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A shoulder surfer would describe Super Crate Box [$.99] as a mess, a pixelated mash of vivid colors and explosions wrapped in a whirlwind of erratic movement, 8-bit sound, and some decidedly bizarre character design. They’d be right. Super Crate Box is a mess, but it owns its fast-moving arcade chaos, and deftly brings you along for the ride.

You don’t even realize that you embraced it until it’s an hour later and you hate that godforsaken disc launcher with the passion of many angry men. What renders you helpless has a lot to do with its infinite, looping structure and purity of play. This is a minimalist, throwback-style game that wants you to do one thing: capture crates for a high score. The hooks are in its constituent parts, which seamlessly blend into a cacophony of arcade action surrounding this pure purpose of play. It becomes hypnotizing, fast.

Your typical game goes a little something like this: on a flat plane, enemies tumble out of an invisible pipe in the opening of a level, and you, while they fall, capture crates and defeat those enemies with the weapons you pick up from said crates. If an enemy hits the lava pit because you didn’t kill it, it pops back out of the top at double speed and joins the ever-growing conga line of even more brainless enemies.

Avoidance is key, but so is aggression. Each crate contains a new weapon that forces you to strategize distance versus time at the drop of a hat. As you play, you’ll unlock even more weapons, all of which do something completely different and are often devastating. Laser guns, mines, rocket launchers, grenade launchers, the shotgun are just a taste of what’s on the roster. Each has its own special kind of spread and weaknesses. Some even have big negatives, like the disc launcher, which is a single fire gun that has bullets that bounce back at you.

Whatever pacing you’re imagining, multiply that by 11 and you’ll get a sense of the raw madness that is Super Crate Box. One second you’re charging up a laser gun to rid a platform of its occupants, the next you’re dropping down to another level and using a mine in order to put a stop-gap on that side so you have enough free-time to grab a crate on another platform. The frenzy absorbs you, and the raw precision becomes a second nature thing. People say it’s a mess, and it is, but I’m OK with it. I welcome all of it.

As you play, you’ll steadily unlock more guns and more characters to use in the game. It’s your usual incentive program, but where it departs is in the fact that it also rewards failure. If you die 500 times, for example, you’ll unlock Super Meat Boy as a character. Simply gathering crates, no matter how many times you die along the way, is also a valid way to unlock stuff.

I’m surprised by how much I dig the virtual controls; Halfbot and Vlambeer did a heck of a job translating the action to the touchscreen and then making it feel as natural, and as split-second responsive as the game’s PC and Mac counterparts. On iPhone, the two-button UI is a tad too bulky. On iPad, the game feels at home. Regardless, these guys nailed it. This game feels good.

Another place you can play is on the iCade. Currently, the controls have been flip-flopped inadvertently in an update, but when they’re working ideally, they feel great. I think this is the way to play since you get that tactile feedback.

People in general are really responding to Super Crate Box, and our community digs it. I love it. Its high-octane play married with its no-frills, arcade game design that keeps me collecting crates and blasting enemies into delightful little pieces of monster. I’m thinking it’ll grab you, too.

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Last week when we learned the classic laser disc arcade game Mad Dog McCree [$4.99] was coming to the App Store, I was stoked. I had fond memories of gunslinging at that giant arcade cabinet as a kid, and figured reliving the experience on my small touch screen device would give me that great shot of nostalgia that I’ve been fortunate enough to encounter often on the App Store. Then I actually fired up the iOS version, and learned once again that nostalgia is a fickle beast.

Mad Dog McCree has not aged well, and I’m not so sure it was ever a very good game to begin with. With a certain part of the video game spectrum always striving for the most realistic visuals possible, and the introduction of disc-based storage in gaming which started becoming prevalent in the late 80s and early 90s, mankind embarked on one of its most hideous inventions of all time – full-motion video games. What could be more real than actual real-life video footage?! It was THE FUTURE.

Unfortunately, the biggest drawback to full-motion video is that it’s extremely linear. Rather than an artificial world which you built from the ground up and could manipulate in an infinite amount of ways, you had to plan ahead for what could happen and then produce those results on film, limiting the level of variety in the game. As such, games like Mad Dog McCree allowed very little player interaction or variation.

My 9 year old me didn’t care about these things, though. All I knew is that I could point a big plastic revolver at cowboy outlaws on a massive screen and they would react to me shooting them. Crazy stuff. That also brings up one major point of contention with the iOS version of Mad Dog McCree – there’s no light gun. This sort of takes away a huge part of the appeal of a game like this, however, I actually found the tap-to-shoot mechanic on the touch screen to work just fine and I didn’t end up feeling like I was missing out by not having a gun peripheral.

As for how well the rest of the game translates, the port itself is very good. The video sequences look good enough, though obviously lightyears away from the high definition visuals we’re all accustomed to nowadays. Aside from the natural old-school look of a 20+ year old title, the menus and interface in the iOS version are really quite ugly. They look especially jagged and blurry on Retina Display devices, and could use a high resolution upgrade. It’s a pretty minor thing, but it sticks out.

Gameplay comes in an original Arcade mode and a new, easier Casual mode. Truthfully, both of them are stupid hard. Mad Dog McCree requires lightning quick reaction times and good memorization of how the levels play out in order to be successful. Enemies can be hard to see in the environment, so tremendous amounts of trial-and-error are necessary to learn the ins and outs of each level. In the iOS version, it’s easy to skip cutscenes and retry sections quickly, and the ability to quit and continue where you left off makes actually completing the game a more realistic endeavor (not to mention, at $1 a pop in the arcades if memory serves me correctly, a whole lot cheaper).

Mad Dog McCree is the product of a FMV era that was light on gameplay and heavy on the “omg look the graphics are actual people!”, but it’s definitely earned its spot in gaming history. The iOS port is really pretty good, and whether or not you should pick it up will ultimately come down to if you actually enjoyed the original game or if you just remember it through the rose-colored glasses of a 9 year old, like me. Strangely, as shallow and frustrating as the game is, I find myself going back to it over and over again. For some reason I really want to see it through, most likely because I never would have been able to as a kid in the arcade.

I don’t think it’s as fun as other iOS laserdisc ports like Road Blaster [$4.99/HD] and Cobra Command [$6.99], but Mad Dog McCree does a solid job at translating the gunslinging action of the arcade original to the touchscreen of iOS. If you’re a fan of the source material, then you should be pretty satisfied with this port.

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When it was initially released for DSiWare last year, Shantae: Risky’s Revenge [Free / $2.99 IAP], was an underappreciated gem on a service that most people didn’t bother using. Now, thankfully, the game might find a little more grounding with the wider release on iOS, but as we’ve seen time and time again, platformers are a difficult sale on touchscreens, and Shantae, despite its pedigree, will have to keep up.

The game is a sequel to the Shantae, which was released for the Gameboy Color well into the rein of the Gameboy Advance. It follows the story of the belly-dancing, hair-whipping Shantae, as she seeks out her arch nemesis, Risky Boots, in order to get a magical lamp.

As a game, Shantae takes most of its cues from Castlevania and Metroid, meaning it’s essentially a large, open-world 2D platformer, where gaining certain transformational powers will unlock new areas. You’ll be able to turn into a monkey to scale walls, an elephant to pound rocks or a mermaid to swim underwater. As you discover new powers, you’ll be backtracking and searching out new nooks and crannies to explore. On top of those powers, you’ll also get magic spells, which are purchasable in the main hub town, and performance enhancers, which enable you to attack faster, stronger and more.

Most interesting is its introduction of a somewhat three dimensional plane, where each smaller 2D area has several levels to it — like a stack of papers with levels drawn on them — you’ll bounce forward and backward through each section. It’s too bad they’re not used more throughout as it’s truly the most interesting addition to the genre.

It’s all rather clever and the level design keeps up, which is a good thing, because in general, most Metroidvania games we’ve seen so far have been lacking in their ambition. Unfortunately, you won’t find guides of where to go and the maps in the game are terrible and unhelpful — Shantae is all about exploring and figuring things out for yourself. This is frustrating at points, especially when you’re at a loss for where to go next, but the reward for finding your own way often makes up for it, even if it does make it so you never feel like your properly progressing. Despite its clear influences, it’s not derivative of either of the above games, and mostly forges its own path while maintaining the feeling of a good homage.

Most frustrating is the lack of a quicksave option, and the fact the game has a tenuous relationship with multitasking, working seemingly at random, doesn’t help. I’ve complained about this before with iOS games and you can call me weak for doing so, but when playing on a mobile device, I’d like a quicksave option for when I need to put it down for a moment — even if it’s just one slot, a bookmark to come back to but not exploit. There’s also an option for iCloud saving, but it doesn’t appear to be working at the moment, but thankfully, the IAP of the full game has no problems transferring from device to device.

Visually, the game is hit or miss. It’s weird to say, but the game actually looks better on the lower-resolution DSi screen, because the pixel matching feels more natural. On retina display, the it looks a bit muddy and it isn’t helped by the hideous bright-blue border around everything. It looks even worse on an iPad, like a blown-out tiny image. Despite itself, it still manages to be passable on the quality of the animation alone. WayForward has a way with 2D platformers that few developers can imitate and even through the pixels don’t look quite right, the game itself never feels gaudy or horrible and you’ll quickly get used to it. I don’t think they needed to invest in making everything a higher resolution, but I feel like the emulation of the pixels could have been a little more clear, especially considering the border around the game screen and characters are all converted up.

The sound too, is worth mentioning. Jack Kaufman’s soundtrack is like something pulled straight out Aladdin, with a chip-tuned, Middle-Eastern vibe pushing you along the whole way. The game was created to look and sound in the vein of SNES and Genesis classics and it succeeds in nearly every way.

Unfortunately, it’s still a platformer on iOS and the virtual controls will never have the tuned accuracy of a physical stick. It does feel like the game was loosened up a bit from its DSi counterpart to correct this, although since Nintendo doesn’t allow for downloading older games onto a different device, I can’t redownload the DSiWare version to confirm this. It’s certainly a bit easier than most of the games that inspired it, which is nice considering the controls aren’t as precise as they need to be. For what it’s worth, the virtual stick works as well as it can, but can’t be customized or moved, so if your hands don’t conform to where they’re at, you’re out of luck.

If you don’t have a DSi or 3DS, or you just don’t want to plop down $12 to play on those systems, Shantae: Risky’s Revenge is a solid port, but marred with the same problems we’ve come to expect on iOS. It’s certainly one of the better virtual control schemes and you’ll only occasionally find problems with it, especially when required to jump and attack, but overall, it retains the engaging gameplay from the original.

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It's been about a year since decades-old studio Elite Systems brought their ZX Spectrum: Elite Collection [iPhone, iPad] and the first wave of its retro titles to the App Store. Since then 150 titles have become available through their Spectrum emulator, giving retro fans much old school gaming goodness to play with.

Since then, Elite has been hard at work engineering a completely new system through which to bring an even broader range of retro classic to iOS gamers. I recently had a conversation with Elite co-founder Steve Wilcox who filled me in on some of the titles that are on the way in the coming Elite Collection of 8-bit home computer games, as well as details surrounding their newly completed proprietary technology that went into it. The new system is a facilitator, of sorts, that was designed in such a way as to not incorporate, reference, or in any way rely upon third-party property and that is able to deliver to iOS games that originated on platforms other than just the ZX Spectrum in near-100% original form.

Elite has been busy licensing classics from a wide range of developers and it sounds like iOS gamers are in for a trove of titles to be delivered through the studio's new system. The first stage in the deployment consists of nine games developed across North America, the UK, and Germany.

The launch games of North American origin are:

• Black Magic (the action-adventure, published by Datasoft in 1987)
• M.U.L.E (the seminal multiplayer game from Ozark Softscape, published in 1983)
• Alternate Reality: The City (the first in the cult RPG series, published by Datasoft in 1987)

The launch games from the UK are:

• First Samurai (the platform game, published by Image Works in 1992)
• Uridium (the sci-fi side-scrolling shoot 'em up from Hewson, published in 1986)
• Paradroid (Andrew Breybrook’s puzzle-shooter, published by Hewson in 1985)

The launch games from Germany are:

• Enforcer (the shooter from revered German programmer Manfred Trenz, published by CP Verlag in 1992)
• Bundesliga Manager (the football (soccer) management simulation, developed by Werner Krahe and Jens Onnen, published by Software 2000 in 1989)
• Denaris (the modified Katakis, an R-Type clone, again from Manfred Trenz, published by Rainbow Arts in 1989)

These games will be released as individual iOS applications, three at a time. The first three titles from the list of nine set to arrive in the App Store are Black Magic, First Samurai and Enforcer, which should land by month's end. A great many more titles will follow, and Wilcox tells me that, down the road, game bundles configured as collections will be offered, as well.

On a touchscreen device, controls are, of course, a particular challenge when bringing over games that were written with joysticks and keyboards in mind. And, while in such cases a touchscreen is never a match for physical controls, Elite has done an impressive job with the highly customizable "iDaptive" controls used in their iOS Spectrum offerings (demonstrated in this video). Steve informs me that in the upcoming Elite Collection, the iDaptive controls are brought to the fore and will allow players to heavily customize the control experience.

As a huge fan of the solid, basic gameplay of the classics of old, I've been impressed with Elite's efforts so far with its ZX Spectrum: Elite Collection. This latest news from the quarter-century old studio shows a true commitment to bringing these classics to a new generation of gamers and is an effort I whole-heartedly applaud.

We should have the first wave of games in our hands in just a few days and will share our reactions shortly. Stay tuned.

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It was back during GDC 2011, during Eric Chahi's Classic Game Postmortem presentation, that we first learned that the French gamemaker would be bringing a 20th Anniversary Edition of his acclaimed classic Another World to iOS with the help of DotEmu, through BulkyPix. A few days back, I interviewed Chahi and shared his thoughts on the coming App Store release and the iOS game scene in general. Since then, I've been playing through the release version of Another World for iOS and wanted to take the opportunity to post an early review of the title so readers know what they've got to look forward to on the game's September 22nd App Store launch day.

Another World (which was also known as Out of this World in certain markets) is a cinematic platform adventure originally released on the Amiga back in 1991. The game tells the story of physicist Lester Chaykin. As is illustrated in the game's introductory sequence, Lester returns to his underground laboratory one stormy night to continue work on a particle acceleration experiment. Shortly after the experiment is underway, a bolt of lightning strikes the laboratory, sending millions of volts into the accelerator and resulting in the freak teleportation of Lester to a far-away alien planet.

After close run-ins with razor slugs and a particularly intimidating muscular beast, Lester is taken prisoner by the humanoid aliens indigenous to the strange world. With help from a friendly, captive alien, Lester endeavors to escape from the underground prison to which he was taken, a feat which proves to be extremely challenging, given the dangerous environments and creatures (and puzzles) that lie ahead.

Reviewing the iOS version of Another World is really a process of reviewing how it has faced translation from the desktop computer of years past to the multitouch devices with which we game, today. It's not so much a task of reviewing the game itself, and that is because, over the years, it has received such consistent exceptionally high ratings from gamers and the media alike. With its rotoscoped polygon-based animation overlying ethereal and stunning backdrop artistry (wrung from a mere 16-color palette), the game was unlike anything anyone had ever seen before. And, crucially, beneath that oh, so pretty face is real platform puzzle challenge. Many gamers, myself included, consider Another World to be one of the best games ever published.

Far from the 320×200 pixel, 16-color screens of the machines for which Another World was originally released are the Retina displays and 10-inch iPads we've come to enjoy. In bringing the game to iOS, the designers have introduced much more striking "HD" graphics that take advantage of our evolved technology and feel fully present-day. For those wanting to relive the more sparse and pixellated visuals of the original, a two-finger swipe down the screen will toggle in the oldschool graphics at any point in the game. All of the original sounds have been re-mastered, as well, for a deeper sensation of audio ambience.

As for screen swiping, it's not just about toggling graphics modes. The iOS version of the game features two different methods of control. The most basic is an on-screen D-pad and action button that can be positioned anywhere on the screen and works about how you'd expect. The developers spent a great deal of time engineering a much nicer method of control, as well. The "Touch" mode was designed to add virtually no clutter to the game screen. Lester's movements are controlled in this mode by tapping on — or dragging outwards to — the left or right side of the display. A double-tap sends him into a sprint, and sliding up or down initiates a jump or a duck. One difficulty the developers faced in engineering this mode was the number of simultaneous actions that Lester can perform, such as running and jumping. To make this work, once Lester is running, a swipe up the screen will send him into a long jump — there's no need to sustain a touch to keep him in motion. The Touch mode is by far the superior method of control. It's simple and succeeds in making the game feel as if it might have been originally written with a touchscreen in mind.

Getting through Another World is not a cakewalk; it's a difficult and challenging game. To mix this up a bit, the iOS version features three difficulty settings. There's Normal mode, which is easier than the original, with simplified movements that make toe-smashing razor slugs, for instance, a pretty fluid affair. Next is the aptly named Hard mode, which is equivalent to the original game. And then there's Hardcore mode for those veteran gamers that feel pretty proud of themselves for having made it through the original already.

The following video shows the entire intro sequence and a few minutes of early gameplay on an iPad 2 at Normal difficulty. The gameplay sequence has been intentionally diced up a bit to prevent spoiling some of the very early puzzles for those new to the game.

As a gamer who's not too proud to admit to having greatly enjoyed but never actually completed Another World, I am excited to have the chance to do so on my favorite game platform. I'm definitely more excited, however, for so many new gamers out there have the opportunity to get to know this title in such a well-executed translation. And, that's absolutely what the iOS version is. It is immediately evident that a great deal of time and care went into making this 20th Anniversary Edition of Another World such a beautiful fit for the iOS platform, and I consider it to be one of the absolute App Store must haves.

I encourage anyone wanting to learn more of the game's history and early development details to watch Eric Chahi's GDC 2011 presentation Classic Game Postmortem: Another World / Out of this World, hosted at the GDC Vault. We will bring an "it's out" reminder when Another World lands on the 22nd at a price of $4.99.

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With such a huge selection of platforming games on the App Store, the debate is always raging as to what the best “Mario-like” platformer is. For my money, it’s Pizza Boy [Free], and not just because of the main character's glorious beard and the fact that I myself used to deliver pizzas. In fact, currently you don’t even need money to see for yourself if you feel the same as I do. Pizza Boy is free for today, September 7th, to celebrate its one year anniversary since release.

In case you haven’t heard, Pizza Boy is an exceedingly cute and colorful platforming game done up in the classic 16-bit style. It contains all the coin collecting, enemy killing, and platform hopping that you would expect from such a title, and it really nailed the proper feel of speed, jumping and character movement that gave it that Mario vibe.

We totally dug Pizza Boy in our review, with the only negative comments having to do with what a short title it was. Developer Acne Play rectified that pretty well with an update last December that added a bunch of new levels and other assorted goodies, extending the experience quite a bit.

Of course, one of the best things about Pizza Boy is the nearly flawless virtual controls. I’m not sure what kind of magic voodoo the developer has infused into the game, but Pizza Boy comes as close as anything to making me forget that I’m using touchscreen virtual buttons. Several platformers have emerged since that have proven worthy in the control department as well, but a year ago Pizza Boy was easily the epitome of great virtual controls, and still is really.

What I’m really trying to boil this down to is that you’re nuts if you don’t grab Pizza Boy while it’s free. If you’re already a fan of iOS platformers but hadn’t got around to getting Pizza Boy yet, then you’re in for a real treat. If you’ve thus far been a doubter of virtual controls being precise enough for a traditional platforming game, then you owe it to yourself to try out Pizza Boy. If you can’t like these virtual controls, then you probably won’t ever like them period.

Hurry and pick up Pizza Boy while it’s free for today and check out the game discussion in our forums.

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Here's one I'm so anxious to share that I'm fumbling over my fingers here at the keyboard. Brandon Williamson over at Nyarlu Labs just sent me the heads-up on some major updates to one of the very best games I have ever played in my entire life, on any platform. The game in question is the modern retro title Forget-Me-Not [App Store] that easily got a five-star rating in my March review (which I urge the unacquainted to read, to get an idea of what the game is all about).

Brandon, yesterday, made a post to his blog announcing the release of a Mac OS X and Windows version of Forget-Me-Not that can be downloaded from his website. And it's freeware! It's not just some dumbed-down, redheaded stepchild build of the game, either — no, no. The free Mac and PC versions of the game are, in fact, the latest, most full-featured versions of the game, bringing many enhancements over the current iOS version.

Some of the new features found in these new versions:

• New enemy: "Thief" guys (pink and green monster) who usually hunt down the key, and when they get it, try to run away from the player. They don't attack anyone and no one attacks them (except for when they get exploded or whatever).
• New enemy: White ceramic square guys who sit there charging up power, then "dash" in a random direction until they hit a wall, instakilling everything in their path. They're indestructible while dashing, and have really high health. The only way to really kill them is squishing them while they're sitting still.  A later variant charges much quicker so is almost constantly dashing.
• New enemy: Some kind of diamond thing that reminds me of diamonds in Boulderdash. If anything hits it, it multiplies. That's all they do, apart from making annoying loud noises. If you're not careful they can quickly fill up all available space. Basically they just hinder you. If you're charged up, you can bash through them and also grind off them at the same time, so you can keep up a steady level of charge.
• New enemy: A stone variant of the spotted "pudding" enemy (the ones which clone when you shoot them). After a certain number of generations, a stone pudding is born. They're indestructible and don't attack, they just plod around slowly blocking the way.
• New enemy: The "floppy disk" enemies now have two kinds: the normal kind which just start moving towards anything that goes past their line of sight, and the new kind which moves around in unpredictable patterns, and sometimes homes in on the player.
• Tweak: Extra lives are increasingly difficult to get
• Tweak: Health potions are more predictable
• Tweak: You now start speeding up as soon as you start wall-grinding, making the whole game play a lot faster
• Tweak: Once the hurry-up ghost appears after a certain amount of time, when the time limit for a level runs out, the lights go off and you can only see a small area around yourself, in pseudo-roguelike style

Fans of the iOS game need not feel left out, however. All of these changes are headed to iOS in a coming update, along with full iCade support! Brandon tells me that the controls have been rewritten for eight-directional joysticks (which the PC version supports, but not yet the Mac) and he feels the game will work quite nicely on the iCade. Touchscreen controls will, of course, be maintained in the iOS version, but with a few speed tweaks to prevent things from getting too fast to play.

Have a look at the iOS game in action:

If you happen to own either a Mac or a PC, there is no excuse for not grabbing this free game, immediately.

Mac download: Mac OS X
PC download: Windows

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Duke Nukem Forever proved earlier this summer that if you find something ancient, non-functional, and barely relevant, with a minimal amount of effort you can turn a profit by selling it purely on the basis of historical curiosity. This is also the premise of the History Channel’s Antiques Roadshow, where people bring in old items to experts hoping to strike it rich by stumbling upon rare and sought after pieces.

Namco Bandai, also no strangers to digging up cheap old franchises and pawning them off on unsuspecting gamers, decided to capitalize on the popularity(?) of the series by releasing Antiques Roadshow [$4.99] for iOS. After taking a monocled eye and a white gloved hand to this title from start all the way to laborious finish, how does it fare in appraisal? Let’s just say it’s going to take more than some wood glue and a certificate of authenticity to justify the price of this junk.

Antiques Roadshow attempts to do for collectible hunting what Indiana Jones did for archeology, by playing up the glamorous, mysterious, dangerous, and metaphysically profound lifestyle of an expert antique hunter. In the game, you play as Julia, an enthusiast who takes a job at an antique store to pursue her life’s passion. The plot quickly thickens as her new boss presents her with a shred of photo featuring a mysterious item and a secret code inscribed on the back. Julia rushes off to find the item in a foreclosed farmhouse before anyone else gets their greedy paws on it.

I’ll come back to the edge-of-your-seat storytelling in just a bit, but first let’s talk about the non-stop action on tap here. Antiques Roadshow is essentially a skin for yet another photo hunt game; touch the hidden objects to cross them off your list. Then touch them again because only a tiny sliver of the object is visible and the touchscreen won’t register your tap accurately enough. Repeat until the screen decides to be charitable or your bratwurst-like fingers grow skinnier due to malnourishment.

Most gamers, when confronted by a hidden object title, will quickly resort to turbo-clicking around the screen hoping to get lucky and circumvent some of the searching. This game tries to keep you honest by making it so that if you tap too many times in succession the screen becomes covered in virtual dust that you "stirred up"  by searching too quickly. You then must “wipe” the dust off the screen to continue hunting. The first few times were cool and novel, but when you factor in the sloppy input sensitivity, just trying to get a single item cleared from the screen resulted in a dust storm as often as not. By the end of the game, I began wishing the white powder was anthrax.

Meanwhile, the mysterious item Julia finds at the farmhouse contains another shred of the photo featuring another item which you must then go to another location to find, which leads you to another shred of the photo. It's a glorious rendition of “I’m Henery the VIII, I Am” that sends you back and forth to a small handful of scenes over and over and over and over and… well, I think I’ve made my point. It's truly rare that I wish an iOS game was shorter.

In addition to the story items and junk items that you can find, you will also stumble across other hidden items that can be taken to the Antiques Roadshow in between photo hunts. These trips to the Roadshow represent the game’s only deviation from the tap-a-licious core mechanics in the form of mini-games. Before presenting your items to the Roadshow experts, you must do the one thing that every Roadshow expert on television tells you NOT to: restore your found items yourself. That’s right, Julia is a rebel, the nihilistic bad-girl of the antiques world. Priceless 1700’s armoire falling apart? Just squeeze some wood glue in the cracks like a boss. One of a kind Civil War uniform looking a little frumpy? Then search through a pile of your old buttons to find matches for the originals and just sew them on!

You think I’m joking about Julia’s penchant for mayhem, but don’t let her conservative attire fool you. Beneath that Stepford Wives exterior lies the heart of a felon. Julia is constantly finding items that allow her to access previously blocked areas, and she is not afraid to use them. After getting her B&E on by using a sledgehammer to smash open the door to a shed, she later in the game opens a grave in an ancient crypt by shattering the marble in with another hammer, and blows open a century old chest with an M80 firecracker that she found abandoned for years in another location. Clearly, Julia takes the honey badger approach to the acquisition of historical artifacts.

Julia’s story gets progressively more and more absurd, and not in a good Japanese development kind of way. The game climaxes in an Empire Strikes Back-like familial revelation, the discovery of a lost pirate stash, and a wildly presumptuous set-up for an Antiques Roadshow sequel. Let’s put it this way. This plot’s plausibility makes National Treasure look like a PBS documentary.

With the exception of infrequent trips to the Roadshow, there’s none of the cool historical information that gives the television show its redeeming qualities. Throw in the painfully repetitive tapping, the abysmally unresponsive nature of all iOS hidden-item touchscreen inputs, the irritatingly unfair dust-on-the-screen mechanic, and a dash of insultingly simple mini-games and there’s just no excuse. In the far flung future, however, this game may have great value; iPads with this game still on it will no doubt be rare beyond belief.

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Despite both noble and ignoble efforts, the real time strategy genre has never managed to find much traction outside of PC/Mac gaming. The micromanagement required to succeed in these games just screams for the speed and precision of a mouse. This hasn’t stopped developers from trying to awkwardly force RTS gameplay into console controller or touch inputs, however. While they struggle bravely on, it may ironically be a game that never attempted to tackle the problem at all that actually provides a vital clue to answering the riddle.

When Majesty: The Fantasy Kingdom Sim [$2.99] first released back in 2000 for PC and Mac, the game was praised for its unique take on the genre. The game featured all the base building, resource gathering, and upgrade grinding that a fan of RTSs at the time could hope for, while streamlining unit management by making all heroes and henchmen autonomous. As it turns out, the iOS port of Majesty demonstrates that it may make far more sense to tailor RTS gameplay to fit the unique inputs of a platform than the other way around.

So, you’re the heir to a monarch who went insane and let the kingdom go to hell in an archaic handbasket. As the new king, it’s up to you to set things right; the realm is overrun with goblins and undead and, of course, rats. While they never say it to your face, the gameplay implies that the heroes and citizens of your demesne are less than confident in your leadership qualities due to your shaky genetic background. Instead of taking direct orders from you regarding specific objectives, they act independently and must be bribed and persuaded to take action on your behalf.

What’s a king without obedient vassals to do? Spend money, of course. Each level begins with your castle and a set amount of gold coin to pay for buildings. Pay for a warrior or mage guild, and you’ll be able to recruit heroes. Blacksmiths, libraries, and the like provide access to upgrades that your heroes will take advantage of as they wander by. Marketplaces speed up your gold intake while opening up magic items like healing potions and rings of protection to be bought by units. A respectable variety of different building types, upgrade trees, and prerequisites gives a great deal of room for experimentation and tweaking for optimal performance.

You may have control over the type and placement of buildings, but when it comes to the heroes, they have their own set of priorities. If their guild or a nearby building in the town is attacked by enemies, they will reluctantly emerge to do battle. Barring an attack, their next course of action is to make the rounds and pick up any items or upgrades from buildings that weren’t available the last time they donned their slippers and swords. These lazy bastards simply don’t get out of bed unless they are under siege or they hear the clinks of a brimming gold pouch.

While heroes will occasionally get a wild hair up their breeches and decide to explore or attack enemies on their own, the fastest way to get things done is to dangle the cash carrot. You can place a waypoint over an enemy structure or unexplored area of the map and attach a bounty to it. The larger the reward, the more likely it is that heroes will wander away from the comforts of home to get rich or die trying. For those who have never played the original, this lack of direct control will drive some gamers crazy. As for myself, I occasionally muttered about how it was hard to find good help these days, but for the most part I found it extremely liberating.

While the game’s core conceit survives the transition to iPhone/iPad famously, that’s not to say that this port handles all things touchscreen with equal grace. Positioning of buildings and waypoints is occasionally troublesome, as is the targeting of your spells. The user interface is also unfriendly. Spells are denoted by icon only, so determining the function and efficacy of your arcane arsenal is problematic. The fact that the game is universal is nice, but ye olde ugly font that is readable on my iPad is much trickier to decipher on an iPhone screen. Playing with the larger device is recommended for those with the option.

Majesty’s focus on building and bounties as primary game mechanics eliminates the clicks-per-minute pressure of most RTS titles that simply doesn’t translate to a touch screen. The result is more fun and less frustration. If this had been a new title built specifically for iOS, I would have called it a stroke of genius. As it is, I’ll have to call it a pleasant serendipity. Not too frantic and not too dumbed down, the port just seems to fit. I’d love to see other developers look at this game and make the mechanic a deliberate iOS design choice.

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One of my very favorite games of the distant past is good ole' Lunar Lander. There's a certain beauty to the simple proposition there — it's just gravity and you. Lunar Lander, which got its start back in 1969, kicked off the cave-flyer genre that boasts many great games under its banner. iOS developer Polygon Play recently offered us an exclusive look at their upcoming iPad title, Lander Hero, that will join those proud ranks later this year.

Lander Hero brings a twist on the standard formula by incorporating puzzle-solving elements into the cave-flyer experience. The goal of the game is to navigate each labyrinthine level, from start point to end pad, collecting stars as you go — you need to have grabbed at least 50% of the stars on any level in order to advance to the next.  Along the way, you will encounter a number of obstacles that must be negotiated. These include moving boulders, I-beams, (tip: flammable) crates, force fields, bombs and the like. For example, a certain pathway cannot be travelled until you nudge a boulder rolling along a beam until its weight tips it out of your way. In addition to these challenges, your ship's fuel and damage levels are always working against you. Power-ups hidden about the caverns of each level must be found and collected to keep your ship in shape.

The game offers several different configurations of the on-screen touch controls, which are thrust-left, thrust-right, and thrust-down. In the beta build I'm playing with, clustered, one-hand controls are the default, but I find a two-handed button arrangement — thrust-left/right at the lower left, thrust-down at the lower right — much more to my liking. Having such simple controls, as cave-flyers often do, Lander Hero works just fine with the iPad's touchscreen.

Lander Hero really shines in the graphics department. The stylized rocky landscapes are bright, colorfully textured, and slide by as smooth as glass on the iPad 2 as you guide your ship along the twists and turns of each cavern. The whole scene, along with your cartoony ship and the little bespectacled scientist inside (there's apparently a backstory there), lend the game a whimsical feel. And the physics system, so critical in titles of the sort, is spot-on.

I've really enjoyed playing through the 13 finished levels in this beta, and am anxious to move through the rest of the 40+ levels (across two different worlds) that the initial App Store release will bring. The game is iPad-only, but the developer tells me he's considering bringing it to the iPhone, down the road. I'll be sure to let all the cave-flyer fans out there know when Lander Hero hits the App Store, sometime in late September.

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