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Regardless of whether you typically buy things with iTunes gift cards or if you’ve just linked your credit card up to your iTunes account and forgotten about it, Best Buy has a pretty great deal going that lasts until 7:00 PM Eastern tonight. iTunes gift cards are 20% off, and they’re available in values ranging from $15.00 (for $12.00) all the way up to $100.00 (for $80.00). Better yet, these gift cards are delivered digitally. So, if you’ve got a way to funnel money into the Best Buy web site, they’ll just instantly email you a discounted iTunes gift card code. How’s that for convenience?

Mash this link if you’re interested in taking advantage of the deal. You should see all the available gift cards. If the link isn’t working for you, just search their site for “iTunes (Digital Delivery)”. These 20% off deals aren’t anything to scoff at either, as buying $100.00 worth of credit for $80.00 could potentially net you nearly 20 free 99¢ games out of the deal depending on your local tax rate.

How much are those of you who are taking advantage of this dumping into the deal? I know people who buy stupid amounts of iTunes credit when these 20% off sales roll around, as that’s not only about as cheap as iTunes credit ever gets, but it’s also definitely a “the more you buy the more you save” kind of thing.

[via 9to5Mac]

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Hey developers, it’s that time of year again. Macworld is happening in San Francisco next week, January 26th-28th, and this time around they’ve added a brand new moniker to their conference: iWorld. Since the advent of the iPhone, iPad, and App Store, Macworld has expanded beyond just Macintosh development and now includes lots of iOS type stuff as well. Their new Macworld|iWorld branding is to reflect this greater emphasis on both Mac and iOS development.

Typically Macworld isn’t a huge conference for us in terms of iOS gaming, but we do always end up booking a good amount of appointments with developers who are in town for Macworld and want to show off an upcoming game project. With the new iWorld title, I’m expecting that we’ll have an even bigger turnout of iOS developers at this year’s conference.

If you’re planning on attending Macworld|iWorld 2012 and have a game you want to show off to us, shoot an email to tips@toucharcade.com with the subject line “Macworld 2012″ and we’ll get back to you about scheduling an appointment time. Since our manpower is limited, and I’m not too sure how big of a response we’ll get, it’s probably best to email us as soon as possible if you’d like to set up a meeting. We’ll be looking forward to seeing some of you there next week!

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Raising Big Poppa Pump hasn’t been easy. He gets hungry at weird times and doesn’t sleep through the night. He also isn’t the cleanest pocket monster I’ve ever owned. But I have a feeling that all this time spent grooming, teaching, and playing with him will lead to something truly rewarding. I’m talking about evolution, man — an incredible change that takes place because I’ve proved that I’m an awesome owner.

Big Poppa Pump is my little monster dude in Hatchi, Portable Pixel’s game for those of us who remember the Tamagotchi so fondly. The two games — and I use that loosely — are pretty similar. You hatch an egg that contains a monster, and then that monster becomes your digital pet. As an owner, you’ll be responsible for feeding, cleaning, entertaining and even applying first-aid to the little one.

Functionally, this is all really simple to do. If your monster’s “smarts” bar is low, and his energy is high enough for an activity, you click the book button to raise it. If his “hygiene” is low, you hit the baby button to give it a bath. If his energy is low, or if you just want a break, you can hit the lights and that puts him to sleep.

The sleep mechanic rolls in a little save state trickery, by the way. When you put a Hatchi down and exit out of the app, upon returning you’ll notice a slight visual hitch and then magically see the energy bar fill according to the amount of time he’s been doing the bed thing. My experience with this varies; sometimes Big Poppa Pump needs hours of rest, sometimes just dozens of minutes.

Most of my day with Big Poppa Pump isn’t spent doing anything thrilling, complex or even all that fun, which is why I hesitate to call this a game-game. In the mornings, I wake him up and grind until his needs are all completely met. I continue to do this through the afternoon until he gets too tired and needs that big nap. At night, I try to tire him out so he doesn’t wake up angry, unclean, and unsatisfied at 2AM.

My greatest fear as an owner is that he’ll die in the night, which is something that can happen. “Yes, it can die if you don’t look after it,” Portable Pixels tells us. “It will get sick first and you can use the first aid to cure Hatchi.”

It’s hilarious, but I really, really, really don’t want Big Poppa Pump to bite the dust. I’ve somehow bonded with the thing, as silly as that sounds, and the competitive part of my brain wants to see an evolution based on my meticulous play.

Big Poppa Pump isn’t evolving as fast as I’d want it to for our preview coverage, so I asked Playable Pixels how it works. “You’ll need to feed, clean, play with and generally look after your pet to ensure it grows up,” it tells us. “[Pets have] several different forms they can evolve into depending on how you look after them.”

That’s as much detail as we’re getting at the moment, but as you’ll see in the article, there are some pretty hip forms. Big Poppa Pump is getting a lot more exercise than he needs, so here’s to hoping that he evolves into a gigantic muscle monster.

That’s the experience as it stands now — train, wait, train, wait some more, and then receive some sort of evolution. In the future, though, Playable Pixels hopes to add a lot more content, including a social component, if sales are good.

“Initially its a retro theme, but we’ve had lots of ideas about bringing it into the mobile era. Taking him on day trips for example, or socializing with your friends Hatchis,” it tells us.

“One of our beta testers said she would give her left arm for a graveyard for all her past Hatchi’s, and one of our developers wants a defibrillator. Its really a side project inspired by a reddit post back in September.”

Portable Pixels says its been “fairly overwhelmed by the response” so far. In an effort to keep up with it, its set up an e-mail address for people to be notified when the game is hitting and for feedback purposes. That address, if you’d like to get in on this, is: hatchi@portablepixels.com.

Currently, the game is on track for a January 15th release at $.99 for iPhone and iPod Touch. A Universal version isn’t slated to happen yet, but it could if “the need is great enough.”

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With it being extremely doubtful that Apple will ever roll out any kind of official game controller for use with iPhone and iPad, it’s up to third-party creators and wizards to fill in the gap. 60beat is the latest we’ve seen to throw a hat into the ring, and its product, the GamePad, seems like a cool accessory.

In a nutshell, the $50 GamePad is a slick-looking, PlayStation-style kind of controller that connects, unlike many third-party controllers, to the headphone jack. No blu-tooth black magic — just seemingly straight-up plug-and-play connectivity.

It features of total of ten buttons, two joysticks, a d-pad, and ships with an audio splitter and a luxuriously long four foot cable. We haven’t had any hands-on with one quite yet — it’s in the mail — but creator 60beat has uploaded a video of the thing in action. Take a look:

Looks cool, right? The biggest hurdle for the GamePad — other than being a good and meaningful product, of course — will be grabbing the attention of the iOS development community. It apparently requires some game-side tweaks to work properly, so 60beat and its friends will have to collaborate. As of this moment, only two games support the device: Bugdom 2 [$2.99] and Aftermath [$1.99].

The official web site for the device says we’ll hear a lot more about games support in February 2012. Expect more from us on the device in the future, too.

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This week on The TouchArcade Show we kinda forget to talk about things like, say, using our iPads on the toilet. Instead, the first half of our show is dedicated solely to our internal Game of the Year debate. We go through all five of our finalists in detail, and then we reveal specifically what game won and why.

If you haven’t noticed, this little bit of information isn’t on the main page just yet, so this is EXCLUSIVE content exclusively for our exclusive listeners. Exclusive, exclusive, exclusive.

iTunes Link: The TouchArcade Show
Zune Marketplace: TouchArcade.com Podcasts
RSS Feed: The TouchArcade Show
Direct Link: TouchArcadeShow-031.mp3, 41MB

At the back-end, we do fit in a Kitty Korner for all your earholes. In the second half, we tackle some of this week’s less-than-awesome news and then fly straight into your user questions. Speaking of which, we need more so feel free to fire us an e-mail. Podcast@toucharcade.com is where to send ‘em.

Here are you show notes:

GAMES

• Infinity Blade 2 [$6.99]
• Mage Gauntlet [$2.99]
• Sword & Sworcery [$4.99]
• LostWinds [$3.99]
• Anomaly: Warzone Earth [$.99 / UHD]
• SpellTower [$.99]

JARED’S KITTY KORNER

• Longcat Love Adventure [$.99]

NEWS

• ‘Final Fantasy Tactics’ Gets Retina Update
• iMAME Appears On The App Store / iDOS Returns
• Remedy Open To Doing Another Game / ‘Death Rally’ Multiplayer Update Is Go

We won’t see you again until next week, so we wanted to take the chance to say happy holidays and we wish you the best in the coming year. Thanks for tuning in and being awesome, by the way, and know this: we’re going to rock 2012, dawgs.

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This week on The TouchArcade Show, we power through topics like Jack LaLanne’s juicer to bring you the latest, hottest, and radicalest in iOS gaming. At the top, we discuss the upcoming iTunes Connect freeze. Later, we dig into new games such as Sin or Win, Sonic CD, and Kinectimals, and much later, we give a few lucky fan e-mailers their moment in the spotlight. Overall, this was a wicked show to do, so we hope you love it.

If you’d like to give us a listen, do so via the handy-dandy links below. If you like what you heard, consider subscribing to us — The TouchArcade Show is on iTunes and the Zune Marketplace for your convenience. Want our shows the second they hit the net? This is how to go about that, folks.

iTunes Link: The TouchArcade Show
Zune Marketplace: TouchArcade.com Podcasts
RSS Feed: The TouchArcade Show
Direct Link: TouchArcadeShow-030.mp3, 42MB

Here’s your show notes:

GAMES

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WOW! This week, or actually, the last two weeks have been insane. We’ve been pulling some crazy hours here getting everything up, and as a result, the front page of TouchArcade has been moving at about mach 3. I’m pretty sure Brad, Jared, and I all Tebowed at one point this week in hopes that the emails would stop coming.

Anyway, here’s a reverse chronological recap of the stories really worth checking out over the past couple of weeks, in case you missed anything! If you’ve already read everything I’m linking here, congratulations, you just earned your TouchArcade holiday season merit badge.

Best iOS Games November 2011

Our ratings for games we reviewed in November are now in place, and we now present to you the ones that are on the top of the heap. Each game reviewed receives a 1-5 star rating relative to the other games from that month. Generally, a three-star or higher is considered a “good” rating.

The ‘Time Ducks’ Trailer Will Melt Your Brain

A couple of weeks ago, Tough Guy Studios released their first iOS game called Time Ducks [$1.99], and I’m going to be honest, I bought it based solely on the fact that it was called Time Ducks. I figured with a name like that, there was no way I could go wrong. As it turned out, Time Ducks ended up being a pretty fun and unique take on line drawing games, and it sort of sat on the back burner as something I’d been planning on writing about.

Controller Update: More on the GameBone, A Bluetooth 4.0 Revelation

iPhone controller accessories have been generating a good bit of news, here lately. More and more existing iOS titles are gaining physical control options via updates, and just last week we detailed the upcoming Gametel Bluetooth controller that will soon become a game-enhancing iOS controller option, alongside the iCade and iControlPad. The more the merrier, true, but long time readers may recall yet another controller we covered over a year ago that has been off the radar ever since. Does anyone remember the GameBone?

Microsoft Releases Official Xbox Live App

Microsoft, via Xbox Live evangelist Larry “Major Nelson” Hryb, has just announced the immediate release of the company’s first Xbox Live iOS app, My Xbox Live [Free]. It’s a free app that basically acts as a mobile companion to some of the more important aspects of the service. You can read and send messages to anyone on your Friend’s List, manage that list or invite new people onto it, edit your profile, gander at all of your hard-earned achievements, or even mess with your Avatar’s apparel.

The OnLive iOS Client is Finally Arriving

At E3 back in June of this year, we got an impressive hands-on demo of the OnLive service running and playable on the iPad. In case you’re not familiar, OnLive is the cloud-based gaming service that allows you to play from a fairly large selection of console and PC games by way of streaming them to an OnLive client running on your computer or a specially designed set-top box that connects to your TV. In simpler terms, it’s a lot like instantly streaming movies over NetFlix, except it’s video games, and you get to actually play them in real time with minimal lag if you’re internet speeds are up to snuff.

Out Now: ‘Batman Arkham City Lockdown’, ‘Mini Motor Racing’, ‘Six Guns’, ‘TXT Fighter HD’, and More

Holy jeez! We’re pretty used to the typical Wednesday onslaught of new releases in the App Store, but today has been a truly insane undertaking. Between Batman making a surprise drop from the shadows and into the App Store with Arkham City Lockdown, the exciting OnLive iOS client finally seeing the light of day (soon anyway), and the normal barrage of new releases we usually see every week, it’s been a wild roller coaster ride of iOS craziness. To top it off, Eli is out in Finland hobnobbing with The Mighty Eagle, ensuring that Brad and I are up to our ear balls in busy work.

Dragon Shout: A Great ‘Skyrim’ Map App

Dragon Shout [Free] has cleared the certification hurdle and it’s available now at the low, low price of $0. What it does, it does well, and it proves a point. Games as deep as Skyrim should be embracing mobile companion apps across the board. Dragon Shout is an app that not only makes Skyrim better, but down the road, it might add an entirely new layer to the experience: social.

‘Chrono Trigger’ Hits the App Store

Hey guys! Here’s a surprise, Chrono Trigger [$9.99] just came out of nowhere. Well, not entirely out of nowhere, since Square Enix had mentioned that it was coming this month… But after the rampant delays that Final Fantasy Tactics saw, my hopes that they’d hit this release window could be best described as “cautiously optimistic.”

Apple’s “App Store Rewind 2011″ Features ‘Tiny Tower’ and ‘Dead Space for iPad’ as Games of the Year

If you’re new to iOS devices, or haven’t been following the scene as closely as you should have been over the last year, Apple’s year end feature App Store Rewind 2011 has an incredible amount of must-have games and apps that, in my opinion, you can basically just blindly download as they did a great job of picking out the cream of the crop.

‘WildChords’ is One of the Coolest Things I’ve Seen the iPad Do

Easily one of my most anticipated games this year, and I’m sure many of yours out there as well, is Warballoon Games‘ Star Command.

‘Kinectimals’ Review – Making Connections

Kinectimals on Kinect is an experiential game that does a solid job of luring its users into forming an emotional bond with its assortment of on-screen, rascally pets.

Out Now: ‘Bug Princess’, ‘Ice Rage’, ‘Marathon 2′, ‘Sonic CD’, ‘Trenches II’ and TONS More

If you’ve been sitting on a massive emergency food supply waiting for the right occasion to open the first gallon sized can of preserved potato chunks, this might be it.

‘Sonic CD’ Review – Absolutely Incredible and Redefines Expectations of iOS Ports

The only way I can start this review is with a little history lesson, both for people who aren’t familiar with Sonic CD, as well as those of you who might not have been reading TouchArcade since the summer of 2009. Let’s start at the beginning, so everyone can truly appreciate just how wonderful the very existence of this game is.

‘Grand Theft Auto III’ Review – Ten Years Later, Still a Great Game

Prior to Grand Theft Auto III I’d say I had fun messing around in Grand Theft Auto games, but never really enjoyed myself. The top-down view felt incredibly claustrophobic, and, at least for me, made getting immersed into the game world incredibly difficult. I don’t think it’s hyperbole at all to say that GTA 3 changed everything.

Carcassonne’ Update Adds Expansion, Baby Mode

Remember when we wrote about the fact that Carcassonne [$9.99] will receive expansion support in the future? It has that right now.

‘Mad Dog McCree’ Coming To iPhone Next Week

American Laser Games’s so-awful-it-ends-up-being-good FMV shooter, Mad Dog McCree, is coming to the iPhone and iPod Touch this December 20, according to caretaker Digital Leisure. This is a port of the original arcade release of the game, so don’t expect anything too fancy, however the team is noting that it has converted the game’s silly footage for phones and even added an “all new casual mode” for those without hardcore gunslinging skills.

‘Bug Princess’ Review – Unsurprisingly, CAVE’s Latest Bullet Hell Shooter is Another Winner

In April of last year, iOS gamers scored big when longtime Japanese developer CAVE decided to task their mobile division with bringing some of their classic shooter titles to the Apple App Store. All of these games – Espgaluda II, Dodonpachi Resurrection, and Deathsmiles – received critical acclaim from media and gamers alike, and set the benchmark for what we should expect from our bullet hell shmups on the App Store.

I told you it has been a crazy couple of weeks! I only cherry picked the really good stuff that we posted for this list too! Now, it’s time for a beer and a weekend away from my inbox…!

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Fasten your time-travellings belts and turn off your electronic devices. Back in August, we checked out Toxic Blob’s Sin Or Win for the first time. We came away impressed, and were stoked to see it that coming September. The game didn’t make it out. In fact, it still isn’t out and won’t be until … this week.

Toxic Blob’s Jamie McCarter dropped us an e-mail saying that he’s been using the delay time, which he’s written about extensively on his studio’s blog, to focus on tweaking and refining the entire experience. The final, retail build of Sin Or Win you’ll play this coming December 15 has new fiends, better load times, a “solid” 60 FPS, and even an in-app hint system.

We’ve had a long, long time since initially seeing this game to figure out how the heck to categorize Sin Or Win. No luck — we’ll continue to let McCarter pitch it, and also use his words as a way to convienently remind you about what it is.

“In the game, the cavemen come from either side, and following the Grim Reapers’ command, leap into the abyss,” McCarter told us awhile back. From here, you’ll get the choice to either save cavemen (winning) by flicking them into clouds or kill them by letting them dive into the pit and burn to death (sinning).”

December is going to be crazy busy with releases, but we’re definitely going to give this the official look closer to release. Also, with the game finished, McCarter has moved on to a content update for the game: version 1.1 will “expand” the play, as well as add in Game Center. Neat!

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My new favorite thing on iOS is Rebuild [$2.99]. It’s a fantastic strategy game that has the capability of ruining your life like only a Civilization can, but it also has this great touch that makes it exceedingly accessible and much more interactive. Its biggest flaw is the fact that it can only be played on iPad 2. Awesomely, that’s going to change pretty soon.

In an e-mail exchange with us, Northway Games confirmed that iPad support is on the way in an update that has already been submitted to Apple. This update will also pack in Game Center support, which presumably will add achievements, too. Explaining why the game wasn’t release for both platforms at once, Northway said that its technology simply wasn’t playing nice with the original iPad. It is now!

If you’re interested on checking this out on smaller iOS devices like the iPhone or iPod Touch, the wait might be a while. Northway is open to the platform, but a port isn’t in the works just yet.

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The App Store is home to a ton of unique ideas, and we’ve seen all sorts of games come along that started out one way and evolved into something entirely different due to content updates that are often spurred by feedback from gamers in our forums. It’s one of the neat aspects about iOS gaming, and something that sets it apart from most other traditional gaming platforms.

However, Bryan Perfetto, creator of the awesome endless high scoring game Kitty Up [99¢] (the second title this morning that has previously been featured on the Kitty Korner segment of our podcast) is taking the app updating facet of the App Store to the extreme. He has just released Rocket Bits [Free], his latest game that’s not really much of a game at all… yet.

The idea behind Rocket Bits is that he’s soliciting any and all ideas from users and will try to implement them into the game the best he can. Right now, the game isn’t much more than an extremely basic cave flyer with very little to do. You can control the dual thrusters of a tiny rocket by touching either side of the screen, and putt around an expansive randomly generated map, bumping into walls and… that’s about it.

But just because there isn’t much to do in Rocket Bits doesn’t mean it’s not off to a pretty good start. The thruster controls feel great, the retro-styled pixel art is quite nice, and the chip tunes in the game are fantastic. Since the game isn’t much right now, it’s being offered for free, and eventually after some updates have fleshed out the experience then Bryan plans to raise it to “the outrageously expensive price of one dollar.”

If the concept of Rocket Bits intrigues you, you can send your game ideas via email to bryan@regularkid.com, on Twitter at @RegularKid, through his website www.regularkid.com, or just blurt them out in iTunes reviews for the game. The plan is to update the game weekly, though that will depend on how difficult the ideas are to implement and Apple’s review process. If he uses your idea, you’ll get your name forever emblazoned in the game’s credits section.

It’ll be interesting to see how Rocket Bits shapes up over time, and how well the developer will be able to use the ideas given to him. We’ll keep our eye on its progress, and there’s no reason not to grab the game for free to check it out and send along some ideas of your own.

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