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Being called a “Child of the 80s” has made me more aware of my mortality recently, than it has conjured memories of the actual time period.

The USSR? Gone.
Hair Metal? Mostly gone. (Thanks for this.)
Reaganomics? Relegated to post-punk indie hardcore band names.

These days you will be lucky to find any kind of media that doesn’t have 1 or 2 glassy-eyed teenagers waiting anxiously for “The Drop.”

Thankfully, the Wonder-Twin powers of Mighty Rabbit and Joystick Labs has manifested a game that absolutely drips 80s nostalgia and helps me forget that the twilight years are quickly approaching. Saturday Morning RPG [ Free ] is as close to a physical manifestation of my childhood as I am going to find, without a truckload of Pixiesticks.

Inspired by the JRPGS of the 80s and 90s, Saturday Morning RPG is nothing special on the surface. Its battle system, littered with quicktime events that modify damage done and taken, is straight forward and pedestrian. In fact, the game’s story (the supposed hallmark of the RPG genre) has the literary alacrity of an R.L. Stine novel. Luckily, none of this matters. One would argue that that is exactly the point.

Episode 1 of Saturday Morning RPG (which comes free of charge) has the game’s hero, Marty, fast asleep on his bed. In his dream, he is spending the day with his sweetheart Samantha, when she is kidnapped by Cobra Commander Hood. Hood intends to wed Samantha, whether she wants it or not. After being beaten down by Hood and his minions, The Wizard (and his powerful glove – which is (so) bad) appears before Marty to offer help. He gives Marty his Trapper Keeper, the spell book Marty can use to defeat Hood’s Army and rescue Samantha. And that is what Marty (and you) set off to do.

The Trapper Keeper enhances the vanilla battle system by throwing in spells and other wild cards. It’s first feature is customizable scratch and sniff stickers. Using up to five, the stickers provide benefits like +15 health or -2 Enemy strength for the length of the battle. The trick is that you have to scratch them to release their bonus, and you are only given a small amount of time at the start of the battle to do so.

Once the battle begins, your Trapper Keeper functions as your spell book. Spells vary from the mundane (a flaming basketball) to the awesome (a glittery-glove-clothed punch, delivered via Moonwalk). There are some balance issues that become apparent, such as getting more bang for your buck via spells and, therefore, not focusing on leveling up melee attacks, but I’m not sure the developers care. The actual gameplay is the plain cracker on which the aged nostalgia cheese is served. No one should complain about the cracker.

When you aren’t battling Lizards or Hood Soldiers, you walk 8-bit Marty around the episode’s environment (they are different in each episode) talking to people and, occasionally, collecting a quest or two. The quests don’t do much to flesh out the universe, instead trading lore for laughs. They vary from the eye-rolling “stop all the downloadin”, to the morbid task of setting animals free by flushing them down the toilet. Completed quests offer you either XP, Spells, or stickers, so they are worth doing when you find them.

If there were any complaints to be leveled against Saturday Morning RPG, they would be the ones I’ve already mentioned. The game is a very basic RPG. Encounters are not random (your character and my character are probably going to be pretty similar by game’s end), quests and quest completions are very linear, and the story lines are pretty dumb. There just isn’t much substance here…much like a Saturday Morning Cartoon.

In that respect, one could argue that this game captures the spirit of the Saturday Morning Cartoon perfectly. And, in the process, litters the game with wonderful nuggets of 80s nostalgia. To play Devil’s Advocate a bit, if the game is called Saturday Morning RPG, and playing it perfectly recreates the spirit and feeling of an 80s Saturday Morning cartoon, doesn’t that make it the perfect game?

You and I could argue about this all day, but I don’t think we could argue as to whether or not you should give this game a shot. The first Episode, which took me 2 hours to complete (I try to be thorough), is completely free. If you like it, you can unlock Episode 2 for a measly 2 bucks. That, to me, seems like an awesome way to sell your game. More Episodes are in the pipeline of course, with Mighty Rabbit shooting for a May/June release for Episode 3.

All in all, Saturday Morning RPG is exactly what it promised. A fun, easy going, RPG with a heavy coating of 80s nostalgia. With an upfront cost of “free”, it’s hard not to recommend it.

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Here’s a story that has multiple layers of coolness, or, as Shrek would say (Yeah, I’m going there.) it’s like an onion. It all started back in September of last year at the 360iDev conference. 360iDev, in case you haven’t heard of it, is a great get-together for iOS developers because it’s still small enough that you can attend it and actually have a pretty good chance of meeting everyone there instead of just falling into the sea of people that show up for a massive convention like GDC. One of the things they seem to do at every 360iDev is a game jam, or, a marathon game development session where developers crank out workable games from start to finish overnight.

TUAW’s Mike Schramm attended the last one, but, instead of covering it for the site he decided to jump right in and build his own game. He blogged the whole thing, which I’ve found to be incredibly interesting to see what it’s like when a blogger jumps to the other side of the fence, so to speak. At events like these, we’re used to just showing up, hanging out, pestering whoever we can, and saying peace out… Not actually slogging through the whole gam jam process and coming out with an workable product entitled Antithesis [ ].

Original concept sketch on the left, final screenshot on the right.

The concept for the game is cool too. It’s a Pong battle, so to speak, where you control a black paddle and defend against a stream of black balls, while an AI-controlled white paddle does the same. The line in the middle shifts back and forth between both sides depending on who is playing better in a series of waves. Like most game jam titles, it isn’t the deepest game in the world, but it’s really cool reading the whole process and seeing the game in various stages of development then finally playing the end product.

Game Jam photo courtesy of RetroDreamer.

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Back in January, developer Spry Fox released Triple Town [Free], an iOS version of their immensely popular Kindle, Facebook, and Google+ matching game. Triple Town was widely loved by gamers and gaming critics, including our own 4.5 star review, and it was great to see a developer that was able to innovate so heavily in what has become a stagnant match-3 genre.

Since its release, Triple Town has received several updates, but they have mostly amounted to maintenance type stuff. Over the weekend, another new update was released, this time adding some very welcome new gameplay maps.

First is the City on a Lake map, which you can see in the screen below. This gives you the standard 6×6 grid found in the original mode only this time there is an L-shaped body of water smack dab in the middle. Obviously this is going to affect your strategy by limiting the amount of space you have to make matches, since the water is unusable space. It puts a nice challenging spin on the regular Triple Town formula.

The second new map is called Peaceful Valley, pictured below, and is a much friendlier, casual experience. It gives you a 5×5 map grid to work with, but here there are no bears or ninjas to muck up your carefully planned town layout. This is another nice departure from the original mode like City on a Lake is, only instead of being more challenging it’s actually much less challenging, and really lets you concentrate on thinking ahead and making smart matches instead of dealing with those pesky bears.

Aside from the big addition of two new maps, there are some minor tweaks in this update as well. High scores are now saved locally in addition to online through OpenFeint, and can be viewed from the options screen. There is also now an in-game orientation lock for people like me who like to get their game on while laying in bed. Finally, there are even more optimizations and bug fixes.

There is one tiny catch, though. The two new maps are only available for those who have paid to unlock unlimited turns from within the game. If you aren’t one of those people then there’s some good news for you: to celebrate the new update the unlimited turns IAP is on sale for $2.99. I paid the original $6.99 for Triple Town when it first came out and felt it was completely worth it, so from where I stand 3 bucks is a fantastic deal for one of the finest match-3 games available, even more so after this latest update.

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Bandai is looking to fuse the world of smartphones and virtual pets in a big way with their just announced “smart pet”, as reported by Macotakara. Some details are a bit fuzzy due to translation issues, but from what I can tell the smart pet sounds like a pretty interesting idea. An app is downloaded to your iPhone or iPod touch, and that acts as the face of your virtual pet. Your device then sits inside a robot dog body and connects to it through the headphone jack, allowing the two pieces to act as one so you can interact with the smart pet.

The smart pet uses the front facing camera on the iOS device to recognize and react to certain gestures, and there will be over 100 different kinds of expressions that the pet can make. There will also be support for importing your own photos of your pets (or whoever you want, really), and there will be some sort of Bluetooth connectivity to allow multiple smart pets to interact with each other. And, perhaps most important of all, your smart pet comes equipped with the ability to sneeze. Sounds adorable.

The smart pet app is on course for release in Japan on March 31st, and will be a free download. With just the app you’ll still be able to begin training and interacting with your virtual puppy, and it sounds like it will be a complete Tamagotchi-like experience all on its own even if you don’t spring for a plastic robot dog body. If you must have the full experience, the smart pet body will be available about a month after the app, but no details on pricing as of now.

Neither the app or the body have been confirmed for US release just yet, but we’ll keep an eye on the situation for our own curiosity, and so we can be prepared once the robot dogs decide to turn against humanity (you know it’s bound to happen).

[Via Macotakara]

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Earlier this month, SNK Playmore released an update for their excellent iOS version of their popular fighting game franchise King of Fighters-i [$6.99]. Unfortunately, there was a huge SNAFU with the update, and for a lot of people downloading it would wipe out all of their data as well as take away 6 characters which had been added in a previous update.

The good news is that SNK Playmore has released a new update for King of Fighters-i that fixes the issue of deleting the additional characters. The bad news is that if your data was previously erased, then you aren’t getting it back. At least not in my case. If you held off on the last update or your data wasn’t erased as a result of it then you should be good to go with the new update. Emphasis on the word “should” because at this point I’m sure anything could happen, so maybe you should proceed with caution.

The strange thing about all of this update drama is that in the end, it looks like the original offending update was merely an iOS 5 compatibility fix, and didn’t offer any new content or features. Sadly, the new update that fixes the old update doesn’t have any goodies in it either, unless you count the fun I’ll be having re-unlocking everything in the game over again.

I know that sounded snarky, but actually King of Fighters-i kicks all sorts of ass, and I really don’t have a problem playing through it all again. Still, I’d love to see an actual content update released someday, and hopefully there’s one in the works. In the meantime, make sure to grab the newest update if you were among those who were affected by the bug.

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Since getting the new iPad last Friday, I’ve been having a blast playing through the games that have been updated to take advantage of the beautiful new screen. Of course, gameplay reigns king when it comes to any game, but the visuals are important too, and it’s pretty crazy just how much a big bump up in the graphics department can add to a gaming experience.

So far, my favorite example of this has been Zen Bound 2 Universal [99¢], which was just updated with Retina iPad visuals. In early 2009, the original Zen Bound was a technical showpiece for the iPhone in terms of its striking visuals as well as its incredible use of multi-touch. Right off the bat, the sequel followed in these same steps by being a launch title for the original iPad back in April 2010, and a few months later for harnessing the power of the iPhone 4’s gorgeous new Retina Display and Gyroscope capabilities.

And here we are again, not even a week into the launch of the long-awaited Retina Display iPad and Zen Bound 2 Universal is again a stunning showpiece of the new technology. The high resolution textures and fancy lighting effects combine to create remarkably realistic in-game models. If there was such thing as an uncanny valley for tiny carved sculptures, this would be it. Everything runs at a silky smooth framerate too, further making the visuals feel like they just pop right off of the screen.

The enhanced visuals have got me hooked on Zen Bound 2 all over again, just as I was when it first released, and if you haven’t checked out the game previously now would be an excellent time if you’re an owner of the new iPad. It’s a perfect game to show off the screen of the new device to people, and the unique multi-touch gameplay is just as impressive as ever, too.

With its slow-paced, meticulous gameplay Zen Bound 2 isn’t for everybody. But if you’re intrigued by the look of it and want something to show off your new iPad then it’s totally worth its current sale price of 99¢. The bonus is that if Zen Bound 2 is your cup of tea, it comes equipped with more than 100 puzzles to work through that can very easily eat up your free time if you aren’t careful, made all the better with the gorgeous new Retina Display iPad visuals.

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I genuinely have no clue how we missed this the first time it hit the internet (in late 2011), but Lego’s Life of George [Free] just blew my mind. This is everything I wanted and more as a Lego-loving child. Check out the video:

In a nutshell, utilizing the Life of George ($26.99 on Amazon) Lego set, the app challenges you to build different Lego objects, then take a photo of them using the camera of your iOS device. The game scores you based on how long it took you to build the object, and a recent (Well, “recent” as in Christmas!) update added 30 new challenges and 45 new models to build.

Has anyone out there tried this? Looking at the charts, Life of George seems to have had some pretty dismal download numbers, peaking at #57 in the family subcategory. That’s too bad, since this is the exact kind of stuff I like seeing the iOS camera doing.

Thanks Marcos!

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It’s been a long week (Well, a little more than a week.) of waiting since the new iPad was announced. But, if you were in the initial batch of preorders or are ambitious enough to head to an Apple Store today, you should have a new iPad in your hot little hands right now. I just got done unboxing and syncing mine, and I’m sort of at a loss as to what to post about it, as I really think the new iPad is what everyone expected it to be.

The screen is incredible, and inspires that same sense of awe the first time you see it that the original Retina Display of the iPhone 4 did. No photos, screenshots, or videos will do the display of the new iPad justice. You simply must see it for yourself to truly appreciate just how ridiculously high resolution it is.

I’ve run through the list of the few games that are Retina-ready, and am totally impressed that the new iPad can actually pull off running all these games with performance levels that seem on par with the iPad 2, only at double the resolution. The GPU Apple packed in this thing doesn’t mess around.

Remember how non-Retina apps on the iPhone 4 looked like total trash comparatively during that awkward transition where not very much was Retina-ready? Well, oddly enough, non-Retina apps and games on the new iPad actually don’t look all that bad at all. There’s obviously a huge contrast between things running at 1024×768 and 2048×1536, but it doesn’t seem to induce that same jarring “Oh wow, this looks bad” that non-Retina iPhone apps did. Maybe it’s just me.

Just like the iPhone 4 to the iPhone 4S, the new iPad is a solid upgrade over the iPad 2. In my opinion, the screen is worth the cost of admission alone, but again, like the iPhone 4 to the 4S, the iPad 2 still is as capable of a device as it ever was. What I’m anxious to see is what sort of apps and games developers are going to start churning out developed from the ground up specifically with the new iPad in mind instead of just resolution-boosting updates.

But enough of my rambling, those of you who braved the Apple store or waited for FedEx to show up today, tell us your first impressions of the new iPad in the comments here. Is it everything you wanted and more? A worthy upgrade? A little disappointing? Let’s have it!

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Cave has basically cornered the market on iOS bullet hell shooters with a slew of solid ports from their vast library of beloved titles. As fantastic as the gameplay is in Cave’s shooters, the fact that they’re ports of arcade titles has typically meant that features like Retina Display graphics and iPad support have required to much additional work to implement into the iOS releases.

Last October, Cave bucked this trend by releasing Espgaluda II HD [$10.99/Lite] for the iPad 2. The game featured a selection of graphics that were redone in high resolution and native support for the iPad’s larger screen. Not everything was HD’d out, though, but it still made a pretty big difference in the visual quality of Espgaluda II, and the nice big screen of the iPad proved phenomenal for navigating a hail of onscreen bullets.

This week, Cave once again is dipping their toes into native iPad support. This time, however, they’re going full stop and have released Dodonpachi Resurrection HD [$10.99/Lite] as a Universal app so that it works with the iPad as well as compatible iPhone and iPod touch models. Not only that, but they’ve gone and updated Espgaluda II HD with the same Universal support, giving both titles new life in high resolution on the smaller iOS device screens.

Example of original screen (left) and updated HD screen with redrawn ship sprite (right) from Dodonpachi Resurrection HD (click to enlarge):

I won’t go into too much detail about either title – you can read our full review of Dodonpachi Resurrection or the review for Espgaluda II if you’re curious to learn more about the game mechanics – but what I will say is that the partial high definition treatment given to each game makes an even bigger difference on the small screen than it does on the iPad.

Both games look gorgeous on an iPhone 4 or iPhone 4S, and you can see that Cave has actually gone and redrawn many of the sprites in the game, as well as given the menus a visual overhaul. Some elements, like backgrounds and other hand-drawn artwork, aren’t technically as high resolution as they could be, but everything in the game has a much cleaner, crisper look than it did previously.

I imagine many of you have already bought either Dodonpachi Resurrection or Espgaluda II before the HD versions hit, so really it’s going to be up to you whether or not some increased graphical fidelity is worth the additional purchase price. To help you decide, there are lite versions of each, and in the case of Espgaluda II HD you can even buy each of the game’s modes as separate apps, Arcade Mode [$6.99] and Smartphone Mode [$6.99], which have also been updated to be Universal.

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