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Somethin' Else's Papa Sangre [$4.99] has been on our radar since it was originally released in mid-December. With a recent sale and an official nomination in the "Most Innovative Game" category at the International Mobile Gaming Awards, I figured it's high time we gave Papa Sangre a closer look.

Admittedly, I initially thought Papa Sangre was a nifty little binaural tech demo. After all, the game has no graphics short of a basic menu system and interface, but if you let your imagination go with it you will be in for a treat. Let's back up a bit and get in to what exactly binaural audio is, in case it's something you're unfamiliar with. There's a number of ways it can be recorded, from two appropriately spaced microphones to actually using a dummy head with fake ears. The resulting product, when listened to with headphones, will provide a shockingly convincing 3D effect for the listener. Wikipedia, unsurprisingly, has a really interesting article on how it all works.

The premise of Papa Sangre is great. The game takes place in the world of the dead, where your eyes are useless. Thankfully, your ears work fine. You're on a quest to save the soul that belongs to a loved one, and doing so involves making your way through Papa Sangre's underworld "seeing" with your ears. Your control is limited to buttons for each of your feet, which you can walk or run with by alternating tapping them either slow or fast. Additionally, there is a dial of sorts that you swipe on the top of the screen to turn your character in game.

At its most basic, you need to walk towards a sound, which you can hear in the distance. Doing so involves swiping to spin the dial until the sound seems to be coming from in front of you, then alternating your right and left thumbs to walk to it. As you get closer, you might need to make adjustments with the dial to not miss the sound. Once you do, it's off to the next level. (Most levels also have multiple sounds that need to be located before they're over.) Of course it isn't that easy though, as the game quickly throws various enemies in game that all make sounds that you need to avoid, as well as different types of terrain. This terrain sounds different, and you might make more or less noise walking on some ground, which can lead to the enemies in the level being able to quickly locate you if you're not careful.

What you get out of Papa Sangre is directly related to how much you're willing to get immersed in to the game. This means playing with your eyes closed, and letting your imagination do the rest. The game is wonderfully narrated before the start of each level, explaining your surroundings and the enemies you need to avoid. An early level sets you inside of a room covered in discarded finger bones which you must run over, and it's just really cool imagining what that room actually would look like to go with the sounds that you're hearing.

Grab some headphones and listen to this:

Even though Papa Sangre is really cool, I'm not sure how strong of a recommendation I can give it. It's a great experience, but I think you need to be in the proper state of mind to enjoy it, and even then I'd lean more towards describing the game as "this is really neat" rather than "this is really fun." Regardless, it's still a great concept, and I'd totally stand behind the IMGA nomination for its innovative gameplay. If you like strange games, or are intrigued by the binaural nature of this game, consider giving it a shot. If nothing else, this is just something really unique on the App Store that more people should be aware of.

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Dead Space is like a wicked seesaw that keeps you teetering between states of panic and outright nervousness no matter how predictable the outcome of a scenario is. This is its real voodoo, the magic of the title, which is informed by a sharp, terror-drenched atmosphere influenced by various sci-fi horror works such as “Event Horizon” and “Alien.”

Its setting, plot, and combat feed into this rich atmosphere, making the title feel as if it were a cohesive whole. However, the game’s weakness, the combat, should give you a bit of pause. It’s not hard to recommend Dead Space, especially if you plan to play with the blinds pulled down, but it’s not a good shooter, which carries some weight.

Dead Space is a sequel to the original Dead Space, a console and PC joint created by the folks at EA Visceral. It’s a confusing name at first glance, until you peel the experience back a bit and learn that Dead Space iOS really doesn’t do anything to separate itself from its forerunner. It feels like a one-off experience just so happens to take place before the events of Dead Space 2 on the mining colony “Sprawl.”

You spend all your time on this colony drifting amongst a cluster of stars, completely detached from the rest of civilization. Gorgeous panels and LCD displays sprinkle and contrast the cold, hard steel of the floors and walls of the Sprawl, while the remnants of civilization inform a grim tone and atmosphere.

Things, of course, have gone bad on the colony. Sickly, disjointed aliens are now taking over, slaughtering all in their path. For you, this means you get to see the aftermath — all those pools of crimson, those piles corpses with the missing flesh, and the wrecked lockers, broken glass, and general disarray.

I think what’s most remarkable about the setting is that it’s crafted in a way that all the future stuff feel familiar, yet obviously above and beyond what our civilization can accomplish and build. You can connect with the setting, but you recognize it as alien.

And it’s in solitude that you dwell. Dead Space is really good at making feel both helpless and alone in the face of something much, much larger than yourself. In this specific one, your avatar, code-named “Vandal,” isn’t the chatty type. Your guide — who also doubles as the games’ narrator to some degree — isn’t all that talkative either. Also, your adventure, as a result of an incident, isn’t filled with many people with jawbones intact. Essentially, you live and breath in a world without any living and breathing.

So, you're alone — alone against hordes of aliens, I should add. Unfortunately, combat isn’t good enough. Vandal is essentially a slow meat turret with basic strafing abilities, which makes it hard to be either aggressive or even defensive. Granted, the weaponry in the game is plenty violent; the Plasma Cutter and the god-like drill weapon can put serious hurt on your foes, but you’ll constantly be re-negotiating your position in battle and never quite comfortable with what you’ve chosen.

Combat isn’t this grand ballet where you can skillfully move about enemies, juking and jiving and delivering punishment with the grace and ease of a Kratos. It’s more like a square dance for people with insanely large feet. This wouldn’t be so much of a problem if you could aim and fire with accuracy and quickness, but you can’t do that. The touch implementation of both these mechanics — bringing up the gun and choosing your target — are clunky, leading to a lot of missed shots, missed opportunities and a needless death here and there.

And you’d figure the combat would be grand: the game features a dismemberment mechanic for god sakes that rewards you for shooting off the limbs of aliens. But the accuracy just isn't there, so the pay-offs aren't either. (You also can't aim with tilt or gyrometer, for that matter. There's also no way to invert the Y axis, or any way to customize the controls.)

The kicker for me is that I think the weakness of the combat actually enriches the experience to some degree. It heightens the scares and does the most work in informing the nervousness you’ll feel. I say this because you’re not a Terminator; you can’t just obliterate anything in your path, making you actually fear the next confrontation.

There's a level of immersion in this game as well, due in large part to the game's super limited HUD. Health and bullets, for example, are displayed visually on the character and its respective guns, which makes for a super clean presentation — one in which you control Vandal with invisible dual-analog sticks, which are serviceable, but still not ideal for some of the things the game throws at you in the action department.

Bullets are limited, which is an interesting touch. The lack of ammunition will force you to rethink battle strategies, readjust and lean on the game’s generous upgrade system. With collected nodes and cash, you can refill your guns and make them stronger and faster via Benches and an in-game Store.

To dive into a little bit more of the brick-and-mortar, this is a rigidly linear, scripted game that goes a little something like this: you are to go [there], and the only way you can get to [there] is to find a way to unlock a door, the key in which you'll need just so happens to be tied to a scare or a fight with monsters. And… that’s about it.

Of course, straying from the set path by a few feet will net you goodies, but for the most part, the game doesn’t offer anything outside of its invisible racing line (which, hilariously, you can pull up visibly at any point in case you lose your way).

And while you’ll encounter few instances where something isn’t scripted, there’s still a lot of atmosphere to soak in. The sound design, in particular, is ridiculous good. You’ll hear the patter of aliens in ventilation system, the terrible groans of aliens behind you, and these astoundingly dramatic crescendos that spurt from nowhere, often sparking you back into a state of high alert. Wear headphones if you have them, it's worth it.

The art and visuals are also particularly inspired. The art manages to parallel the grim undertones of the narrative and the visual work is top-notch.

However, I wish there was more "new" in this game. A lot of the assets and elements of the original Dead Space for PC and consoles, including the enemies, the lockers, the weapons, and so on, are reproduced here. I suppose if you haven't had experience previously, though, this isn't a big deal.

Also, The Retina display visuals on the iPhone 4 look tremendous, though I think the control issues on this specific version of the game are made a little worse because of the lack of screen real estate. Your thumb will almost always obscure part of the game. I lean towards preferring the iPad version myself, but you'll get a similar experience no matter what device you play on.

But, I think what’s best about Dead Space isn’t the art and sound despite their impressiveness; what's best is how good this game is at keeping you thinking about what kind of terrible things can happen — that overwhelming sense of dread that you get from the best horror flicks.

In some sections, the game terrorizes you with traditional video game tropes, having you check bodies that you know will spurt to life. In another section, it plays with vertigo, and still in others, it hammers you with sudden conflicts, bouts of nothingness complimented by a roaring firefight, and hallucinations. It's kind of amazing when you consider just how many ways this game tries to screw with you.

Sure, Dead Space is worth a download based on its production values alone. The team has successfully created a very, very dark title bolstered by a rich atmosphere that oozes everything you want out of a solid horror game. And the story isn't so bad, either. As Vandal, you set off a series of events that it must, in turn, stop. It's almost a revenge narrative, though to really dig into it would kinda kill the experience for you.

But, I feel like the weakness of the combat far surpasses its usefulness as a bolster for the scares. The end of the game turns into a series of unintelligible slugfests that will grate on you, especially on higher difficulty levels. It's a bummer that more imaginative situations weren't created for the last hour or so of the game because the rest of it manages to feel so smart.

This isn't the scariest game on the planet, nor is it the best put together. The combat in particular is a black eye. But there's a lot in Dead Space to keep you engaged and there's some points of great design that I think you'll appreciate — especially if you're daring enough to play this on your sofa with the lights off and some great headphones on. Just keep the minor issues in mind and I don’t think you’ll leave the game disappointed. I suppose there’s also the chance EA could go back and implement fixes like sensitivity sliders or even some kind of aim assist system, but we’ll have to wait and see on that.

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I love sprawling multi-million dollar platformers as much as the next guy, but I’ll take a small indie-developed project over the Super Mario Galaxies of the world any day. It boils down to execution, really. The good indie devs distill their games and bring to the fore one single, sometimes miraculous mechanic. Then, our underfunded heroes iterate and eventually offer us good games that lack the big budget fluff or unrealized stuff that sometimes worms its way into huge projects.

Yeah, yeah, you heard this all before. Welcome to mobile, Brad, you say. We see this all the time, you say. And to that I reply: hey, have you played They Need To Be Fed [.99 / HD] yet? Because even though it has problems, it could be the poster child for what we’re talking about here. It’s a no frills platformer with near perfect execution on a simple and entertaining mechanic. Oh, and it’s made by a single guy — that’s, like, eight billion less people than the core Ratchet & Clank teams!

Provided you don’t already know about TNTBF, let’s talk about what it has to offer. It’s a 2D, physics-based platformer with hardly any plot to speak of and an art style that would melt any HAL Laboratories employee’s heart. But despite it being filled with so much color and life, it’s got a grim undertone. In TNTBF, you play as a silhouetted avatar with an endearingly misshapen head across a variety of levels in which the point is to die. Specifically, the end goal is always a squiggly monster’s gullet.

No worries. The sacred gameplay loop — progress, fail, and die — is still in effect, though in a more tortured way than normal. In TNTBF, it’s more like progress, fail, die… and then die again.

Fun stuff, sure, but the core mechanic is easily the most compelling thing in TNTBF. To move around and meet your doom as the game demands, you’ll need to get good at moving around platforms. Each level is littered with various geometric objects, all of which the daring silhouette clings to via 360- degree gravity. So, when he jumps to, say, another platform, the game negotiates that platform’s gravitational pull versus the platform he just left. If the silhouette is closer to the latter, it'll cling to that one. Progress!

Momentum factors in as well. The faster your avatar moves, the more he’ll be able to bounce out of a platform’s pull. This leads to some interesting platforming, made all the more interested — and dangerous — when the game starts throwing in nasty stuff like rotating platforms laced with spikes, exploding platforms, cannons that shoot bullets at last known positions, and more.

It’s a breeze to shake bullets and jump around with the on-screen controls, but the jumping itself is a hair too floaty for me. Overall, the game is flat-out missing a layer of accuracy that’s seems warranted for some of the more nontraditional platforming sections. Also, some of the levels expect way too much in terms of object avoidance, which kinda complicates this basic, but annoying problem.

The good news is that this isn’t a punitive joint. Levels have smart checkpoints and accidental deaths are infinite. You’ll just get slapped on the wrist with a restart for your buffoonery or complications with the level design.

They Need To Be Fed is indeed, a smart, simple, and endearing platformer. The core mechanic might sound a little abstract, but don’t let that get in your way. In fact, just play it for free on the PC first. You see, this game used to be just a web-based project before publisher YoYo Games decided to bring it to iOS. Both versions of the game are a ton of fun, and it really comes down to whether you value portability or the ability to play it with your keyboard.

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Last week a trailer for a mysterious fantasy-based game by Gameloft hit the internet, causing rampant speculation across the iPhoneiverse (If that's not a word, it should be) regarding which game it was that Gameloft was setting its sights on next. We speculated this could be Gameloft's take on Zelda, and from the looks of it, that's exactly what we're getting.

Check out the new trailer:

Sacred Odyssey: Rise of Ayden seems to have everything a good Zelda-esque game should have: A horse to ride around, items to use to get passed various obstacles, sliding block puzzles, and massive bosses. I'm excited to give it a try as Darksiders basically proved that I will play any game with similar gameplay mechanics to completion regardless of how good or bad it is. (Or in the case of Darksiders, how much headache-indusing screen tearing it has.)

Sacred Odyssey is landing on the App Store next month, likely launching at Gameloft's typical price point of somewhere between $4.99 and $6.99. In the meantime, we've got a thread for the game in our upcoming games forum if you're looking for even more speculation about the game.

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Last month, retro revival studio DotEmu, who brought us ports of Nicky Boom, Krypton Egg, and R-Type among others, signed a deal with the noted Japanese development and publishing house Jaleco LTD to bring 17 arcade conversions to the App Store, all of which will self-published by DotEmu. The first title out of the gate was Avenging Spirit (1991), which launched in December.

During a walk with his girlfriend, a boy is ambushed by agents of a mysterious crime organization and is shot to death. Now, as a wandering spirit with the ability to possess most others, he is summoned by his girlfriend's father to save her from these criminals

The game is a run-and-jump platformer that sets itself apart due to its "possess anyone" mechanic. You start out as a Casper-cute ghost and make your initial possession. Then, when you die, your ghost pops out and you can take control of most any character onscreen. Your fighting abilities depend upon who you've possessed, so it mixes the game up nicely.

Avenging Spirit is controlled by way of an onscreen stick and button arrangement that works about as well as you'd expect for a game of the sort. A standard Arcade playmode is present, as is a Freeplay mode where you can't die or unlock new levels, that's good for practice. By default, the game is played fullscreen, but a windowed mode is available that renders the game at it's original arcade resolution. Game Center integration takes your score online and tracks achievements.

DotEmu's Avenging Spirit trailer shows a sample of the gameplay.

DotEmu CEO Xavier Liard has just given us a heads-up on the second title from the Jaleco arcade series, which should be making its App Store debut shortly. Earth Defense Force (or E.D.F.) is a side-scrolling space shooter that saw an arcade release in 1991, an SNES release soon after (as Super Earth Defense Force), and has much more recently landed on the Wii Virtual Console.

The alien Azyma Empire, threatens to destroy the Earth with the Orbital Buster, a large computerized space satellite. The Earth's only hope lies in the recently developed XA-1 spaceships held under the organization known as E.D.F: Earth Defense Force. You are the pilot in command!

The game will feature both Arcade and Freeplay modes, both touch and D-pad controls modes, Game Center integration for online leaderboards and achievement tracking, and the ability to switch to tunes from your iTunes library.

Liard indicates that, based on feedback received from the studio's iOS conversion of R-Type, they decided to add a small touch area to the left of the game's playfield, to avoid the "finger hides the ship" dilemma. He feels the small loss of game area is well worth the overall effect of this control approach.

We'll bring news of the DotEmu's third release when we get it, but in the mean time…the studio indicates that somewhere hidden on their Jaleo games page is a hint as to what the third conversion will be. Can you find it?

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Early last month we previewed Solar Minotaur Rescue Frenzy from noted psychedelic shooter author Jeff Minter. The game is basically a trippy combination of Asteroids and Space War! played on the screen of the iPhone or iPad and marks the first in a series of Llamasoft games that are part of the "Minotaur Project," an effort by the developer to release numerous titles featuring retro gameplay, progressing forward from the Atari VCS aesthetic to the VIC 20, Commodore 64, and beyond.

The game is now complete and, with a few additions and enhancements over the preview build examined earlier, is available for download in the App Store [link].

Minotaur Rescue, which is a Universal app that natively supports both the iPhone and the iPad, consists of an active starfield play area with a sun at the center. In its core gameplay mode, you control an ever-firing ship that can fly about this starfield (wrapping at the edges) and is affected by the intense gravitational pull of the aforementioned sun. And so, too, are the asteroids closing in from the edges. Your job is to blast apart these asteroids (as opposed to slamming into them), some of which contain minotaurs that must be rescued before they drift into the sun. If too many asteroids drift into the sun, it will turn into a black hole…which is bad. The closer to the sun a minotaur gets before you rescue him, the more points you gain for said rescue. And, the more minotaurs you rescue and the closer you are to the sun, the faster your auto-fire tosses out rounds. Just to keep you fully on your toes, the occasional enemy saucer passes through (and some are tiny), shooting at you and dropping mines.

A touch-anywhere control pad puts you in the pilot's seat, with perpetual auto-fire engaged, as mentioned previously.

In addition to the core gameplay mode, Minotaur Rescue features four other playmodes, as well. There's Survival mode, where you've got just one life in a bid to score as highly as possible before obliteration. There's also Deep Space Minotaur Madness which is like the core gameplay mode, but with only the Asteroids elements in place (plus minotaurs) — no sun and associated gravity. And, perhaps oddly, there's also the Tanks! and Jets! modes, which are like the simple playmodes of the pack-in Atari VCS cartridge Combat. But, of course, with a heavy dose of psychedelia and floating minotaurs to pick up along the way.

The game features solo play, as well as (for those who have friends) two person play on the same iPhone and up to four person play on the same iPad. OpenFeint and Game Center integration are both in place, here.

See Minotaur Jeff demonstrating the game on an iPad.

Minotaur Rescue makes use of Llamasoft's new Neon 2 game engine for iOS, an evolution of the original Neon "light synthesizer" engine, which powers the XBOX 360's music visualizer and Space Giraffe title. According to Minter, Neon 2 is much improved as compared to the original, featuring a cleaner framework and a lot more bang-for-the-buck in terms of shader usage.

As fan of Minter's work, and of retro titles in general, I've had a blast with Solar Minotaur Rescue Frenzy, but also feel that the simple yet challenging gameplay may appeal to a wider audience, as well.

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Grimm [99¢] is an interesting little platformer from developer Robox Studios that popped up in the App Store yesterday. You play as a perambulator (a baby carriage, for the non-British amongst us) that has carelessly been left behind at a train station by a couple of snobbish-looking parents. Not only did they leave the carriage behind, though, but they've left their infant child in it as well in their haste to board the train for a seaside trip. A shady character named Mr. Grimm notices the abandoned child, and will harass you as you control the carriage through the game in an effort to reunite the baby with its parents.

It's an odd but intriguing premise, and Grimm is absolutely drenched in a sick and twisted art style that suits the game well. It has a look that's light-hearted and macabre, and highly similar of the illustrations of Edward Gorey, as so astutely pointed out in our forums. You control the perambulator by tilting the device to move either left or right, with a button for jumping and another for stopping on a dime. Humorously, you can also drag down on the carriage when it's standing still and a trajectory line pops up. You are then able to actually launch the baby out of the carriage at enemies or to activate puzzle elements.

These clever puzzle portions are what work really well in Grimm. You may have to launch the baby onto a switch that lowers down giant barrels into a gap so you can safely cross, or activate the tap on a barrel of ale so that a portly drunkard can drink his fill and become heavy enough to push a platform down, thus creating a way for you to pass. You'll constantly be coming across blocked paths in your travels, and will constantly be amused with whatever silly means are necessary to enable you to forge onward. These puzzles, coupled with the wonderful art style of Grimm, are the high point of the game.

Unfortunately, there are several low points as well. First, the tilt controls can be a little fussy, and there aren't any options for adjusting sensitivity or calibrating them. They work, but it's really hard to be precise, especially when trying to jump on an enemy. Second, and much more annoying to me, is the way the carriage scoops the baby back in after being launched. It's a cute little animation but it takes way too long to complete, and leaves you vulnerable to attacks while it's occurring. I've died several times just from this, and it can be frustrating. Aside from these two big problems there are also a few more instances of clunkiness in Grimm, but nothing too major or distracting. Also, with such terrifically illustrated graphics, it would be really nice to have high resolution support for Retina Display, which sadly it currently does not.

Even with its flaws, Grimm is a highly entertaining game. It's worth the price of admission just to hear the baby's gleeful cry as you launch it across the screen. Levels tend to be rather long, but there is a reasonable checkpoint system in place should you lose all your lives or have to leave the game. The story is told in between levels via poems which are both clever and funny, and even though I feel like I'm a long ways away, I can't wait to see how it turns out in the end. Some adjustments to the controls and an overall smoothing of the rough edges would go a long way in making Grimm a more complete experience. But even as is, there is a lot to like in Grimm, and if you can deal with tilt-only controls and some minor frustrations, it's worth taking a look at.

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There have been a number of fun and free advergames on the App Store. Firemint did a great job with Real Racing GTI [Free], which was little more than a cleverly disguised lite version of Real Racing [$4.99] with some very heavy Volkswagon branding. VW has also worked with Fish Labs to bring us Volkswagen Think Blue. Challenge [Free], an odd "racing" game of sorts where you're put to the task of driving fuel efficiently instead of as fast as possible.

Today's interesting advergame is CP3K [Free] courtesy of Nike, Chris Paul, and his new set of Jordan shoes which, like every year, look even sillier than last year's iteration. How do you mix shoes and a basketball player from the New Orleans Hornets in to a video game? Well, it has something to do with some kind of futuristic training simulator where Chris Paul himself (apparently equipped with his shoes) runs, jumps, and of course, executes wicked backboard-shattering dunks. This all is accomplished by tapping when you're running over pads that boost your speed, allow you to jump higher, or dunk. Otherwise, tapping just makes you jump.

Like most of these advergames, there's limited depth in the gameplay as the goal of CP3K is to sell you shoes. Still, you can replay the levels to beat your ghost, and there's a 3 star rating system depending on how quickly you're able to run and dunk your way through the 9 included levels. It's surprisingly fun for what it is, and the game is even universal. Virtual Chris Paul is animated quite well, and the soundtrack is this cool post-8-bit electronica with an R&B backbeat that's pretty catchy. It's under 25MB too, so iPhone owners can download it via 3G without issue.

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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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Today Joystiq caught wind of a cryptic teaser site for a Japanese mobile phone port of Chrono Trigger, which is yet another classic 16-bit era RPG by SquareSoft. The site itself isn't home to any more information other than the Chrono Trigger logo and "Spring 2011." Chrono Trigger was a remarkable RPG that had many revolutionary systems such as time travel, multiple endings, and other things not previously seen on home consoles. (For a full rundown, check out the extensive page on Wikipedia.)

We're not sure just yet whether this means the game is coming to Japanese mobile phones, the Japanese App Store, or anything else other than it's coming to mobile platforms in one way or another next year. However, with the success Square Enix has seen with their titles on the App Store, I'd find it to be almost impossible to believe that Chrono Trigger wouldn't eventually end up running on iOS sooner or later.

[via Joystiq]

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