slightly errant swipes often resulted in disaster. Silverfish MAX seems to be much more forgiving in this category, making it easier to enjoy the action once the enemy density and speed really picks up. The ability to adjust flick sensitivity is still included, and I definitely suggest playing with the settings to find a sweet spot that’s right for you.

Despite the improvements to the flick controls, the absolute star of this version is the inclusion of iCade support. The classic avoidance style gameplay always seemed tailor-made for an arcade cabinet format, and Silverfish MAX only confirmed those suspicions for me. Joystick controls are responsive and precise, and the game just feels right.

There is the occasional confusion between a game that features up-down-left-right motions and a stick that supports 8-direction movement. Pushing the stick on the diagonal will occasionally result in the game forcing you in an unintended direction, but this is a rarity and no more common than hiccups with the flick controls. Once I found the warm and familiar Pac-Man claw grip on the joystick I had stored in the dark recesses of my muscle memory, I found playing the game a sweet merger of nostalgia and neon.

Silverfish MAX is a worthy upgrade to its iPhone progenitor, and Chaotic Box capitalized nicely on the arcade-y potential of the original. It’s a should-buy for fans of the original, and a must-buy for iCade owners looking to add a strong title to a small library. I’m glad I forced myself to play with flick controls first, because now that I have it on a joystick I simply won’t go back again.

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If you would have asked me when I was sitting outside of the local Apple Store all night in line for the original iPhone in late June of 2007 with $600 burning a hole in my pocket if I thought this phone would spawn a device family that would be the catalyst to what could be the biggest shake-up of the gaming industry in decades, I would have let out a derisive snort and gone back to playing my Nintendo DS. However, the iOS ecosystem seems to be doing exactly that– A few weeks ago we heard from EA CEO John Riccitiello who explained that consoles are shrinking and the iPad is their fastest growing platform, meanwhile, Nintendo significantly dropped the price of their 3DS that is struggling to compete in a world dominated by smartphones.

The latest comes from Epic Games President Mike Capps who in an interview with Industry Gamers discussed the real threat that is the (potential) iPhone 8:

"Before the problem was between the consoles and PC where they had very different levels. The power of your PC could be 100 times the power of somebody else's PC. This time the problem could be mobile. If you look at the ridiculous acceleration of iPhone hardware and technology, trying to find a sweet spot for tech to make your mobile game… I mean, what would your mobile game look like in 2015? Who knows how fast that's going to operate, but you can bet it's going to be faster than an Xbox 360," he said.

"So I think that's the real challenge for us now, rather than worrying about the difference between a couple consoles and some order of magnitude, whether 3X or 4X. It's about how do we deal with iPhone 8… if you watch where the gamers are going that's where they are. Your iPhone 8 will probably plug into your TV, or better yet, wirelessly connect to your television set to give you that big screen gaming experience with good sound. So really, what's the point of those next-gen consoles? It's a very interesting situation to be looking at. That's what we're starting to think about more… not how do we scale from some Nintendo platform to some other future console," he concluded.

It's an interesting problem, and has been the topic of discussion with a few friends of mine lately as current generations of consoles approach the end of their life cycle. A big part of the business for home consoles is getting an install base of hardware that you can utilize to sell software for upwards of ten years. With iOS devices getting refreshed on a yearly basis combined with substantially cheaper, instantly available games, how long is the dedicated console market going to be appealing? We're already seeing iOS devices erode the previously untouchable dominance of Nintendo in the portable sector, and the features of the "iPhone 8" Capps discusses above largely already exist today– They're just not being utilized in any meaningful way yet.

Epic later released a clarification stating that they're still very much invested in next-gen consoles as well as PC gaming, but it's hard to deny the way gaming seems to be going.

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Tribase Studios’ first-person running game, Requiem [$1.99], should be better. In a recent update, the studio added some graphical and optimization tweaks for users with third-gen devices, bug fixes, and has also re-worked tutorial for the iPad version. The cost? Free!

We gave the game a go after it generated a decent amount of buzz on our message board. It’s like a stripped down, more tightly constructed Mirror’s Edge. Taking place in a boy’s dream, you’re charged with running from a giant thug, all the while barreling through an environment filled with objects you need to jump, crouch, crawl, or spin away from. The perspective is a welcome touch in a market increasingly cluttered with uninspired hallway or military shooters. The visual direction is pretty radical, too, just like DICE’s first-person runner.

Man, all this really reminds me that Mirror's Edge 2 needs to actually happen.

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We got a look at a few screenshots of Speedway GP 2011 last month, and while we're still incredibly light on details regarding what's going to be in the actual game, they shot us over a new trailer today which features an entire six seconds of gameplay footage.

Check it out:

I'm… oddly excited for this game. Games that have to do with motorcycles and dirt bikes tend to work really well with the tilt controls of the iPhone, and I've had a lot of fun with games like 2XL Supercross [$4.99]. I think what will make or break Speedway GP 2011 is how heavily they lean on the licensed and "official" aspect of the game to cover up any potential lack of features. If there's a compelling career mode, I'll be one happy camper.

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TechCruch has the scoop on a fairly basic HTML5 game of Blackjack running on the Apple TV. While a browser-based game of Blackjack isn't exactly mind blowing, it's still awesome seeing the Apple TV taking these baby steps towards becoming what could potentially be a brand new market for iOS developers. Remember, the foundations of the App Store we know and love today was largely in part of jailbreak developers proving it could be done.

Getting this setup running involves jailbreaking and installing the Couch Surfer browser. It's not much, but it's a start. Those who have been around since the first iPhone 1.x jailbreaks surely will recall just how comparatively lame all the offerings were back then too.

We'll be keeping a close eye on future Apple TV gaming developments.

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If you're not familiar with Venan Entertainment's Space Miner [$2.99], let me get you up to speed. In a nutshell, the game is incredible. So incredible in fact that it was our 2010 iPhone Game of the Year. It's an awesome modern spin on the Asteroids formula with light RPG elements, a lovable game world, and upgrades out the wazoo for your ship. Additional difficulty modes (including a super-difficult perma-death mode) add a silly amount of replay value, making Space Miner one of the few iOS titles I've ever replayed from start to finish multiple times across multiple difficulties. In other words, you need to check it out.

This weekend Venan released the game design document for the game, and while it doesn't really reveal anything new or exciting that we already didn't know, it's really cool to take a look at what was the foundation for one of our favorite iOS games. It's also totally worth a read if you're an indie developer, as a solid game design document like this can really ease development as it serves as such a fantastic reference point to keep everyone on the same page throughout the pre-release life of the game.

We're still torn up over Venan announcing that a Space Miner sequel was being shelved, but we've got our collective fingers crossed they eventually pick the franchise up again.

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Late last month, we detailed an impending update to CAVE’s bullet hell shmup Deathsmiles [$11.99/Lite], and over the weekend that update went live in the App Store. It includes a screen shifting option to give you more room to control the game on either edge of the screen, unlockable costumes for Tiara in iPhone mode, brand new background music hidden in the game, and a number of new DLC items including weapons from past CAVE shooters Guwange and Dodonpachi Resurrection [$11.99/Lite].

You may also remember us mentioning that CAVE was broadcasting a preview of the Deathsmiles update over UStream last Friday, and hinted that there would likely be other surprises in store as well. It turns out that there were a couple of pretty big announcements during the stream.

The first is that CAVE is bringing a version of their Japanese cellphone title Castle Creator to iOS. Castle Creator allows you to build up your own little empire in medieval Japan and then test out its durability in skirmishes against other peoples’ empires. It sounds like there will be social and location-based elements built into the gameplay.

There’s a second game based on Castle Creator coming as well, though currently it’s only going to be for folks in Japan. All we really know about this game is that it will feature slot machine style gameplay, but more details on both of these Castle Creator titles should be coming out this weekend when CAVE holds a press event in Japan.

The second big announcement during CAVE’s live stream was that an iPad specific version of Espgaluda II [$11.99/Lite] is currently in the works. The game will feature enhanced graphics over its iPhone counterpart, and will be tailored towards the extra power of the iPad 2. TouchGen has captured a video from the stream of CAVE showing off the iPad version, though they seemed to have some zooming issues during the demo and it’s hard to tell how drastic the differences will be over a video:

There’s no release window announced for Espgaluda II for the iPad, but we’ll hear more on Castle Creator during the CAVE press event next week, and just maybe they’ll throw us some new nuggets of info for the iPad bound shooter as well. We'll keep you posted.

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Are you the kind of person who has such an extreme affinity to retro gaming that you've let your lust for games like Pac-Man and Galaga invade every aspect of your life, but you've often found yourself disappointed that they haven't taken over your social media feeds? Well, Namco has the answer for you, and it's not part of a twelve step program– It's PAC'N TWIT [Free]. This free Twitter client does what most Twitter clients do in that it allows you to view your timeline, replies, direct messages, and all that jazz. It even has push notifications, which I was more than a little surprised to see implemented.

PAC'N TWIT also has some strange mini game integration. You can spin a roulette wheel based on the number of tweets you've posted, and winning rewards a puzzle piece to a… iPhone wallpaper. Each skin has its own associated wallpaper to unlock, and apparently aside from the two included Pac-Man skins and two included Galaga skins there are more on their way via updates.

It seems weird for Namco to dedicate resources to developing and releasing a Twitter client, but it was also pretty weird for Taito to release a whole mess of utilities like Space Invaders Calculator [99¢]. Myself, I'm a fan of Tweetbot [$2.99], although I suppose the one drawback that it has is a significant comparative lack of retro game skins.

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Practically everybody is familiar with Super Mario Bros., the classic NES title that you could argue single-handedly dragged the video game industry out of the muck and into the living rooms of gamers everywhere during the mid-80s. What isn’t always so widely recognized, however, is the original title that preempted that release – Mario Bros. Originally an arcade game, Mario Bros. took Jumpman, the protagonist from the popular Donkey Kong series, and named him Mario, teaming him up with his brother Luigi to rid the sewers of New York from nasty varmints.

Mario Bros. is pretty different from its older brother Super Mario Bros. mostly because it’s not the traditional side-scrolling platformer that we've all come to know and love, and is instead a single-screen game with arcade-style platforming elements. In the mid-90s, a clone of Mario Bros. was released for the Mac called Bonkheads. Recently, developer Around the Clock Games brought that game to the App Store as Bonkheads HD [$2.99], and if you’re looking for that Mario Bros. type of gameplay on your iOS device, or you were a fan of the original Bonkheads, this new version fits the bill nicely.

The gameplay in Bonkheads HD consists of ridding creatures that enter from the sides of the screen by jumping and bopping the platform they are standing on from below. Once you’ve knocked them silly from under the platform, you must then get to where there at and touch their paralyzed body to rid it from the screen. Take to long to do this and they’ll eventually wake up and start coming after you some more. As the game progresses over its 144 levels, more and faster enemies will appear with various types of attacks and patterns. Bonkheads HD also introduces some new elements, like special powerups and boss battles, which add some variety to the familiar formula.

The original Mario Bros. was at its best with a second person playing simultaneously with you, and Bonkheads HD on iOS remembers that and includes a neat local multiplayer mode. It’s a split-screen same device multiplayer, which gives each player their own view of the action on their own side of the device’s screen. This mode works really well and is a lot of fun with a second player. Many iPad games include a same device multiplayer mode like this, but interestingly, Bonkheads HD also supports this mode for the iPhone and iPod touch. Things are pretty tiny on the smaller screen of those devices, but it’s doable, and I appreciate that they give you that option even if you aren’t an iPad owner.

The above developer video gives you a look at the game in action, as well as the default swipe-based control scheme. I really like these controls, as you don't have to worry about keeping an eye on where you fingers are placed while playing, but a standard virtual button scheme is available as well for those that don't end up digging the swiping.

I can’t really think of any better options if you’re looking for a Mario Bros. type of game on the App Store. Bonkheads HD has nice high resolution graphics, good controls, tons of levels, and OpenFeint achievements and leaderboards, though sadly no Game Center currently. It’s also a universal app, and the same device multiplayer is a cool addition no matter which device you’re playing on. Players in our forums seem to really like the game too, and since we’re not likely to see the original Mario Bros. on the App Store any time soon, Bonkheads HD is the best option available to scratch that particular itch.

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Limbic Software’s Zombie Gunship [$.99] is a fascinating change-of-pace game. In it, you pilot an AC-130 and drop hot metal on the undead, similar to how you butcher regular infantry in its iconic aircraft sections in the Modern Warfare games. From an overview level, this is a cool, compact twist on zombie genre which has struggled of late for a creative spark.

When we first praised the game, it was only available for the iPod Touch and iPhone. Now, it is a Universal game courtesy of a new (and free!) update. I went hands-on with the iPad version this morning and came away pretty impressed. The game looks stellar on the bigger screen, and it plays just fine, too.

Provided no-one makes a Zombies Vs. Dinosaurs game in the near-to-mid future, I think we’ll continue to struggle to find new experiences in this genre. I’m glad that Zombie Gunship exists, first of all, but I’m stoked that it’s actually fun, too. Check out the iPad version already!

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