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Earlier this month we brought news of Elite Systems' initiative to expand on their ongoing retro rebirth efforts and bring a host of classics of old to iOS — those that originated on platforms beyond the ZX Spectrum, which was their initial source platform. Studio co-founder Steve Wilcox was kind enough to provide us with builds of the first wave of titles that will soon arrive in the Elite Collection of 8-bit home computer games to share with our readers.

The first Elite Collection titles that will arrive in the App Store are Datasoft's 1987 magical platformer Black Magic, Image Works' lovely 1992 release First Samurai, and the frantic 1992 space shooter Enforcer from Manfred Trenz. Every one of these titles is very well implemented in iOS and is among the top tier of games to be found on the 8-bit platforms of decades past.

Let's have a look.

Black Magic

The evil wizard Zahgrim has turned good Aganar to stone. Being a ghastly sort of wizard, Zahgrim has removed his six eyes and placed them in different locations across the land so they may view the destruction being wrought in his name. Your task is to recover each eye and place them, one by one, into the empty sockets of the Blind Statue. Hordes of monters roaming the land make this a challenge, but you've got your arrows and magic to aid you, and a bit of help from a somewhat fiendish troll.

In researching Black Magic for this post, I found a great many fond recollections gamers shared of hours spent chasing down the six eyes of Zahgrim. The title is very well loved and secured an 8.2 user rating from Lemon64.

Enforcer

Enforcer: Fullmetal Megablaster is an excellent side-scrolling space shooter released for the Commodore 64 in 1992. That it is, indeed, excellent should come as no surprise, given that it was written by Mafred Trenz, the developer behind the Turrican series, the C64 version of R-Type, and The Great Giana Sisters. Enforcer features some of the best graphics ever to grace the C64's screen and the on-screen action is furious and maddeningly difficult.

The game features six levels through a range of space and cave backdrops, with an boss waiting at the end of each. It is a very well-received title that has secured an 8.3 user rating on Lemon64.

First Samurai

First Samurai, released for the Commodore 64 in 1992, puts you in the shoes of the first samurai in history. You start out as a hermit travelling through an ancient land, but with enough food — and sake — you will grow stronger and stronger, gaining power and eventually becoming a samurai. That is, if the daunting enemy creatures don't do you in first, which they probably will.

First Samurai is, without question, one of the five best looking C64 titles I've ever encountered and features very nice platform combat action. Elite's iOS version features glass-smooth sprite animation and brings a truly worthwhile platformer to our favorite mobile game devices. First Samurai got an 8.3 user ranking at Lemon64.

The Elite Collection titles detailed here will be available in both standard (iPhone, iPod touch) and HD (iPad) versions that are playable in both portrait and landscape orientations. (All videos in this post are of the iPad HD versions of the games.) Each title features the latest implementation of Elite's iDaptive control system, which allows highly customized placement of both virtual joystick and virtual key controls on the game screen, as illustrated in the embedded videos. I am in hopes that Elite will consider the addition of iCade support for all of these titles, to allow for an even more authentic retro game experience.

Elite has gathered quite a collection with which to launch their new retro effort, and I must confess it's been rather painless labor running through these titles in preparation for this post. For the retro fans out there, each of these titles is a no-brainer buy — obviously — but, as I am one who appreciates the simpler formulas of old, I must urge even those without a nostalgic bent to have a close look at the provided videos and consider giving these titles a shake.

My crotchety old self is often of the mind that "they don't make 'em like they used to," when it comes to games I really want to spend time with. This initial Elite offering is a rather good representation of "the best they ever made 'em." And there's much more of this ilk on the way from the studio. It's a pretty great time to be a (retro) iOS gamer.

We will let readers know when the first three Elite Collection titles go live in the App Store this weekend and will keep the news coming on future titles in the collection, as we hear it.

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There’s a grotesquely misshapen tiger that haunts my dreams. His butt is where his head should be. He implores me to make him whole again, but the more I try to help the more horrific he becomes. I move his parts around in a fevered panic to no avail, unwillingly transforming him from proud feline predator into a twisted terror that would give even H.P. Lovecraft pause.

He is the tiger that was on the plastic sliding puzzle I had when I was 5 years old. When I finally did get that poor beast into his god-given form again, it was as if I had exorcised a demon. It felt like the laying on of hands. Much more pleasant and significantly less nightmarish was my recent experience with MixZle [$.99]. No pictures, no waylaid arses, just a simple but challenging physics puzzler with a sliding panel mechanic.

The game is a series of challenges (ala Angry Birds or Cut the Rope) where you must drop a ball from the top of the screen and ensure that it goes through a hoop elsewhere on the screen. Drop too many without getting one through and you must restart the level. It’s as stripped down a conceit as you’re likely to find.

Don’t let that throw you off, however. There’s plenty of depth and variety here, due to the aforementioned sliding puzzle mechanic. Every level is a series of panels with one square missing. The others will either be blank or contain structures that you can position to divert the course of the ball towards the net. Early levels will be a breeze, as the correct positions for most tiles are quickly apparent.

The challenge steadily ramps as new structures come into play, which ensures that MixZle is fresh throughout. Rudimentary planks and ramps give way to fans, pneumatic launchers, and more. Additional difficulty is slowly mixed in, in the form of fixed tiles that you must work around, cranks which can rotate tiles, and other constraints. Also, not every tile with a structure on it will be necessary to solving some puzzles; it’s a clever twist that keeps your mind working.

The developer clearly has a mind and a passion for puzzle design. The game has over 100 levels, so value-per-dollar hounds will find no complaints in the content category here. A score is assigned based on the number of ball drops and tile movements it takes to complete each level, meaning perfectionists will find lots of replayability looking for that optimal solution.

On the minus side, the need to restart a level after x number of drops kills the will to be creative with your problem-solving. There’s already a point system that will tell me if I made a mess of things or took an embarrassing number of moves, so having the panels reset to their beginning positions is an unnecessary fail state. Not to mention I had some cool moments of emergent gameplay where I had fun setting up panels and just playing with the physics, and it always seemed that the level would reset right when I had the board the way I wanted it.

Lack of character is this game’s biggest drawback. It’s a smart game, but it doesn’t seem to really have a sense of play to it. The art is clean and the music is chilled out and conducive to puzzling; there’s just nothing in the presentation to get very excited about. With such well done level design, it’s a shame to have the vanilla assets and sounds turn me off to extended play. In short bursts, however, the game shines as a bite-sized brain teaser.

There’s much to like about MixZle, and at a buck for a heaping biggie-sized helping of levels, the value proposition cannot be denied. It’s not going to set the world on fire, but it’s a smartly executed twist on a well-worn genre. Pick it up, and you’ll find yourself stashing it in the corner of your screen and snacking on it periodically, like trail mix on a road trip. It’s a great palette cleanser between games, and if you’re like me, you may find yourself redeeming some of the dark shames of your childhood ineptitude.

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So, we got a build of Forever Drive and decided to put the pedal on the floor in order to bring you some early impressions. And, wow, guys, does this seem cool.

With Forever Drive, Supermono Studios is taking a smarter approach to user-created content design: instead of asking players to mold and shape entire experiences, it asks that they mold and torture a fraction of a blip on an infinitely expandable super-highway. By managing user expectations before people even begin creating, Supermono is freeing its users from failure and the game’s players from having to filter out tons of garbage. Most user-created content titles, including Media Molecule’s venerable series starring a boy made of sacks, do not practice any kind of control or creative constraint, which is what makes Forever Drive unique, and as we’ve been discovering, pretty fun.

You got to at least appreciate Supermono’s core design conceit. It’s shooting from the hip with Forever Drive — there are no curated races, no lifeless campaign, and no attempts at narrative. Through and through, this is a racing game about racing forever, and it’s built by you and everyone else. The basic idea behind this is simple. Supermono wants you to play a racing game about the journey instead of the destination. That's some next level stuff.

“What we've tried to create is a very streamlined experience — something a little different from the "load a track, do 3 laps, stop, repeat" gameplay that's become almost universal in driving games,” Supermono’s Dave Ferner told us earlier this year.

“We're trying to create something that feels more like an epic journey, with that feeling of discovery and wonder you get driving fast into an unfamiliar land…”

I recently gave the level editing portion of the title a go and I’ve been surprised by how deceptively simple it is and how graceful most of your projects tend to be, even if you’re just goofing around and attempting to make something phallic. You’ll probably never make a level on par with 1-1, but you’ll make something that works and fits with the game.

Basically, there are two parts to the creation process: track editing and environmental editing. The former editor lets you build a small swathe of track from one end of the editor to the other, while the latter gives you the power to add scenery. Other tools give you the power to raise or lower the track where you please, as well as make fine adjustments on the turns you may or may not choose to have.

It’s not rocket science and I think that’s important: execution on design concepts floating around on your head is about as hard as drawing your bedroom realistically from the picture you see when you close your eyes. By making the editor simple and keeping the bar low with the amount of content you’re responsible for, Supermono is constricting the scope of your ideas, but not their potential.

And while whatever you make will probably be gold, there are tricks to making a good track, as I’ve learned from Dave. He suggests paying attention to the actual curvature of tracks, how a straight benefits the overall design, other high-concept-y things. He also suggests checking out this article by Luke McMillan called A Rational Approach To Racing Game Track Design, which is crazy good read if you’re into design or production.

"One of the main barriers to mainstream acceptance of user-created tracks is the complexity of the editors — we didn't want a PC style professional tool with a million hotkeys, we wanted a super-streamlined editor which was fun to use," Ferner tells us. "We honestly spent months on that thing — it takes a lot of work to make something simple out of something complicated!

"And because our game relies on users to create the content, we aimed to create an editor that was almost a mini-game in itself — there's even some unlocks which you can only get by building popular tracks, and we may even put a highscore table for track creators… it's all a big experiment, but hey, you never know until you've tried it!"

If a section of track somehow manages to suck, you’ll be able to down-vote it. After enough, it’ll be removed from the rotation.

The track I made while farting around (after the no-no shaped one, that is) was a simple “S”-shaped joint. The game automatically integrates in spots where players can drift to earn XP (which is currency used to purchase upgrades, cars, and more stuff for the editor) and it also auto-scaled the height in order to accommodate some lackluster building placement. The actual placement was a simple as dragging and dropping or pinching to zoom to smooth out the rough spots. You’ll see a few images of it if you look around this write-up.

We still haven’t seen the full-full game — you know, the one with the potentially hundreds of thousands of user-created sections of tracks, so we haven’t really dug into the core of the experience. We’ll definitely do that when the game goes wide later this October.

On that note, this is definitely a game that’ll live and die by its audience. At the end of the day, it’s a title that is relying on a community and a vast one at that, so we’ll have to wait and see how people react it hits and how long they’ll stick with the user-creation component in a post-release environment. Provided there is an audience, Forever Drive has the potential to fulfill the promise of its insane conceit, and really, we can’t wait to see if it can manage.

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A new turn-based iteration of aerial combat game Steambirds [$1.99 / HD] is on the way, and get this: it’s a free-to-play venture headed up by the original crew behind Steambirds, Spry Fox, AND the video game gurus over at Fruit Ninja [$.99 / Lite / HD]creator Halfbrick. Talk about a mash-up.

Phil Larsen, Halfbrick’s potential Hollywood movie star and marketing wizard, calls Survival the “ultimate dog-fighting tactical aerial combat game” and he’s probably right. I mean, what other game manages to fall under that description? This is why he’s a wizard, folks.

We’ve seen preciously little of Survival thus far, but we do know that it’s a turn-based combat joint similar to Spry’s original game in look and vibe. It’ll hit later this October with eight planes and 64 missions at launch with the promise of more to come. We’ll definitely try to get this in our e-office soon and give you the skinny from a hands-on perspective.

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I've been chastised in the past for using phrases like "Unless you grew up under a rock, you've probably heard of…", but in this case, if you haven't heard of FarmVille, you've probably never used the internet. Or you're Amish. Possibly both. At any rate, while there's nothing new about the whole land management genre, we can definitely give FarmVille a nod for making it popular on a massive scale — and not with just gamers, either. Facepalm all you want, but when your mom tells you that she totally built out her English Countyside, you have to admit that games like this have changed the gaming landscape in a major way (although good or bad, we can't quite agree on.)

Tiny Farm [Free]  is the latest offering in this popular genre, and I'm just gonna say it right off the bat so I don't feel like I'm holding back: It looks a billion times better than FarmVille. It trades in the deformed character style that makes you feel like you've stumbled into an avatar generator for a clean cartoon look, and I admit it made me like the game ten times more right off the bat. The cute little sounds the animals make when they get all swoony over you for feeding them in pretty great, too.

As far as gameplay goes, it will be very easy for any person who has played this type of sim before. You start off simply with a small plot of land, a shop to buy things from, and a basic tutorial which will show you how to grow crops and adopt animals. You'll start off with a few sheep, learn to breed them, and soon enough you'll be a regular master, mixing breeds and so on. One mentionable here is the menus, which are just as clean as the gameplay and make it a pleasure to play Tiny Farm. Since these types of games rely so heavily on menu interface, this gives the game a little boost and makes you want to keep on playing.

So how do you make your farm bigger and better than anyone else's? Well, by doing things such as upgrading your house, breeding bigger and better animals like pigs, cows and fancy roosters, and expanding your land. To do these things, you'll need to spend time in the game — there are some processes you can hurry along with items like Bells, which make animals instantly level up, but other things you'll simply just have to wait out. The good news is, while you wait you can fill your land with all sorts of decor, from trees to statues.  By the time you're done, you can harvest some crops and check on your animals, and you'll be well on your way to expanding your universe.

Part of the allure of these types of games is sharing your country with your friends so you can brag about how vast it is. Since Tiny Farm is Game Center enabled, people can check there to see how fast you are progressing. You can also use a message board to leave messages for other visitors to your farm, or you can also back into the world map and use it to invite friends using the game's built in system. Just like FarmVille, there will be certain quests later down the line you'll need help with, so you're best off making some pals so they can come over and water your lawn or whatever it is people do in this crazy world where people just tend farms and build things for fun. I'm kind of jealous, honestly.

Tiny Farm doesn't do a thing to break the mold here, but what it does do, it executes expertly. This is a fun game to play, and it's absolutely adorable, which means any gamer with a soft spot for cute things is going to fall in love with it instantly. It doesn't cost a penny to play, although you can spend money in-game if you want to hurry up certain processes. The game's website tells us to expect themed events as well, so expect fun stuff to come up around Halloween time. All this for the big fat price of …free. Call me crazy, but I have a sneaking suspicion it might end up being popular…

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As if simply touching a screen with your finger and interacting with an iPad game wasn’t magical enough, Disney Mobile is taking things to the next level with a special toy and game tie-in for Cars 2. All Things D recently got a first glimpse at the first “Disney Appmate,” a weird experiential racing game that requires Cars 2 toys. Basically, you turn on the game, put a toy Cars car on the surface of the iPad, and then you push it around and explore (and crash into things in) the virtual top-down world that Disney Mobile has developed alongside the corporeal item.

The meatspace-slash-cyberspace tie-in isn’t a new concept by any means, but it’s interesting to see a new product utilizing the iPad’s touchpad enter the realm. Also, this is definitely the mother of all free-to-play experiments so far. The game part will be free and packaged in with a $20 blister of two interactive Cars 2 toys.

Kids love the gadget and word on the street is that they also love toys, so on a conceptual level this all sounds like a promising venture. We can’t really envision a world in which this actually takes off, but hey, who saw that electricity thing coming? You? Nope.

[Via All Things D, 9 to 5 Mac]

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Machinarium [$4.99] is a treasure, judiciously and efficiently designed, with not a single pencil-drawn sprite out of place.

It was worthing playing on the PC two years ago, it will be worth playing on the PlayStation 3 later this year, and it's worthing playing on your iPad 2 right now.

The "story" of Machinarium – Amanita Design's first full-length effort — is unobtrusive and elegant, told entirely through the unnamed protagonist-bot's thought bubbles and context clues. There is no human speech to parse, no dialogue trees to navigate, no lengthy exposition to ignore — Jakub Dvorsky and his team have a laser-sighted focus on puzzle design.

And what puzzles they are! Machinarium features a mix of traditional logic problems and modern, multi-step inventory manipulation puzzles that, by and large, fall into the range where challenge and critical thinking intersect. The result is a game that feels organic and internally consistent, with none of the arbitrary, "guess-what-the-designer-wants" logic that so often plagues puzzle games.

If you do happen to get stuck — and that's ok! — there is a two-fold hint system that should give you a nudge in the right direction: a hint system, and a full-blown (and beautifully illustrated) in-game walkthrough. The rub: the hint system is generally pretty limited, and access to the walkthrough is blocked by an intentionally awful LCD-screen shmup, which is boring and time-consuming enough to discourage the mentally lazy. (One of the iPad 2 version's quirks is that it's, y'know, impossible to alt+tab to a walkthrough, adding yet another barrier for those inclined to cut corners.)

When touch screens became a viable input device for the games industry, the consensus was that point-and-click adventures would be a natural fit. This is particularly true for Machinarium: Amanita decided to limit players' range of motion to a few actionable hotspots in each area. In other words, Machinarium dispels the need for super-precision touch controls — the game is designed to require as little movement as necessary.

Machinarium, as a whole, is remarkably tidy. It begins with an unnamed protagonist being dumped, rather unceremoniously, on the outskirts of a city whose skyline is dominated by an ominous spire; it ends with a flashback of the events that set the game in motion in the first place. The puzzles employ a similar rolling structure: each puzzle is discrete and self-contained, but the game as a whole is tightly paced and given momentum by a set of smart, complementary design choices.

First: solving any given puzzle in Machinarium generally results in the acquisition of another inventory item that — unbeknownst to the player — will be critical to a later scenario. Secondly: though the town square acts as a hub for the gameworld, the bulk of Machinarium's puzzles take place inside individual rooms or buildings, i.e. on a single screen. The result is that players enter each area already armed with the necessary tools and aren't forced to travel very far to solve puzzles. Like a shark, Machinarium thrives because its design encourage progress, not stagnation — every step.

My only real hiccup with Machinarium's high-level dynamics is that the gameworld doesn't always do enough to inform or motivate the player. For example, an early puzzle tasks players with helping a group of musicians fix their instruments, but the player has no real reason to help them except that they happen to exist in the gameworld. The game's sparse narrative components are great when it comes to contextualized story telling, but they don't particularly account for the player's need to, say, fix someone's didgeridoo. Instead, it's design by tautology: Machinarium is a puzzle game, so it should include puzzles.

Everything else in the game is beautifully realized. The puzzles, full of circuitboards, waterworks, and mechanical tinkering; the protagonist's evocative animation; the mournful soundtrack — all of these things exist to sell the idea that a world populated entirely by robots could be plausible, and that this particular robot has something important to contribute to it. Nevertheless, there are several moments — even after you discover the game's central conflict — that are aren't necessarily tethered to any kind of narrative or in-game logic: puzzles are solved because they simply exist, not because it's clear that they somehow contribute to one robot's quest to save his city from … well, bullies.

Bullies, of all things. How quaint, right?

And maybe that's why we had to help those poor, broke musicians — because Amanita Design hopes that we're just nice people. That Machinarium is, give or take, a beautifully evocative story about playground bullying should indicate the kind of charming, understated game it is. Even the name, Machinarium, suggests a mysterious, whimsical place — I do hope you explore it.

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The Dark Meadow by Phosphor Games is an upcoming action adventurey horror game and despite heaps of excitement, we still don't know a whole lot about– Yet, anyway. Well, that's all going to change on October 6th, when the game is unleashed to the world, per a recent announcement from the developer.

Here's the trailer again, if you didn't catch it over the weekend:

Hopefully we'll be able to do some additional preview coverage before the 6th, but if you're looking for other similarly excited people to chat about the game with, head into our forums.

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If there’s one genre that’s prolific on the App Store, it’s mini-game collections. It’s not particularly surprising considering the general appeal for games that can offer small doses of gameplay for gaming on the go. Flick Champions [$0.99 / HD] looks to expand the genre with its own collection of sports themed mini-games. While Flick Champions certainly succeeds at providing some much-needed diversity in its sports mini-games, the fact that a lot of the better games are locked at the onset may irritate potential players.

As its name implies, the mini-games in Flick Champions are all centered on simple flicks and swipes in order to play each of the eight included mini-games. For example, both Tennis and Hockey are played as glorified Pong simulators which have you swipe around the field of play in order to block the ball (or puck) from scoring points on you. Other games, such as Bowling and Basketball actually require precise flicks in order maximize your scores in harder difficulties. Each game also has a variety of options to tinker with, allowing you to customize certain rules and make the gameplay as long (or as short) as you want.

When it comes to actual gameplay, Flick Champions has some fun games, but not all of them are going to be particularly compelling. As mentioned above, Tennis and Hockey are incredibly simplistic and, while fun, aren’t going to win any awards. Soccer is a sort of turn-based magnetic foosball simulator, and can be frustrating since a lot of the game is dependent on missteps from the opposing AI. Bowling and Archery were my most favorite games, as they actually require enough timing and skill that your success is mostly dependent on you and not the AI. The same goes for mini-golf, which features a whole 18-hole course and would be a good casual game on its own if it had more courses.

Another thing Flick Champions does a good job with is its overall presentation. The game has a definite Olympic-style motif which is prevalent in everything from your initial selection of a country to represent to its round-robin tournament ‘Cup’ gameplay mode, which has you playing against other countries for trophies (and experience). Also, the entire game, from the playfields to even the menus has a striking visual appearance (at least on retina devices). Some folks may be turned off by the simplicity of the player models (they look similar to ‘Mii’ avatars), but overall Flick Champions nails its visual style.

My only complaint with Flick Champions is the fact that only half the games are unlocked when you first pick up the title. Even more frustrating, the four that must be unlocked (Bowling, Archery, Mini-golf and Football) are by far the most interesting (and deep) games that are available in Flick Champions. Considering that the primary way of unlocking games is by accumulating experience through playing games, you’re going to see a lot of the first four games (at least a few hours’ worth) before you start unlocking the other titles.  Of course, an IAP option exists to unlock all collectibles and games instantly, but it seems a bit odd to have to pay extra to unlock these other games when you’ve already paid for the initial app download. I understand the need to create 'hooks' in order to encourage your player base to return to your game, but it would have been nice to have one or two more games available at the onset.

Overall, if you’re a fan of mini-game collections and you’re looking for a new fix, Flick Champions does a solid job of satisfying that need. There are certainly enough different games (assuming you’ve unlocked them all) for variety, and the available options and collectibles (along with a harsh difficulty on ‘Hard’) means that you’ll have plenty of reasons to return. However, if you don’t care for simplistic gameplay (or if you’re not a fan of sports games), don’t expect Flick Champions to offer anything particularly captivating.

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As we mentioned in our preview of Stardash [$1.99], developer Orange Pixel set out to make a game the way Nintendo would. The result? A lovingly-crafted tribute to Game Boy platformers of old. It may lack the polish Big N gives its games, but pulls off a challenge more common to a time when creators didn't worry about keeping the lowest common denominator up to speed.

Stardash is a simple game with a simple formula. It's divided into 40 levels over the course of 4 worlds, and each level can be completed in as little as 20 – 40 seconds. The levels don't call for much exploration — they're just series of platforms and baddies that do whatever it takes to bring you down. Unless you're a platforming superstar, they'll probably succeed. This game is made with equal measures of love and sadism.

Borrowing a page from games like Super Meat Boy, Stardash doesn't let your death drag you out of the action. You're not limited by lives, there's no lengthy loading sequence and the music never stops. This keeps death from being too frustrating, a a very good thing when you'll probably be dying a lot. The first few levels are forgiving, but as you progress you'll find a need for more and more precision — and more and more things that will straight up kill you if you don't already know what to expect.

The difficulty in Stardash can be cruelly high, but it rarely feels unfair. The controls are excellent, some of the best on-screen controls I've used. A few levels rely on your ability to jump as high or as far as possible with pixel-perfect precision, but most (thankfully) don't. Instead, the most difficult bits are all about speed, timing, and careful jumping. Dashing off an edge and jumping in midair will save you in many circumstances, and once you master that technique most levels will feel hard but fair.

If just completing the game's main levels isn't enough of a challenge for you, Stardash has plenty more to offer. Each level has two stars that can be earned: one for completing it under a tight time limit, and one for collecting all its stars. It's usually impossible to do both at once. Each level also has a hidden key that goes to opening one of the temples, a sealed level that's only available when you collect all of a world's 9 keys.

For the truly dedicated, there are also a selection of extremely difficult Game Center/OpenFeint achievements to earn. Oh, and your high score only maintains through levels if you don't die, so you'll need to work on your survivability to place on the leaderboard. Sounds easy enough, right?

Unfortunately my time with Stardash wasn't problem free, thanks to a number of technical glitches. The game didn't obey my mute switch. Music kept on playing even after I turned the screen off, too. Leaving a level from the pause menu would in that level becoming locked again if I'd just reached it. The level-selection menu didn't react consistently to input. And while I played on iPhone, our forum users report several issues with the controls on iPad and iCade. Its disconcerting to see bugs of this scale in a released game.

Still, nothing kept me from spending hours playing Stardash. I played until my hands cramped, running through some levels dozens of times. If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result, then I completely lost my head over this game. It hits the sweet spot of difficulty, sometimes frustrating but never too frustrating. It's also perfectly wrapped in its Game Boy aesthetic, sound, visuals and all. This isn't a game for the easily defeated, but if you're willing to persevere then Stardash will leave you well rewarded.

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