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Here's something awesome: You can rock out Max Adventure [$.99] with a projector, TV, or any other video display device with a VGA input and a Apple Dock to VGA adapter. (It also might work with the component and composite adapters as well, but Imangi hasn't had a chance to test them — let us know if you own either of these cables and are able to get it going.)

To show you how, Imangi Studios has released a neat little YouTube tutorial video about these "video-out" capabilities — tech-speak for "yo, you can plug a cable in your thing to make a game work on a TV or whatever." Check it out!

This capability isn't new by any stretch, but only a small number of iOS games take advantage of it. Each time a really good game like Max Adventure adopts the tech, we get excited like we just found a Zero bar buried in our couch.

Max Adventure's video-out, by the way, runs natively at that projector's full screen resolution, which is 1024×768. We're told the actual implementation of it was pretty easy — Imangi was able to drop it into Max Adventure in a day. The possibilities!

Of course, totally wireless iPhone-to-TV would be better, right? That's something Imangi is thinking about. The studio told us that it wants to develop for Apple TV so it could stream content over AirPlay. And while there's no solid way to do that with the SDK as it is, Apple could, theoretically, write up some APIs that would allow real-time streaming in lower resolutions similar to how OnLive operates. The needed hardware is, apparently, already in the iPhone 4, according to Imangi.

In case I lost you there, no worries. I was just spitting out some stuff about grey magicks and tech voodoo that I don't even completely understand. What I do get, though, is that Max Adventure is pretty rockin', so give that a check if you're in the mood for a game.

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This one comes as a shock. In an age where gargantuan mega-corporations are gobbling up smaller development studios for prices reaching into the tens and hundreds of millions, everyone seems to want to play the guessing game of who the next acquisition will be. But I don't think this one crossed anybody's mind. Australian developer Firemint, who have been making games for over a decade but struck it big with their iOS titles Flight Control [99¢/Lite/HD] and Real Racing [$4.99/Lite/HD] in 2009, and more recently with Real Racing 2 [$9.99] in 2010, have struck a deal to buy fellow Aussie developer Infinite Interactive, who have existed for twice as long as Firemint and are most widely known for their Puzzle Quest series.

The juicy details regarding pricing weren't disclosed, but it sounds like a happy venture for all parties involved. Infinite Interactive will consolidate its team into Firemint's in their newly expanded Melbourne offices.  Steve Fawkner, founder of Infinite Interactive, will take on a management role at Firemint and continue working with his current team on a project that is already in progress. All games developed by the newly combined studios will be released under the Firemint name. It sounds like Steve Fawkner and Firemint founder Rob Murray had been flirting with the idea of collaborating on projects at various points over the last decade, and now with the combined power of their respective studios they will be able to do just that.

We'll be eager to find out exactly what kind of projects will come from the new-look Firemint, and until we get any further information regarding new titles you can drop by this discussion thread in our forums and leave your opinion about this latest merger.

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Here's a question we don't consider enough: what happens when a studio pulls the plug on its micro-transaction fueled games? The answer is obvious and a bit unsettling. You don't get to play anymore, and all those ad impressions you handed out, all of those extra games you downloaded in exchange for precious in-game coin, and all the real money you spent just disappears into the ether.

Unfortunately, we bring up this subject as a result of a recent ngmoco decision. The studio has announced plans to "shut down" Epic Pet Wars [Free], Epic Chef Wars [Free], Epic Crime Wars [Free], and Titan Wars [Free] on Jan. 16, 2011. After this date, these games will "no longer be playable."

Epic Pet Wars was one of ngmoco's first major acquisitions as part of a larger acquisition of developer Miraphonic in 2009. At the time, ngmoco's Plus+ platform was a fledgling one and the studio presumably wanted to flesh out its offerings utilizing Miraphonic's comparatively massive player base. Now it has dozens of Plus+ games, most of which support in-game purchases, and many which enjoyed boosts on the top download charts thanks to in-game offers from Wars games.

Games with expiration dates are a new-ish concept, though we should realistically expect all our cloud-based, online-focused romps to come to an end at some point. Business is cold and hard and if the numbers don't line up? Well, this is what happens, though I can't imagine anyone, especially the fans of these latest casualties, can be happy about it.

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Last week we posted about the Indie iPhone Holiday Sale, a joint effort from six developers, each with fantastic indie titles, to raise money for Penny Arcade's Child's Play charity. It really doesn't get more win/win than this. For $6, you get six great games, and some of the proceeds go to helping improve the quality of life of kids in hospitals across America.

The following games are still on sale until the 2nd of January:

• Canabalt, by Semi Secret Software – Review
• Solipskier, by Mikengreg – Review
• Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor, by Tiger Style Games – Review
• Osmos, by Hemisphere Games – Review
• Eliss, by Steph Thirion – Review
• Drop7, by Area/Code Inc. – Review

To celebrate raising so much cash for kids in need, Semi Secret Software made a substantial announcement: Canabalt is now totally open source via the MIT license. This is the full latest version of the game that hasn't even been approved yet on the App Store which features some pretty sick OpenGL optimizations I've been told, allowing the game to run at 60fps on recent devices.

If you're a pioneering iOS developer, check out the source here. The license they're using is open enough that you can basically use the game engine for anything you want, provided you're not redistributing the game code, graphics, or sound. This really makes me wonder if we'll see a Canabalt spinoff that features all the unanswered suggestions from our forums.

Either way, this is great news for the developers participating in the sale, developers who are interested in looking under the hood of Canabalt, and most importantly: The kids benefitting from these donations.

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After months (years?) of rumors, Apple finally released the iPad in 2010. iPad gaming hasn't quite taken off as quickly as on the iPhone/iPod, but here's a cross section of some of the best iPad games of 2010. If you just opened an iPad for Christmas, here are some games to look at.

World of Goo, $9.99 – [Review] – [Forum Thread] – World of Goo is a game about creating towers and bridges with stretchy pieces of goo. It becomes much more than that though as you progress, which is one of the most fascinating and rewarding things about this natural-feeling, and beautifully directed puzzler. It's truly one of the best games ever released on the iPad.

Plants vs. Zombies HD, $6.99 – [Review] – [Forum Thread] – Developer PopCap Games manages to splice in whimsy on top of a satisfying mix of careful tower selection and defense. In Plants vs. Zombies HD, you are the lone protector of a backyard who must put up seed spitting plants and other abominations in order to beat back an advancing zombie hord. The towers are diverse, the amount of options are incredible, and the hours of entertainment provided are incalculable.

Osmos for iPad, $4.99 – [Review] – [Forum Thread] – Osmos for iPad is a beautiful and relaxing game in which you, essentially, take a big bubble and make it steadily grow bigger and bigger. A great soundtrack eases tension and the simple play lends itself to a good, calm time.

Corpse Craft, Free – [Review] – [Forum Thread] – Corpse Craft is a fun and rewarding match-3 title with an interesting tower defense twist that has you using turning matched blocks into building materials for your reanimated soldiers. The game's greatest accomplishment though is its balance between character and mechanics. The brilliantly grim art direction and narrative doesn't detract from the gameplay, nor was development time seemingly sacrificed for the inclusion of the brilliant universe Corpse Craft is based in.

Monkey Island Tales 1 HD, $6.99 – [Review] – [Forum Thread] – The Tales of Monkey Island series was fantastic on the PC and Mac and developer Telltale Games successfully ported over that experience to the iPad. Rich in humour, character, puzzles, and reverence to its forerunners, this is the ultimate adventure game for Monkey Island fans. It's also pretty good as a standalone point-and-click adventure game.

Puzzle Agent HD, $0.99 – [Review] – [Forum Thread] – Puzzle Agent HD is a non-traditional point-and-click adventure title featuring the grim art of Graham Annable. It has a few technical problems, but the puzzles and the narrative are deeply involving and worth your time.

The Tower®, $7.99 – [Review] – [Forum Thread] – A lazy bit of shorthand that we use to describe Yoot Tower is "SimCity in the sky." In the game, you construct a tower out of the living spaces like offices, condos, hotel rooms, and even restaurants. As you progress, you'll need to start paying attention to the stress levels of the people who have a financial stake in your tower, while also attempting to keep the tower growing to floor 100. It's fun, complex, and most all, pretty rewarding. Talk about a time sucker for the ages.

Cut the Rope HD, $1.99 – [Review] – [Forum Thread] – Cut the Rope HD is a straight port of its other iPhone brethren, but it just feels so right on the iPad, which boasts a larger screen area to cut the rope holding the precious candy so it can sail into the adorable Om Nom's mouth.

Across Age ™ HD, $4.99 – [Review] – [Forum Thread] – Across Age HD is the closest you'll get to a Zelda on the iPad. And, really, that's selling it short. On top of the traditional dungeon-based play, Across Age HD offers rewarding hack-and-slash combat, a neat time travel mechanic, and decent controls.

Fruit Ninja HD, $0.99 – [Lite- [Review] – [Forum Thread] – Fruit Ninja HD is essentially just a bigger version of its iPhone cousin wherein you chop up fruit for points. It's a simple game that requires simple gestures, but there's just something about it that has kept us playing for hours and hours.

CHAOS RINGS for iPad, $7.99 – [Review] – [Forum Thread] – Chaos Rings for iPad is a creative take on the traditional JRPG. Developer Square Enix forgoes the usual narrative in favor of a shorter, much more focused journey that has teams of gender-confused people taking on monsters and then each other in a contest to win immortality. A deep battle system, a great hi-def look, and fun, bite-sized adventures make this a must-have.

Cubed Rally Racer, $1.99 – [Lite / iPad] – [Review] – [Forum Thread] – A wonderful homage to isometric racing games, Cubed Rally Racer is completely randomized, so you'll never play the same track twice. Similarly, if a particular track is too difficult, you can simply generate a new one to play. The iPad version features split screen single-device multiplayer which is a ton of fun.

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I'm a firm believer that Rovio Mobile has a high-ceilinged vault in the back of its office filled with mounds of cash and coins from the billions and billions of Angry Birds [$.99 / Lite / HD] purchases. I reckon it'll need to build a new money vault rather soon as a direct result of the game's latest update, which adds 15 new themed levels and the long-awaited Mighty Eagle, a bit of paid DLC that adds a new, pig-annihilating bird to the Angry Birds roster.

Let's back up a second. Update 1.5 adds a Wild Western-themed chapter called "Ham 'Em High." A total of 15 new levels are introduced, none of which feature anything stunningly new from a design perspective aside from cowboy hats and sombreros. It also adds a new Golden Egg "for y'all city slickers" to discover.

But the update also adds the Mighty Eagle, a one-time, $.99 bird purchase. The Eagle is basically the Angry Birds version of a nuclear bomb. To use it, you slingshot a can of sardines into the environment. When the can stops, the Eagle swoops down and banks off the geometry, causing the physics to react from the aftershock. This clears the level of all pigs and then you can progress.

The thing to note here is that the Eagle can only be used once an hour if you're using it in levels that you haven't completed. But if you use it in levels that you have completed, you can go to town as often as you like, with no hour cooldown.

There's a cool meta-game with the Eagle, too. After you clear a level, a destruction indicator pops up and reports the percentage of the level you destroyed. The goal here is to to completely wreck a level. Once you've got 100 percent, you get a small feather next to the stars on the level select screen, luring completionists in to replaying the whole game again with the Eagle.

It's hard for me to tell if the Mighty Eagle disrupts the game's balance. I think it's more of a creative level-skip than anything else, considering you don't get the same sort of satisfaction from pounding the Eagle "Win" button. But these new levels are the only ones I've yet to beat, so my frame of reference is bad. The hour between skips seems like a good compromise between letting you skip forward if you're stuck but preventing you from just skipping through the entire game.

All in all, this is another good update from Rovio, and the new Mighty Eagle destruction gauge makes the new IAP a must-have for every Angry Birds lover.

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Last year Action = Reaction Labs released Aves [Free], a (then) paid tech demo disguised as a archery game that featured both binaural 3D audio and an animation technology known as "BioReplicants". We explained what this all was in our review:

Aves uses GHOST binaural audio, which requires headphones, but creates an eerily realistic three dimensional effect to all the in-game music and sound. The animation technology in the game is called "BioReplicants," and has no preset animations for the birds flying around in the game. Instead, the physics model is built around a virtual muscular-skeleton system to create a bird rag doll that moves and flies identical to how a bird would fly in the real world.

At GDC this year, we met with the guys from Action = Reaction Labs, and while they weren't ready to show anything publicly, we saw what the next iteration of the BioReplicants technology looked like. Recently, they offered us a video of this all in action:

If you find yourself watching this video saying, "OK so why is a robot getting shot cool?" Well, here's the deal- iPhone games largely use completely canned animations for everything your character does from running, to jumping, to shooting. Quite a few iPhone games such as Stair Dismount [Free] use ragdoll animations which amounts to the game treating a model quite literally like a ragdoll and having it procedurally bounce off things with its limbs flailing to create more realistic death animations. Wikipedia does a great job of explaining how ragdoll physics works if you want to know more.

What BioReplicants does is sort of combine the two. With this technology, instead of how many games work, where you basically just shoot your opponents and the only feedback visual feedback you get is a little flourish around your crosshair until they finally just fall over dead, you'd see their standard shooting animation, modified in real time based on the forces your own bullets are exerting on them. If you look at the above video as "holy cow I can't even believe all the physics math going on behind the scenes" instead of "hey a robot getting shot," it can pretty easily blow your mind, especially considering that this physics engine apparently performs well enough to be feasible to use for iPhone games.

Like any tech demo, it all comes down to how the technology is eventually implemented in an actual game. Yes, the new BioReplicants stuff is cool, and I expect it to be downright amazing for people who have experience with working with 3D models and physics in video games, it's an uphill battle to make middleware like this interesting to your average gamer. Regardless, it's cool seeing what's technically possible, and I really look forward to seeing someone taking the BioReplicants engine and making something incredible.

For more demonstrations of BioReplicants in action, check out the Action = Reaction demo site.

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