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Retro visuals have become such a staple they're beginning to feel like they're modern again, but Shaun Inman's The Last Rocket [$2.99] proves it's not just about the look, it's about the entire aesthetic of the game, from the simple and easy to pick up gameplay to the sounds coming out it — retro is a design principle, not just a pair of pixilated pants.

You play as a rocket — the last one, actually, in case the title didn't clue you in — as you attempt to help an onboard computer collect gears and escape a ship before it tumbles into a star. The story doesn't seem particularly important, but you'll get different endings depending on how you complete it, and although you're playing a mechanical rocket there is a whole lot of charm packed into that orange tube that will make you sympathize with its goal.

The Last Rocket has a lot in common with VVVVVV, where the primary control is restricted to the ability to flip from the ceiling to the floor, giving you no means to jump in a contemporary fashion. Control is handled by a single tap to jump, and another to change direction, then an occasional swipe to choose a direction or to walk. While the mechanics of The Last Rocket and even some of the puzzle design will look familiar to any masochist who's chosen to subject themselves to the excellent, but brutally challenging VVVVVV, the game isn't so much as a copy as it is playing with the same principles. If VVVVVV was a fetishistic iteration of Commodore 64 classics, The Last Rocket is the cousin inspired by the mechanic, but unflinching in the way it forges a different path.

That's partially because The Last Rocket is optimized for play on iOS, which as we all have come to know, means the puzzles take place on a single screen and you can pick up items along the way to boost your score. Where this game differs is where it decides not to help you out along the way. You can't replay any of the 64 levels, which are spread across eight different stages, and you have to continue on if you've missed a gear here or there. Punishing? Yes, but it falls in line with everything that The Last Rocket has going for it.

Each stage comes with its own gimmick. At first, it's just learning the controls, but as you move on you'll run into spikes, flames, moving platforms, disintegrating walls, hidden rooms and more. The bulk of the early levels tend to operate on one of two principles, either a puzzle or timing based screen. The later levels, especially in the seventh and eighth stages, work with both, where you need to be quick fingered and quick thinking — which is to say, you'll often find yourself cursing at the game. Thankfully, it's almost always your own fault as the controls, as simple as they are, work well.

The level design is worth noting for its ability to frustrate and teach you at the same time. While most of the early levels are geared toward teaching the mechanics, the game does a good job of introducing its elements slowly and largely without text. If you are having trouble, you can jump over to one of the computers at the beginning of the stage to get a tip. As for the frustrating parts, they'll usually leave you cursing by the end, but they're never so impossible you'll want to quit forever — just for a few minutes.

As mentioned above, The Last Rocket comes packed with a clearly visible, easy to recognize 8-bit look, and the sound follows suit. The music works well at both drumming up nostalgia and fitting the mood, and if you find yourself particularly fond of any part of it you can play the soundtrack through the menu screen at any time.

What The Last Rocket does best is challenge both your reaction time and your brain. It's not easy and it makes no concessions to modern ideas like level or stage selection, but it does offer a challenge you likely won't be able to keep yourself away from for long. It's well worth the price tag and you'll find yourself so empathetic for the rocket's goals that you'll push yourself to finish it no matter how hard it gets.

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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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Last September Namco released Time Crisis 2nd Strike [$6.99/HD], a game that offered a technically competent experience akin to their classic arcade light gun game series, but also one that lost most of what made it fun in the transition to the touch screen. Light gun games just aren’t as good without the, well, light gun. Time Crisis, along with most every other gallery shooter on a touch screen, isn't quite as satisfying when all you have to do is tap directly on a target to shoot it.

A few weeks back though, Namco released the iGunCon [Free], an interesting app that tries to replicate the experience of using a physical controller in Time Crisis 2nd Strike using a second iOS device. At a time when peripherals like the Joypad Game Controller [Free], the iCade, and the iControlpad are offering cool new ways to play iOS games, the idea of a clever option for a light gun really interests me. In practice, the iGunCon certainly works, just not well enough to offer the type of solid experience that you would want. But, it’s still a neat novelty to play around with, and if the tech improves it could turn into a real alternative for Wii-like motion controls in iOS games sometime in the future.

First off, the iGunCon can only work with devices equipped with a gyroscope and a digital compass. So basically, just an iPhone 4 or iPad 2, for now. It uses these parts of the hardware to track the movement of an onscreen cursor when aiming by pointing and moving your device. The setup is extremely easy, just involving selecting the iGunCon from the options screen when both devices are on the same local WiFi network or connecting over Bluetooth. The iGunCon can be used to play Time Crisis 2nd Strike on an iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, or in the Mac App Store version of the game.

While the setup is really simple, actually using the iGunCon to play the game isn't quite as successful. You can recalibrate the aiming reticule at any time right from the same screen you use to play, which is great, but the cursor movement is pretty choppy and doesn’t always feel totally accurate. It’s easy to adapt to with a few minutes of practice, but don’t expect the same precision you would have with a real light gun or even the default tap-to-shoot option. But, if you can accept that things aren’t totally perfect, it can actually be pretty fun to use the iGunCon.

Besides being used as a light gun controller, the iGunCon app itself can also be used as a toy gun, similar to something like the iGun [99¢] and its many derivatives, and makes the different firing sound effects that are used for the weapons in the game. There are also options to use different graphics based on the various GunCon peripherals from the arcade and console versions of Time Crisis games over the years, which is actually a pretty cool nostalgic touch.

While it doesn’t work completely perfectly, the iGunCon app is a neat peripheral that gives you a different way to experience Time Crisis 2nd Strike, and it’s actually pretty fun, too. Best of all it’s free, so there’s no reason to not at least give it a try to see what it’s all about. With some refinement, the tech could lead to some interesting gameplay experiences in the future. For now it remains mostly just a novelty, but definitely one that's worth checking out.

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After being an Android exclusive for half a year, Pachinko Frenzy [Free], the latest from ngmoco, has arrived on iOS hoping to whet the appetite of Pachinko addicts everywhere. While that itch is certainly scratched with this game, Pachinko Frenzy’s freemium underpinnings unfortunately detract from the overall gameplay to the point where only the most hardcore of Pachinko fans will continue to play the game for longer than a few sessions.

For those unfamiliar with the early 20th century Japanese gaming device, we gave a good explanation of it in our review of the 2009 Pachinko [$0.99] iOS game. Essentially, small metal spheres are launched into the Pachinko machine with the goal of hitting as many stationary pins as possible, racking up points and generating more balls. Pachinko Frenzy takes this further by incorporating mini-games that can be earned when every pin on the board is lit up.

Mini-games range from trying to keep a single ball live for as long as possible, to trying to hit as many consecutive pins on one ball, and more. Do well in these mini-games and prizes can be earned, including collective trophies that can unlock new boards when enough of them are collected. Overall, Pachinko Frenzy does a good job emulating a standard Pachinko board, assuming you aren’t put off by the excessive anime motif. Just make sure that you have the latest generation of iOS devices, as Pachinko Frenzy isn’t compatible with anything earlier (and does occasionally slow down on the iPhone 4, no less).

Where the game starts to falter, unfortunately, is in its freemium implementation. The game starts out with only one board unlocked, and you can only unlock additional boards by “selling” 1000 balls or by collecting all the trophies associated with a locked board. Acquiring 1000 balls appears to be an exercise in futility, as you start out with 50, and it’s extremely slow going trying to earn more than that (unless you’re some kind of Pachinko Savant). The developers predicted this, and included the option to purchase additional balls as IAP, but as of this writing, IAP hasn’t been implemented yet. This leads to trophy collection as the only other alternative to unlocking the additional boards, which is definitely possible but would take an extremely long time. Odds are most players would probably lose interest in the one board before any additional ones could be unlocked.

One of the goals of Pachinko is to feed the addiction of possible reward by playing a game based mostly on random chance. If you’re looking for a time-waster that accomplishes that, or you’re a fan of Pachinko, you can’t go wrong with Pachinko Frenzy. However, don’t think you’re going to be unlocking new boards any time soon, unless you put in a good deal of time or money (once IAP goes live).

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It’s a big week on the App Store for Square Enix. Following the release of what looks to be a fairly hobbled port of Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lion [$15.99], the publisher has cut the cost of a tremendous amount of its existing library on the digital storefront. For a limited time, you can grab some pretty hot games for up to 50 percent off from its fairly “up there” price points.

• Chaos Rings – $12.99 → $6.99
• Chaos Rings for iPad – $15.99 → $7.99
• Chaos Rings Omega – $11.99 → $8.99
• Chaos Rings Omega for iPad – $14.99 → $10.99
• Crystal Defenders – $7.99 → $3.99
• Crystal Defenders for iPad – $7.99 → $3.99
• Final Fantasy I – $8.99 → $4.99
• Final Fantasy II – $8.99 → $4.99
• Secret of Mana – $8.99 → $6.99

Sadly, my personal favorite Square Enix App Store title, Final Fantasy III, isn’t one of games targeted in this deal. If I had to pick a runner-up that was included in this listing, I’d grab the original Fantasy Fantasy at its lowered price point, though only because of the nostalgia factor. It’s a great game and all, but it’s also pretty long in the tooth.

Anyway, happy shopping and I hope you’re able to afford any of this after giving away your first born and shoveling over close to twenty bones for Tactics.

[Via Slide To Play]

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If you grew up in the '80s playing RPGs like Dragon Warrior and Ultima, you're going to immediately recognize the roots of 9th Bit Games' Guardian Saga [$1.99]. Heck, the name is even borrowed from the DOS-era Ultima games. It's about as old school as you can get without releasing a text-adventure, and while it will certainly appeal to fans of the era, it's also going to provide a steep learning curve for newcomers.

As these things tend to go, the story kicks off with you learning about the Guardian Beasts, the giant monsters who protect humanity from evil, but who have decided to stop. Your job is to find out why. To do so, you'll need to adventure around the world searching out the Guardians and unraveling the mystery of what happened.

It's a relatively basic RPG story, and the game is rooted in basic gameplay. You won't find the complex party management of the Final Fantasy series, nor will you find a map, fancy visuals, sub-plots, side quests or a love story — this is all about you exploring the world on your own, doing a little grinding and unearthing the truth. To that end, Guardian Saga does a fantastic job of giving you not only a clear sense of progression, but also the tools get the job done.

Being a lonely hero means you acquire all the skills necessary to survive. You don't have team members, so you'll be healing yourself, casting spells, taking potions and everything else on your own. You'll also need to use your own memory to tackle objectives — no notepad, quest screen, or hint guides here — when the king tell you to go to the town in the Northeast, you have to remember it. You'll spend most of your time in the overworld, but there are a few dungeons spread around and the towers that hold the Guardians to explore, as well as a diverse cast of enemies to kill.

The same premise goes into how you level up and chose your weapons. Leveling is automatic, and weapons are essentially bound to the town you travel to. You won't find yourself making any hard choices between swords or armor, you'll just purchase the best one you can. There is rarely much in the way of loot on your travels, which means you'll be doing most of your stocking in town. It's a bit jarring at first, especially if you're used to grabbing a potion or two off an enemy, but considering you can't use items in combat, it's clear 9th Bit wasn't too concerned with item management.

The nostalgia delves deep into the aesthetics as well. The 8-bit graphics aren't updated with modern colors or pixel density, and the score and sound effects sound entirely composed using the limited hardware of the NES. It still looks fantastic though, and I'd love to see an iPad version of it just to stare at the visuals on a bigger screen without the oversized directional pad of double-sizing it.

That said, Guardian Saga dwells in its past to a point of absurdity at some points. As a mobile game, it could have stood to have a better save option, and while there is a means to quick save before you exit it would be nice to have multi-tasking support for when you receive a call. The quick save is unforgiving as well. You'll be kicked out of the game after doing so and you can only return to that exact point. That's not a complaint — more of a warning — one quicksave per game session, one use only.

It might also have been nice to have a quest system in place, if nothing else to remind you of what you were doing if you put it down for a while. It's also worth noting that you can check out your character stats by tapping the box in the left corner. It took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out I could heal, use items, and quick save from this menu. This is all to say that there are a few modern conveniences that it would be nice to see here simply because there are added complexities with a mobile game that didn't exist back then. It's clear these were left out on purpose, but that doesn't mean they wouldn't be handy for playing on the go.

Even through the moments of frustration, fans of early RPGs will find a lot to love in Guardian Saga. It's a solid homage to everything that made the NES and DOS eras influential and interesting. Once you get the hang of it and remember some of the tricks from the '80s, Guardian Saga clicks and settles in well. This isn't a game for fans of in-depth, complex story arcs or ridiculous item management; it's for fans of a simpler time, when RPGs meant you leveled up, killed some monsters and saved the word and nothing more.

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Binary Square's Flick Rocket [$.99] is a gesture-based amalgamation of Missile Command, Centipede, Asteroid, and Space Invaders that has you firing rockets from a centralized turret into a swathe of vertical space occupied by roving beasts nabbed from its source material. Where it has the most bang is in its over-the-top presentation, which assaults your senses with its lo-fi, retro-infused arcade sound effects and vector-stylized world. Where it fails is in its lack of precision and content. As far as flaws go, those are pretty fundamental, but I feel like the rudimentary action mechanics and even the stilted content to some degree are almost perfect for a pick-up-and-play game. If you rock Flick Rocket in bursts, you’ll get something out of it, which is a vague way to say that you’ll probably get those basic, visceral thrills that all of the classics its based on have provided for eons.

As of right now, Flick Rocket boasts three different styles of play that can be accessed in either its pick-a-level campaign or its arcade score-attack mode. The most satisfying of the trio is its Space Invaders mode, which simply has you hammering a squadron of roving crabs with unlimited missiles that you flick out of your turret with a swipe. The other two styles of play are basic riffs on Centipede and Asteroid: one has you battering a squirming worm that drops a mushroom for every segment you explode, while the other has you pummeling space rocks. You get infinite ammo in all the modes, as well as access to power-ups that allow you to stop time and do fun stuff like bounce your rockets off walls.

The goal is always to protect the city underneath the action. The foes, whether its from straight-up attacking or from secondary flack, can easily obliterate the eight or so buildings you’re charged with protecting if you're not on the ball, so you're asked to stay on your toes. Overall, it’s a simple enough play formula, and its satisfies in that overly basic and cozy kind of way. Oddly, you never really feel like you have total control over where the rockets go, despite that being the central conceit of the game.

I also kinda think that the enemy spacing is a tad too close and the explosions from rocket-to-enemy impact are just a smidgen too weak. Despite the fact that you’re firing rockets half the size of the enemies, you don’t really get a solid sense of empowerment, and I think the precision factors into that, too.

But, again, this is a really simple, retro-infused title. I feel like I’m saying that Pac-Man is broke or something whenever I criticize Flick Rocket. So, to be perfectly clear, the core concepts and the mechanic at work in this game are entertaining, though these are fleeting feelings. I like Flick Rocket as a lunch break-type of game, where you just go in and get your kicks and get right out. It doesn’t have the substance to hold your attention for long anyway, but I don’t think it really needs to.

It’ll be interesting to see this game expand in the future. The campaign mode leaves several, several bubbles open indicating that new mechanics are coming. My gut doesn’t says this was a horrible choice; games that feel content-light shouldn’t really advertise the fact that they are indeed content light, but it’s nice to know  that more is planned, I guess.

Anyway, if you’re in the mood for some old-school action, Flick Rocket is definitely a good place to start looking for action. It’s entertaining enough for what little it is. Check it out if you’re intrigued, though, or need another good time waster.

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In this week’s bonus edition of The TouchArcade show, we sit down and have a chat with CEO of Cedar Hill Games, Tobyn Manthorpe. We’ve covered his studio’s latest game, Emissary of War, pretty well so far, so I’ll spare the pitch in this post, however, I will say that we spend a good deal of time talking about the streamlining process which went into it. We also discuss his background at BioWare and how his experience informs Cedar Hill, Emissary of War, and his studio in general.

If you’d like to give this a listen, you can stream it or download it just below. You could also subscribe to our podcast feed and get these episodes without having to click a single thing! Its like “One Click” check-out minus the click, what a deal!

iTunes Link: The TouchArcade Show
Zune Marketplace: TouchArcade.com Podcasts
RSS Feed: The TouchArcade Show
Direct Link: TouchArcadeShow-Bonus-007.mp3, 20MB

Music for this episode is from Overclocked Remix. Specifically, we picked two up-tempto re-mixes of traditional RPG tracks:

• Baldur's Gate 'Child of The Murder God'
• Neverwinter Nights 'Kara-Turian Nights'

If you’d like to get hold of us, feel free to drop us an e-mail at podcast@toucharcade.com or hit us up via the Twitter and the Facebook. We’ll be back later this week for another regular show. I wonder what cat game Jared will pick up next?

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With a name like Emissary of War, Cedar Hills Games’ RPG has to laced with all the sober-serious conceits and tropes of a traditional Western RPG, right? Wrong. As I continue playing a near, if not already, feature-complete build, I can’t stop myself from thinking about how badly I whiffed in our announcement post. It’s a Western RPG that’s informed by other party-based, isometric RPGs, sure, but it’s also one that trades in ye’ old sober serious tone and goals for something different. Also, it’s thrown out a lot of traditional mechanics so it can do something entirely novel on this platform: tell you a digestible, snappy story.

From a purely mechanical perspective, this is an isometric hack-and-slash. You point and touch to move the barbarian Ghent around his environment and you click on an enemy to kill it. It's pretty simple stuff. Each area operates like an arena with a finite amount of fantasy villains to maim. It's a cast that includes Mer-people, rock-spiders, ghouls and ghosts, and mercenaries.

After you take out everything, you’re allowed to proceed into a new area. If you look closely enough, you'll also notice that hidden areas unlocked, too. These will provide you with some extra goodies to use in the game and lead to some of the more challenging fights you'll have.

Ghent is accompanied by an old friend, Hassock the alchemist. He functions as a foil of sorts to the raw brawn of Ghent, but he’s also a handy design element: he’ll heal you as you fight, as well as add ranged support to battles. You don’t directly control him, but you can queue up his actions in the corner of the screen if you don’t agree with what the AI has in store.

This frees up you to focus on the action, which is typical hack-and-slash fare: you click on a dude and you swing until it explodes and rains crimson and coins. You don’t earn experience points or pick up loot. Instead, you’ll earn gold coins which can be exchanged for weapons in a hunk of UI that also includes ability upgrades which you can unlock by collecting Runes. I realize this might turn a lot of you off, but a streamlined upgrade path is a cool and functional way to cut out the standard RPG fat and get to what really matters to Cedar Hill Games: Ghent and Hassock and their part of the unfolding story.

The duo, before and after battle, have scripted, but also real-time conversations. Most of the time, chats break down to the two simply reinforcing the notion that they’re in this for the long haul together, but they’ll also talk about the next objective or the one they’ve just accomplished. Bigger, more produced ‘movies’ compliment this stuff.

I’ll be vague since I don’t want to kill the story for you. Ghent and Hassock are, as the namesake suggests, emissaries. Their unusual brand of bartering has made for a lot of solid alliances across the realm, but suddenly, all of their hard work being undone. The quest revolves around figuring out who is doing this, and of course, why.

One thing that really caught me off guard is the tone. It’s light. Hassock is a bumbling, but brilliant dude who is prone to tripping over his shoes. Ghent is heroic, but dim. You’ll see these two ham it up a lot, even when the situational circumstances turn quite dire.

The writing as a whole isn’t going to put Valve or BioWare or whatever out of work. But it’s some of the sharpest stuff we’ve seen so far in this genre on this specific platform. Also, Cedar Hill Games isn’t trying to stretch the story over 50+ hours — this is a four-to-five hour romp, which means its writing flows in a much more natural, less fluff-laden way.

As for the lack of the traditional loot-grind driver, I was initially surprised that Emissary of War has retained my interest over the course of several hours, but the upgrades come quick enough to feel like you’re actually being substantially rewarded for fighting, so it operates in much the same fashion. Also, the story works well enough to keep you plodding along.

I certainly haven’t seen the entire game, so I’ll definitely be checking it out a little later this August when the game is slated to hit. You can hear Cedar Hill Games’ CEO Tobbyn Manthorhpe on our podcast this coming Monday if you want his perspective on the title.

Needless to say, we’ll be keeping our eyes on this one.

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I'll set the scene for you youngsters out there– It's the late 90's, you finally upgraded your weird Motorola flip phone to a fancy looking new Nokia candy bar with amazing new features such as a clock, a calculator, interchangeable faceplates… And the best of all: Snake. You'd go on to quite literally spend the next few years of your life playing Snake, as well as discussing strategy, tactics, and top scores with friends who all shared the similar problem of having a state of the art phone with a single game on it.

Even though the game was made popular by these Nokia phones of the late 90's, the concept behind Snake itself actually had roots going all the way back to 1960 where it was originally played on an IBM 1620 at the Physics building at UC Berkeley. This ultra-primative version of the game was displayed on an oscilloscope. Derivative titles then went on to make their way into arcade machines, the Atari 2600 launch lineup, the TRS-80, the TI-99/4A, and tons other classic platforms.

Enter Snake '97 [99¢ / Free], an absolutely marvelous rendition of the classic Nokia Snake. It features multiple virtual phones for you to play on, as well as all the original sound effects and (as far as I can remember) shockingly accurate gameplay. If you've similarly invested years of your life into playing Snake on your old Nokia, this is something you simply must have on your iPhone.

There's both a 99¢ version with no limitations, as well as a free version which allows you to play to a top score of 200. If all you're looking for is a taste of nostalgia, the free version is fine… But for true hardcore Snake players, that 200 point ceiling is going to come way too soon.

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