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Back in October we reported that the classic Bitmap Brothers Atari ST / Amiga / DOS Speedball 2: Brutal Deluxe would be making its way to iOS in the form of Speedball 2: Evolution. Moments ago, the game went live in the App Store as a Universal application for both iPhone and iPad [link] and we've taken a close look over the past few days.

Speedball 2 is a futuristic cybersport that's something of a mix between handball and ice hockey. The game takes place between two opposing teams — nine players to a team — in an enclosed, metal arena littered with power-ups and arrayed in warp portals and various score-enhancing mechanisms. Points are scored by getting the metallic ball past the opposing defense and into the goal, but brutality and violence are rewarded along the way. The overall feel is something akin to Atari's earlier, football-inspired arcade cybersport Cyberball, I've always felt. It's nicely visceral.

The first thing to say about the iOS version of Speedball 2 is that it's an enhanced version of the classic Atari ST original. I note that right off, due to the fact that a remake of the game was released on the Xbox Live Arcade, featuring "enhanced" 3D graphics…which were anything but. They were 3D, but they were awkward and poorly animated and did not compare to the "classic" mode's top-down, 2D graphics of the original. Speedball 2: Evolution for iOS takes the original's 2D graphics and enhances them while leaving them in their original orientation, making the iOS release the best looking version of Speedball 2 to date.

The list of things Speedball 2: Evolution brings to the table is vast. There are 336 individual players, 20 in-field power-ups, 16 classic Speedball teams along with 12 new intergalactic teams, a 10-season career mode, 10 single-player modes, a multiplayer mode (Bluetooth & WiFi), six arenas on four different planets, and 22 achievements in all. It's an impressive list. The various play modes allow for long-term team-building or just a quick detached match — whatever suits you.

I, personally, spent more time with the original Speedball back in the day, than with the sequel, and so certain enhancements over said original stand out to me. Among them are the arrays of stars for each team on the arena walls that add points when illuminated by a tag from the ball, sets of spiral ramps situated on the sidelines that alter point-multipliers, and the electrobounce chargers that turn the ball into a weapon. That's not to mention the many power-ups that can be collected during the game, such as those that provide faster movement, body armour, or even freeze the opposing team in place.

Speedball 2 offers tilt controls as well as an optional onscreen D-Pad. I found that I like the tilt controls better than those of most iOS games, but more precision is offered by the onscreen D-pad, which is centered where you touch, adding a nice bit of flexibility. It's a tap anywhere to pass the ball, and a tap-and-hold to perform a high, long-distance pass or to jump to catch such a pass.

In evaluating the game for this review I spent notable time with the Atari ST original to see how it compares to the iOS release — and had fun in the doing. After playing both titles side-to-side, I have to say that the iOS version is a bit steeper in the difficulty department than the ST original. Also, graphically the iOS version is notably superior to the ST version. I'd call the two pretty well matched on the fun scale, though I was a little more successful on the field on the ST due to its somewhat lower level of difficulty. And, I don't think it was about the controls — of course the Atari version with a physical stick controlled better, but it was more about the game as presented.

Speedball 2, and its classic predecessor Speedball, brought the excellent Cyberball mechanic to the home, and Speedball 2: Evolution does likewise to the App Store. This is a classic arcade-style sports game that is more about fun than about simulation and accuracy. And, if you're the kind of gamer that takes sports on a pretty casual level like I do, that's a win.

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As an avid fan of the retro aesthetic, it's with a hopeful heart that I try out every retro game in the App Store that I come across. Sadly, all too often the charm ends right there — with the aesthetic. But, on the occasions where all those blocky pixels and glowing vectors are backed up by addictive gameplay, I'm a happy gamer, indeed. And a happy gamer is what two titles from Dan Bliss at BinarySquare have made me. They're not new releases, but titles we seem to have overlooked for whatever reason and it's only in the last month or so that I've spent real time with them.

Dragon Panic - $0.99

Originally released almost two years ago, Dragon Panic [App Store] is a cute little dodge and blast game that looks like something you'd see on a Sega Master System.

The game puts you in tilt-based control of one of two dragons, Berny or Blaze, trapped in a sort of dungeon of horrors. Said horrors come in the form of spears, skulls, arrows, and potions falling from above. You must run about the dungeon, blasting the falling implements with a ball of flame that can only be fired diagonally upward at a fixed angle. If you miss and an object hits the floor, it cracks a floor stone, which will shatter on a second impact, cutting you off from a section of the dungeon. If an object hits you, it's game over. And, blasting one of the potions grants a boon, such as eliminating all falling objects onscreen, replacing a missing floor stone, or adding a ricochet to your fireballs.

Just going on the description alone Dragon Panic might seem like an overly simple, unremarkable game, but after one round I was hooked. It packs a definite just-one-more-time draw to rank on the leaderboards.

SpaceBlast HD - $1.99

An iPad-only title, SpaceBlast HD [App Store] (no relation to the earlier SpaceBlast for iPhone) is a straight-up Asteroids clone that does a great job of capturing the glowing vector aesthetic — complete with a slight flicker — of the classic Atari shooter.

Destroy the rocks and stay alive is the name of the game, as you'd expect, and black holes, weapons upgrades, and an online scoreboard are planned in a future update.

SpaceBlast HD's "vectors" are semi-trasnlucently rendered over a space scene backdrop, an effect that evokes the old cardboard + mirror + CRT arrangement that added color to certain vintage arcade cabinets. Below the playfield are onscreen buttons for rotation, thrust, shields, fire, and hyperspace that "clack" like the real thing.

I'm hoping most readers have played a game of Asteroids at some point. SpaceBlast HD is the closest thing I've seen to that experience on the iPad.

Dan Bliss previously brought us the retro-inspired Buganoids, Kerplinkus, and Space Out.

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Remember Sword & Sworcery? We called it "the most amazing game we've seen at GDC" last year. A few months later we sat down with Nathan Vella who gave us a fairly in-depth hands-on that we were able to catch on video. To really get the low down on S&S though, if this is the first you've heard of it, you should check out our further reflection on Sword & Sworcery post from GDC 2010.

Check out the new trailer:

According to Superbrothers, the game will be released "around the Vernal Equinox" (which is late next month). We've got a meeting booked with the Sword & Sworcery creators at GDC '11 next week, and hopefully can secure some more details then.

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I had absolutely nothing but good things to say about Battleheart [99¢] in our review when it was first released. It's an entirely multitouch controlled real-time RPG battle game, which pits your varied party of four adventurers against many different types of monsters and bosses.

Battleheart takes traditional RPG elements found in party-based RPGs and even to some extent MMORPGs and boils them down to their essence. At its core, gameplay consists of managing a four member party through various battles. There isn't really any story to speak of aside from random flavor text describing characters and levels, characters only have four equipment slots, and there's only two statistics for each class to even worry about. In my early time with the game the latent RPG power gamer inside of me initially thought that how simple everything initially seems to be was a significant drawback, but oh, how wrong I was. …Read More

Battleheart was just featured by Apple as the game of the week on the App Store, and in response Mika Mobile has dropped the price of their game to 99¢ for a very limited time.

If you were waiting on picking up Battleheart for whatever reason, now is your chance to pounce. Since its initial release it has been updated a few times with various tweaks and fixes. Don't miss this game while it's 99¢.

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Here's one that will make a select few of our readers stand up and shout, while merely drawing a faint "hmm" from the rest. But, as Arnold and myself are among the standers and the shouters… Last night, in honor of the 20th anniversary of their founding, the Free Tools Association (or FTA) released a free bundle of their classic demoscene productions and games wrapped in their ActiveGS Apple IIgs emulator as the Universal application ActiveGS – Best of FTA [App Store].

FTA and the associated groups Apple Chemical Software (ACS) and Second Sight Software were well known in the pre-web online Apple II communities for their to-the-metal, assembly-coded demos, games, and utilities that pushed the Apple II to its limits. Among the included productions are Nucleus and Modulae, probably the most well loved and beautifully executed demos to be found on the IIgs, as well as the playable demo of the group's take on the pseudo-3D shooter Space Harrier. Those checking out this collection who have no Apple II in their past should note that the Apple IIgs, which was released in 1986, is an 8/16-bit computer that runs at 2.8MHz — and that's in "fast" mode.

The Modulae demo, running under emulation on a Windows machine:

The group's ActiveGS emulator used in this application is a front-end for the multiplatform KEGS, which emulates the Apple IIgs and, by extension, the Apple IIe. It's available in both stand-alone applications and as a browser plug-in and is the primary emulation system behind the Virtual Apple ][ website where hundreds of Apple II programs can be run online.

In this iOS version, the emulator simply provides hard coded execution of FTA's demos, so it won't work as a general emulator.

UPDATE: Developer Olivier Goguel has chimed in on the comments thread and provided a link to a video of a version of ActiveGS running on the iPad, loaded with many more Apple II demos and games than are featured in the App Store release. But don't get too excited...

For approval reason, this version contains only FTA product! For a sneak preview of the full version, have a look at this video, but don't expect it to be live soon...

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Last November, indie developer Spaces of Play released their unique take on the Lemmings formula called Spirits [99¢/HD]. In Spirits, you negotiate a series of 40 cleverly designed levels while commanding a group of floppy-headed spirit folk. The general gameplay is pretty similar to Lemmings, where you can assign tasks to individual spirits like digging holes or becoming ladders so your fellow spirits can make it past a blocked path. What really set Spirits apart is how there are various wind currents flowing through each level, and when you direct your spirits into these currents their umbrella-like heads filled with the breeze and they were swept up into the flow of air.

The wind factor turned Spirits into a very different beast than its inspiration Lemmings, and the fantastic hand-drawn artwork and beautiful music made for an incredibly engaging gameplay experience. We really liked Spirits in our review, and it has even gone on to win several different design awards since its release in November. While originally released on the iPad, in December an iPhone version hit the App Store, and despite the smaller screen space the excellent gameplay translated very well. Now, to celebrate the coming of GDC in San Francisco which kicks off next week, both the iPad and iPhone/iPod touch versions of Spirits are available for just 99¢.

Either version of Spirits was well worth their original price points, and at 99¢ each they are practically no-brainers if you're into puzzle games, or if you just like games with very pleasing aural and visual features. There is a very challenging nature to Spirits if you try to beat each level using the least amount of spirits as possible, or if you are trying to collect the often difficultly placed bonus plants throughout the levels for maximum completion. But these are not required, and there's also a very casual aspect to Spirits if you're just looking for basic completion of each level, and the music and visuals offer an almost zen-like experience as you play.

There's a discussion of Spirits taking place in both the iPad games thread or the thread for the iPhone version, and it's highly recommended that you check out Spirits during this 99¢ sale which will be running until next Friday, March 4th.

App Store Links:

• Spirits, $0.99
• Spirits for iPad, $0.99 (iPad Only)

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George Washington’s name day came and went without the dozens of celebratory App Store sales we associate with federal holidays. I’ll admit it; I was ticked about this at first. Not only was George the US’ first president, he was also the tallest, strongest, and best endowed. A dude as great and beautiful as he was needs to be honored by price-slashings. But, hey, now I'm not so sore about the situation. Gameloft realigned my humours and tamed my choler with this beauty of a sale, which sees 30 of its games reduced to less than a dollar.

Here’s the list:

Asphalt 5
Assassin’s Creed: Altair’s Chronicles HD
Blokus HD
Brain Challenge HD
Chess Classics HD
Driver
Dungeon Hunter HD
Fishing Kings
Frankenstein – The Dismembered Bride HD
Gangstar: West Coast Hustle
Hero of Sparta HD
Hero of Sparta 2 HD
Let’s Golf
Modern Combat: Sandstorm
NFL 2010 HD
NFL 2011 HD
NOVA
NOVA 2 HD
Prince of Persia: Warrior Within [and its HD version]
Real Soccer 2010 [and its HD version]
Real Soccer 2011
Real Tennis HD
Secrets of the Vatican HD
Shrek Forever After HD
Shrek Kart
Skater Nation
Star Battalion [and its HD version]
UNO HD
Tom Clancy’s HAWX
War in the Pacific
Zombie Infection HD

That’s a lot of games, and a lot of iPad HD versions for sale, right? Oh, and to be clear, I’ve no idea what Gameloft is throwing a sale for… but I’ll go ahead and keep pretending that its celebrating the greatest man (not named Tesla) who ever graced this Earth.

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One of the big news items of 2010 in the world of iOS was the unveiling of the Unreal Engine on the platform. Epic Citadel [Free] was the first taste we got of this fantastic engine, with Infinity Blade [5.99] hitting the scene a little later as the first real game using the engine. Since then, there hasn't been a whole lot of activity with the Unreal Engine on the App Store. Trendy Entertainment released both Dungeon Defenders [99¢] and Chicken Coup [99¢] but that's about it as far as UDK games on the App Store is concerned.

Why so few games? Well, it all comes down to licensing. Previously, the Unreal Engine was free to use until you crossed the $5,000 mark in sales. This made using the Unreal Development Kit a little hard to swallow for most developers, especially as the proverbial pie was sliced so many times between Apple's percentage, any potential publisher's percentage, and Epic's percentage. This didn't leave much left for the actual developer, and unless you could guarantee that your game would be wildly successful, it didn't make much sense to use.

Mark Rein recently announced that this royalty threshold has been increased to $50,000, which hopefully will be much more enticing to developers. We'll still need to see how this all plays out over the next year, but from we're sitting, the Unreal Engine seems even more appealing now. If you were a developer that previously wrote off using the UDK because of royalty fees, it may be time to reconsider.

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Last month Gameloft teased us with an announcement trailer for their upcoming game based on the Tom Clancy franchise Rainbow Six: Shadow Vanguard. Unfortunately, as is the nature of teaser videos, very little of the actual game was shown. In fact, there was no gameplay in that video at all, making it frustrating if you're a fan of the Rainbow Six series and were curious to see what the iOS version would be like.

Today Gameloft is easing that pain a bit by releasing the first screens for Rainbow Six: Shadow Vanguard on their Facebook page, and unsurprisingly they look pretty fantastic (click to enlarge):

Based on the screen shots, Rainbow Six: Shadow Vanguard should offer up the same sort of tactical espionage that the series is known for. Unfortunately we still don't know a solid release date, but if these screens are any indication then it should be arriving fairly soon. There is a lively discussion of the game in our forums, and we'll bring you any new information on Rainbow Six: Shadow Vanguard just as soon as we get it.

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It really has to have been a crazy last few days for Andreas Illiger, the developer of Tiny Wings [99¢]. His first iOS game hasn’t even been out for a full week yet, and it was just two days ago that we gave it a glowing 5 star review and have basically been glued to it since. Over these past two days, the buzz surrounding Tiny Wings has been swelling like an epic tidal wave. It’s all anybody has been talking about on Twitter, it’s been one of the busiest discussion threads in our forums, and every iOS toting device owner I’ve run into in real life I’ve recommended the game to.

For having zero marketing, Tiny Wings has been doing some incredible things in the top paid charts in the US App Store. It’s been steadily climbing the last couple of days, and I was floored when I looked up and noticed that it had broken into the top 25 of total paid apps. It didn’t stop there, though, and shortly thereafter broke the top 10. I was genuinely amazed by this, but it still kept climbing. For most of yesterday it spent a lot of time in both the 3rd and 2nd top positions, dethroning top 3 mainstay Fruit Ninja and pushing past the incredibly popular Camera+ app.

And then it happened. The unthinkable. Tiny Wings took the top spot from the King of the App Store charts for nearly a year, Angry Birds. Many members in our forums were confident that this would happen eventually, and some felt that it could never be done, despite how good Tiny Wings was. It just didn't have the brand recognition or marketing muscle to push it to the very top. It has happened though, and for one of the most unique, fun, and beautiful games I’ve played in a long time I think it's well deserved.

This isn’t the first time Angry Birds has been knocked off the top, as several different games or apps have bumped it from its position over the past year. But usually it’s a short-lived victory, as within just a few days Angry Birds is right back at #1. We’ll have to see how long Tiny Wings can maintain it’s #1 status, but surely there has never been such an unknown IP with no marketing campaign whatsoever that’s risen in popularity as fast as Tiny Wings has.

Based on our review, the positive words of everybody who plays it, and this very article you’re reading right now, it should go without saying that you need to pick up Tiny Wings if you haven't already.

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