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Last week we posted about Mobile 1UP's Lemmings live blog, which was met with tons of enthusiasm both on our forums and in the comments of the actual story along with some very understandable skepticism that this unauthorized port would even see the light of day. Originally published by Psygnosis in 1991, the Lemmings franchise became part of Sony Computer Entertainment when Psygnosis was sold to Sony in 1993. Since then the game has been ported in one form or another to every Sony console, and with Sony's latest online ad campaign targeting the App Store, their reaction to Mobile 1UP's Lemmings isn't entirely surprising.

Citing Joystiq, the cease and desist letter sent by Sony is viewable in its entirety on the Mobile 1UP blog. This isn't entirely bad news, as even though the iPhone port of Lemmings is on hold for the time being, Mobile 1UP has posted in our forums that they're going to try to open a dialog with Sony in attempt to arrange distribution rights to legally bring Lemmings to the App Store. Unfortunately, the licensing costs involved likely means Lemmings will no longer be free as originally intended.

We'll keep a close eye on the drama between Mobile 1UP and Sony, but in the meantime, I'm just keeping my fingers crossed that a real Lemmings game makes it to the App Store sooner or later.

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Earlier this month at Apple's WWDC 2010 in San Francisco, we had a chance to sit down with Julian Farrior and Dale Thoms of Backflip Studios, who brought us Ragdoll Blaster and Paper Toss, among others. The group has shown real App Store savvy, with eight of their 12 titles reaching the top five overall ranking. What's more, they're presently serving one million unique players per day.

In our time together, the folks from Backflip demonstrated four new titles — three free games along with the paid arcade shooter Tunnel Shoot, a collaboration between Backflip Studios and Team Phobic (Bounce On, Bounce On 2). We liked what we saw of them all, but it was the last that really had us excited — and now it's here. Tunnel Shoot [link] has recently gone live in the App Store.

Now, right off the bat — aside from anything relating to gameplay — Backflip / Team Phobic impress with Tunnel Shoot in that it's a Universal iOS game that graphically renders natively to all three iOS platform devices: the iPhone / iPod touch, the iPhone 4, and the iPad. Everybody wins, here.

Tunnel Shoot is, perhaps unsurprisingly, a tunnel shooter in the vein of N2O: Nitrous Oxide for the Playstation (and is somewhat reminiscent of the iPhone's own Boost 3D). The goal of the game is to survive as long as possible, travelling down a neon-vector tunnel while dodging obstacles, blasting enemies, and collecting green gems for points. You're placed in tilt-control of your craft — there are several to choose from, all of which can be visually customized — with a tap / hold mechanic for firing your blaster and bombs.

Your ship's blasters, when first activated, fire bursts of three bolts per shot, but as you hold down the fire "button," that soon drops to two bolts, and then to just a stream of single bolts. Let up on the button and your blasters quickly recharge and it's back to three bolts per shot. (Read: don't just lay on the fire button, folks.) You start off with one bomb which, when activated, flies down the tunnel destroying all enemies in its path. More are accumulated along the way. Your damage bar replenishes over time, and fairly quickly. A nice touch is that when you get blown up, the force of the explosion sends a destructive shockwave down the tunnel before you respawn.

The farther you go, the harder things get. After you get a little ways into the game, the obstacle layouts become rather complex. The arrangement of oncoming pylons and walls becomes difficult to visually comprehend between their appearance on the screen and their crushing impact with your ship. Here, I experience a definite advantage in playing on the iPad and, to a lesser extent, the iPhone 4 as compared to the earlier iOS devices. It's just easier to make out distant structures on larger and / or higher resolution displays. That said — the game is great on the older devices. I've, in fact, spent the most time with it on my 3GS.

As mentioned earlier, the game utilizes accelerometer-based tilt controls for steering. Tilt controls for fast paced shooters can often come up short, given their generally slower reaction time and lesser precision as compared to onscreen swipes. That's really not a problem in Tunnel Shoot as, although the action is intense, the velocity at which you're hurtling down the tunnel is a bit slower than that of some, similar games. I don't mean to indicate that it's some sort of "sluggish" or "laggy" affair, it's just that you're being challenged to dodge hither and yon, choosing your path and placing your shots wisely, as opposed to emphasis being on go, go, go!

The long and short of it is that Tunnel Shoot is a stylized shooter that feels very well implemented, delivers real challenge, supports all iOS devices natively, and costs $0.99. The only gripe I've got is that there's no real explanation as to the specifics, in-game — how the multi-blaster works, that green gems are good, that your damage repairs over time, etc. Nonetheless, it should be an instant buy for anyone that even approximates a shooter fan — especially if you've got multiple devices.

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It's amazing to see the success of Doodle Jump [99¢], especially when you consider the meager beginnings of Lima Sky, which essentially is little more than two brothers building simple games for the iPhone. Igor and Marko Pusenjak announced this afternoon that since its release, the game has been downloaded over 5 million times, which they believe is a first on the App Store.

Since its initial release, Doodle Jump has become somewhat of a pop culture phenomenon. It's been mentioned on the show Big Bang Theory, spoofed on the Jimmy Fallon Show, and the doodler himself has even been spotted on stage with Lady Gaga.

Doodle Jump like so many other games built in one or two man teams perfectly embodies the indie spirit of the App Store. It's hard to say what really made Doodle Jump take off like it has, but it's unreal to think that the $99 a year Lima Sky pays for their iPhone SDK license has given them access to their pool of 5 million customers, and even more remarkable to think that this is barely 5% market penetration, per the "over 100 million devices" figure Steve Jobs quoted in his latest keynote address.

The Pusenjak brothers seem to be planning to keep the regular updates coming, with an underwater Doodle Jump theme in the works. After winning an Apple Design Award this year at WWDC, I'm confident that Lima Sky will keep the updates rolling for some time to come. Either way, it's no secret that we love Doodle Jump around here. If you haven't yet, give episode #10 of our podcast a listen, we interviewed Igor regarding the game and his company a few million downloads ago.

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If you're one of the lucky ones you managed to secure themselves an iPhone 4 today (or even the past two days if you're really lucky) you've no doubt marveled at how thin it is, how crisp the Retina Display is, and maybe you've even found someone else to do a FaceTime call with… but what about loading it up with some games? Since we haven't gotten our own iPhone 4's yet, we haven't really been able to put together a "games that are really awesome on the iPhone 4" listing, but I figured we'd start out by compiling a list of some of our favorite games in the App Store.

If you think this looks a lot like our 2009 Buyer's Guide, that's because it does. However, we've updated the list with some of our recent favorites and kept some of the old ones. In the interest of space, we had to drop many off the list, but that doesn't reflect the quality of those games. If you're looking for more suggestions, please check out the 2009 Buyer's Guide for additional titles we also loved.

If you want to play games on your new iPhone, you're in for a treat.

iPhone Classics

Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor – We choose Tiger Style Games' Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor for our 2009 Game of the Year first and foremost because it's a great game, but also because it perfectly represents the promise of iPhone gaming. Spider is an original concept built specifically for the iPhone by a small self funded team. It's this low barrier to entry which provides customers with a huge selection of games including unique and polished gems like Spider. You really should experience this one. (Review, App Store)

Doodle Jump – While we have to give props to PapiJump as the clear inspiration for Doodle Jump, Lima Sky has managed to take the game to a whole new level and succeeded in creating a true iPhone classic. Doodle Jump has sold over a million copies to date and even been casually referenced on primetime TV sitcoms. Every day we hear from up and coming developers who claim they have come up with "the next Doodle Jump" but so far Lima Sky's title hasn't truly been dethroned. (Review, App Store)

Flight Control – Another iPhone game that will go down in history as one of the classics for the platform. Firemint's CEO Rob Murray took some of his free time during last year's Christmas break to whip up a prototype of a game that eventually became Flight Control. The game has single handedly defined a genre on the iPhone of "line drawing" games and has been endlessly imitated. Flight Control is also one of the few games available at the iPhone 4 launch with high-resolution graphics for the Retina Display. (Review, App Store)

Fieldrunners – One of the original tower defense games on the iPhone, and still the best according to many. Fieldrunners was named one of Time Magazine's Top 10 video games of the year in 2008, and since then the game has seen updates adding OpenFeint support as well as additional maps. (Review, App Store)

Angry Birds – We really liked Angry Birds when it was first released, since then it has become a complete App Store sensation with amazing staying power near the top of the top 10 paid app listing. In the game you fling an array of angry birds with different abilities at pigs. Of course it isn't that easy, as the pigs have fortified themselves in makeshift forts. Angry Birds has seen many updates, and now comes loaded with a surprising amount of levels to play through. (Review, App Store)

Only on iPhone

Zen Bound – Ok, technically this started life as a PC Game, but Zen Bound didn't really come into its own until it became an iPhone game in 2009. The game just came to life on the iPhone with multi-touch and tilt controls along with mood and music to perfectly and completely engross you as a player. An experience as much as a game. (Review, App Store)

Eliss – A multi-touch masterpiece. Eliss delivers a unique, challenging and undeniably iPhone experience. Pinching and combining on-screen planets without letting them touch make for some frantic and riveting gameplay. (Review, App Store)

Sway – The unique multi-touch "swinging" controls of Sway may have ultimately been its downfall. If you can master the steep learning curve of the game's controls, an amazing iPhone platforming experience awaits. (Review, App Store)

Space Ninja – A great use of the iPhone's accelerometer that allows you to dodge enemy fire and invoke slow motion "bullet time". Since its original release, 3GS enhancements have been added as well as a new "magnet fluxor" that allows your ship to briefly repel bullets. (Review, App Store)

Arcade

Tilt to Live – Tilt to Live is a game that draws you in with its edgy personality and inescapable 'just one more go' gameplay. It is gorgeously crafted and presented and has a wicked sense of humor to boot (just take a look at the loading screens to see what I mean). Completing its challenges and unlocking weapons has the added benefit of enabling you to achieve even higher scores and multipliers, meaning even those not normally counting themselves as completionists may be eager to experience the width and breadth of what Tilt to Live has to offer. An update added two new game modes since its initial release, making a great game even better. (Review, App Store)

Espgaluda II – Bullet hell at its best on the iPhone. Even not being a huge fan of the genre, we fell quick and hard in love with Espgaluda II. It is the best 2D shooter experience in the App Store with great touch controls. Note: It will only run on the latest generation devices. (Review, App Store: iPhone 3GS, 3rd Gen iPod Touch, or pixel-doubled on iPad)

Cubed Rally Racer – This fantastic racing game features retro-inspired 3D graphics and completely randomized tracks which range from a walk in the park to iPhone-smashingly difficult. If you were a fan of RC Pro Am back in the day, pick this one up. (Review, App Store)

Platformer

Babylonian Twins – Sixteen years in the making, Babylonian Twins delivers an amazingly challenging yet satisfying iPhone and iPad puzzle platformer. In many modern platformers, I've felt like I'm just mindlessly going through the motions to make it to the end of each level. Babylonian Twins, however, really keeps you enthralled throughout. (Review, App Store: iPhone, iPad)

Super QuickHook – A sequel of sorts to Hook Champ, Super QuickHook utilizes a similar swinging mechanic with updated "16 bit" graphics and a brand new completely randomized survival mode. If you love this one, don't miss out on the original Hook Champ (Review, App Store)

Retro Games

Karate Champ – Revolutionary Concepts' iPhone conversion is done superbly. The dual-stick control mechanism is handled via on-screen joysticks which, while no match for physical controls, work rather well. As far as I can see, aside from the necessary control alterations for the iPhone's touch screen, Karate Champ for the iPhone is a perfect conversion. (Review, App Store)

Broken Sword – The remake of this 1996 point and click adventure was wonderfully brought to the iPhone. The story and all around high-quality production values of Broken Sword sucked us in. Whether you're an old fan of the original game, a newcomer to the series, or even someone who's never played a point-and-click adventure before, Broken Sword is a game with mass appeal that will draw you in. (Review, App Store)

Racing / Driving

Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars – A great adaptation of a DS/PSP game, Chinatown Wars offers a level of depth rarely seen on the App Store. If you complete everything in game, playtime will need to be measured in days, not hours. The weapon targeting system can use improvement, but barely detracts from an otherwise phenomenal game. (Review, App Store)

Jet Car Stunts – A remarkably fun jet car racer/platformer that had us coming back again and again due to its great controls, fresh visual style and mind boggling levels. The only real complaint we've seen voiced has been the relative difficulty of the game, but, honestly, that's what made it so addicting. (Review, App Store)

Real Racing – Perhaps we should have categorized this as a "classic", but Real Racing was the first iPhone racing game that really blew us away. The great graphics, perfect controls and AI all combined to make this one of the best iPhone racing games that still holds up today. Like Firemint's other game, Flight Control, Real Racing also has been recently updated with high resolution graphics for the iPhone 4's Retina Display. (Review, App Store)

Casual

Fruit Ninja – This oddly popular game puts players to the task of slicing all kinds of fruit that is thrown up from the bottom of the screen. Swiping with your finger controls your virtual sword, and combos are awarded based on how many fruit you can slice in one swipe… Just look out for bombs. (Review, App Store)

Canabalt – This isn't a particularly deep game. In fact, the average gaming session is probably measured in seconds rather than minutes. But with its simplicity and style, it managed to keep us coming back again and again. You can try out the identical Flash version for free at Canabalt.com. (Review, App Store)

Boost 3D – We might not have been too over the top about the game when we first reviewed it, but over time we realized that Boost 3D is a game that we love to play. There's something hypnotic about this tunnel runner that had us coming back to play it again and again. (Review, App Store)

Harbor Master – Among the first of the avalanche of Flight Control inspired games, Harbor Master mixes things up by having the player dock cargo ships and send them back out to sea on a variety of different levels– Each with a different layout and some with additional gameplay elements such as pirate ships to shoot or sea monsters to fight off. (Review, App Store)

Word

Bookworm – A game that should need no introduction, Popcap's word searching classic fits great on the iPhone. The touch controls work effortlessly, and the gameplay is perfect for the casual play style of many iPhone gamers. (Review, App Store)

Words with Friends – Asynchronous online multiplayer not-quite-Scrabble that can either be played for free with in-game ads or without for a couple bucks. A recent update added push notifications to tell you when it's your turn and according to Newtoy, the average player spends 1.5 hours each day playing. (Review, App Store)

Strategy

Carcassonne – A fantastic rendition of the classic board game, Carcassonne can be played with 8 different AI players, locally, or online with push notifications. It also has high resolution graphics already in-game to take advantage of the Retina Display. (Review, App Store)

Plants vs. Zombies – Popcap's breakout hit for PC has come to the iPhone — and it's great. Popcap took the standard tower defense formula and greatly simplified it. Instead of a path to build towers along, you drop seeds in your yard which then grow in to plants that have various offensive or defensive capabilities. While it does lack a few gameplay modes from the original, the iPhone adaption is very well done and highly recommended. (Review, App Store)

Land Air Sea Warfare – There are quite a few options for RTS fans available on the App Store, but all of varying degrees of quality and none that felt "just right". That all changed last month with the release of Land Air Sea Warfare. LASW gets it “just right”, offering a full console-like RTS experience with brilliantly executed, easy to use touch screen controls.(Review, App Store)

Sword & Poker 2 – This strange game is the sequel to the original Sword & Poker <a href="which we loved in our reivew. In the game you play an RPG battling monsters by placing poker hands on a 5×5 grid. The concept sounds crazy, but works very well. If nothing else, give the lite version a try. (Article, App Store, Lite)

Chess with Friends – The iPhone equivalent to snail mail correspondence chess– You can play the ad-based version for free, or upgrade to the premium version to play without ads. Recently added push notifications that alert you when its your turn and an endless supply of human opponents makes this the best chess game available on the platform. (Article, App Store)

Role Playing

Chaos Rings – One of the most ambitious RPG games we've seen so far for the iPhone. The graphics and gameplay are exactly what you'd expect out of a Square Enix RPG. Battle in parties of two in classic turn-based battles as you make your way through a story that's just as ridiculous as any other Japanese RPG. (Review, App Store: iPhone)

Space Miner – It's probably no surprise that this game topped our list for February. Space Miner: Space Ore Bust has an unusually broad appeal successfully mixing shooter and RPG genres into a humorous and well scripted package. Whatever sort of gamer you are, don't miss out on this one. (Review, App Store)

Pocket Legends – This free online multiplayer game for both the iPhone and iPad that is a ton of fun and playing in a party with your friends is especially impressive while you're playing via 3G as the netcode does a great job in providing a lag-free experience. Additional content is available via in-game DLC, but you can really get a good feel for the game before you ever need to buy anything. (Review, App Store: iPhone, iPad)

Sports

Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 – A surprisingly competent port of the classic skateboarding game. Everything is included from the original, and once you get used to the virtual controls, you'll be performing endless combos in no time in the many included skating locations.(Review, App Store:iPhone)

X2 Snowboarding – X2 Snowboarding from Exient is a highly enjoyable romp on the slopes that sets itself apart from the crowd in graphics, controls and gameplay. With a great sense of speed and immersion, this is our snowboarding game of choice for the iPhone. (Review, App Store / Lite)

X2 Soccer 2010 – The followup title to their 2009 title, X2 Soccer 2010 is one of the top soccer game experiences right now on the App Store. X2 Soccer 2010 is complete with great AI, impressive 3d graphics and solid controls. (Review, App Store)

To see other iPhone games we've rated, check out the sidebar where you can find: 5 Stars, 4.5 Stars, 4 Stars, 3.5 Stars, 3 Stars, and 2.5 Stars. All of what we have considered to be the best iPhone games are filed under Best iPhone Games, and I'm sure this post will be filled with comments from people suggesting their own favorite iPhone games that we left out of this list.

Good luck to everyone in line today looking to get an iPhone 4, we'll have much more iPhone 4 coverage as soon as we get ours in our greasy little hands.

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Konami's much anticipated PES 2010 for the iPhone has arrived internationally. We'd previewed the game based on the developer's blogs describing the control system they were working on for the game.

The game has been released to non-U.S. countries. No indication yet when the U.S. release is coming.

Here's an early gameplay video run on an iPhone 3G:

A video of 3GS performance shown here.

We'll have a closer look shortly. Meanwhile impressions can be found in our forums.

App Store Link: PES 2010 (Not in U.S.)

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One of the most beloved and recognizable classics in the relatively short history of video games is Konami's Frogger. The timeless gameplay of getting your character from point A to point B, while navigating a busy highway and hazardous river, has spawned many variations during the years and is still fun even today. Banzai Rabbit (formerly called Frogman) is the newest game from Revolutionary Concepts, who most recently brought us the excellent port of Karate Champ, and it takes the very basic premise of Frogger and turns it on its ear with new gameplay twists, gorgeous 3D graphics, and a comic book style storyline. The overall experience feels more like an actual evolution of the Frogger series than any of the spinoffs ever have.

The story starts in a lab, where scientists are experimenting with building teleportation pods. During some commotion, test lab rabbit Banzai escapes his cage, leaping into one of the pods (with a stowaway flea coming along for the ride as well). The pod then activates with two scientists inside, one getting fused with Banzai and one getting fused with the flea. The results are rabbit and flea humanoids. After the dust clears from the accident, the enemy now known as The Flea plots world domination and kidnaps beautiful lab assistant Mary Beth. Having strong feelings for her, Banzai plots how to stop him, and thus the story begins. Ok, it's basically the plot from the 1986 film The Fly mashed up with elements of Spiderman, but it works pretty well in setting up the story for Banzai Rabbit.

The game is set across 34 levels in various locations such as city streets and railyards. You must guide Banzai from one side of the level to the other while avoiding the hazards laid out before you. On the other side of the map is a human who has been infected by The Flea, and if you don't make it to them in time then they will turn into a fly. Once you rescue that person, the perspective of the level flips around and you must make it back the way you came to save a human who's now on the opposite side from you. This continues until you've rescued 5 humans per level. Two different powerups can be collected, one that let's you jump over one of the hazards if need be, and one that slows down time for a short period making it easier to maneuver between the obstacles. It all comes together extremely well, taking a classic mechanic and wrapping it around some new ideas and fantastic visuals.

The area where the game falters is in terms of difficulty. More specifically, a brutally hard, teeth clenching difficulty. George Costanza couldn't beat this. The levels start to pick up in pace and complexity about a third of the way through the game. It took countless retries to pass some of these levels, which was bad enough, but at about the midway point of the game I completely hit a wall. There was just no way for me to progress, despite trying over and over. Collecting mutagen orbs spread throughout each level allows you to continue. You start the game with 5 lives, and can earn more through bonus levels and by rescuing humans. It takes 10 mutagen orbs to continue once you lose all lives. I started the level where I got stuck with 60 some odd orbs, and went through them all without blinking an eye. That's at least 30 lives wasted on a level where I didn't even rescue one human. Once you run out of orbs, you must frustratingly start completely over from level one. It's just flat out too difficult. I consider myself a fairly accomplished gamer, and have a fondness for the overly challenging games of the 80's and 90's, but I concede to Banzai Rabbit. He beat me. Some truly hardcore players may love this type of challenge, but I highly doubt normal to casual players will have the fortitude to see the game through.

I realize I'm making a pretty big deal about this, but it's honestly the one thing that can keep me from wholeheartedly recommending Banzai Rabbit. I'm not alone, either, as I've only made it halfway through the game and am sitting comfortably atop the Agon leaderboard. Is halfway really the farthest anyone has made it? It's not always necessary to completely beat a game when reviewing it, but you should at least have a pretty broad understanding of what the game offers. I feel like I'm missing out on a big part of Banzai Rabbit that's awaiting me in the second half of the game, not the least of which is the story (I imagine the hero saves the girl, but I'd like to see it).

Luckily, Revolutionary Concepts has been listening to the feedback in the game's forum thread, and will likely address the difficulty in an update. If you feel up to the challenge, Banzai Rabbit really does have a lot to offer, just don't expect to see all of it any time soon.

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In our current fast-paced internet age, oftentimes classical arts and literature take a back seat to silly YouTube clips and 30-second Flash games. In times like these, just how do you get a generation prone to short attention spans and low-brow humor interested in a two hundred year old classic novel? Simple, you add zombies. And ninjas. This is precisely what author Seth Grahame-Smith has done with Jane Austen's critically acclaimed work Pride and Prejudice with the aptly titled Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Taking the original text, he interjects his own bits of zombie and kung-fu fiction to come up with an alternate telling of the story. The results are borderline brilliant. Austen's quintessential tale of life as a young woman in late 1700's/early 1800's aristocratic English society juxtaposed with campy B-movie style zombie and ninja undertones makes for incredibly humorous storytelling. Others seem to agree as well, as the mash-up novel rose to #3 on New York Times bestseller list following it's release in April 2009.

Now, the fine folks at Freeverse have teamed up with the publisher of the novel Quirk Classics to bring the video game iteration of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies [$2.99] to the iPhone. It's a 2D side-scrolling beat 'em up similar to Final Fight, Streets of Rage, or TMNT Arcade of years past. The presentation of the game is a total success, both visually appealing and rife with bizarre humor. Unfortunately the gameplay itself isn't quite as strong, and feels somewhat shallow and repetitive. Surprisingly, this doesn't hamper the overall experience of the game that much, as the story is hilarious and remains a lot of fun to play through.

The graphics in PPZ look appropriate to the era, with sketch-style illustrations comprising the smoothly animated characters and backgrounds. It looks like a storybook come to life. The game is broken into 12 separate chapters from the book. The level of description in the game is obviously not as thorough as Austen's original novel, although it does hit on all the major plot-points. You are the second oldest of five daughters, Elizabeth Bennet, struggling to find love and social acceptance in England at the turn of the 19^th century. You are also the most skilled warrior in your family. Your mother wants nothing more than to see you married to a wealthy gentleman and secure your future. You want nothing more than to worry about your own future, and marry for true love rather than money. You'll do anything to defend your family's honor from public opinion while defending their lives from the constant threat of zombie infection.

What works so incredibly well and makes the game so funny is how nonchalantly the zombie aspect is integrated into the story. Take the very first chapter for example. One minute you're attending a hoity-toity ball discussing with your sisters which male guests would make suitable husbands, the next you're fighting off an onslaught of the undead who've decided to crash the party. The game then delves into the awesomely absurd when you are channeled by your Shaolin Master and reminded to “remember your training” as you're guided through the controls. At the end of the level, even more inexplicably, the five sisters combine powers Voltron lion-style to attack a large mob of zombies. Then, just as quickly as the madness breaks out, it's right back to the topic of marriage like nothing even happened. It's this kind of sharp contrast in events and cavalier attitude towards the zombie infestation that made the book such a success, and it translates to the visual extremely well in the iPhone game.

As mentioned, the gameplay is of the classic beat 'em up style. Enemies will attack from every angle as you progress from left to right through the various levels. A small control stick controls Elizabeth's movement and a single screen tap executes a basic attack with her katana sword. There's also an impressive advanced move set that uses simple swipe gestures to allow for many different special maneuvers. Swiping diagonally upwards performs an uppercut slash, or swiping diagonally downwards performs a sliding kick, as examples. There's a lot of depth to the moves you can pull off with such simple commands, and each one is upgradeable after completing a level (in what is amusingly named the Dojo).

It sounds really great on paper, but falters a bit in execution. Some of these special moves are unwieldy to use in the heat of battle, and the majority of the time your best offense is your basic katana slash. This degrades the gameplay into furious button-mashing. My finger literally got sore from all the tapping. This isn't entirely surprising, as that is historically the nature of this type of game. It's a shame though, because the upgrade system and arsenal of moves are interesting and well designed, they just aren't that useful. When I did try to get fancy with my attacks, it often cost me more damage than if I had just kept on spamming my katana. The couple of exceptions to this are an Earth-shaking move (swipe up to jump and quickly swipe down while in the air to pound the ground) and a spinning katana slash (swipe down while on the ground to spin with your blade à la Baraka from Mortal Kombat II). These two moves proved to be the most functional for me out of the whole arsenal.

Monotonous gameplay aside, I really enjoyed Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. It does enough right presentation and story-wise to hold your interest, and is filled with plenty of laugh-out-loud moments. It's a fairly short ride, and is definitely on the easy side, but has some replayability in the form of going back and attaining medals for every level. You are scored on how quickly you beat a level, how much life you have left, and on your style, which is how much variety you put into your attack patterns with special moves. Plus+ integration offers achievements and leaderboards to round out the package, giving even more incentive to go back and replay. Still, PPZ works even as just a one-off experience, and for the fraction of the cost of going to the movies you can spend a few hours engrossed in this odd tale on your iPhone.

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Back in the early '90s when I was in college, with some sorrow, I replaced my lovely Amiga 2000 with a Mac LC in order to crank out higher quality print documents for my classwork. And, in that capacity, it excelled. Sadly, as the weakest color Macintosh one could buy, it was not much of a game machine — not that there were that many Mac games out there to play, anyhow. One game, however, was huge fun and played rather well even on the meager LC. It eased my pain at having to part with the veritable gaming powerhouse that was the Amiga. The game I speak of is Spectre, and it actually made that little LC feel like a proper game machine.

Spectre is a 3D, filled-vector tank battle game something akin to Battlezone. The simple objective was to drive your tank around various obstacle-filled battlefields collecting flags and dodging the fire of AI enemy vehicles. The game also supported local multiplayer over the Mac's integrated AppleTalk networking hardware. It was followed by Spectre VR, an overall enhanced, network-centric title. Both versions were highly rated at the time and were awesome to play on the Mac's relatively high resolution, color display.

As a lover of that 1991 title — pretty much the only game I played on that Mac — you can imagine my thrill when Spectre 3D [link] made its debut in the App Store. And the iPhone release is not just a port of Spectre; the game includes iPhone versions of both Spectre and Spectre VR, including four different multiplayer games. It's pretty much an old Spectre jockey's dream come true.

Let's start with the single player scenarios. Both Spectre and Spectre VR are pretty much straight conversions of the Mac originals, although on the iPhone they play glass-smooth thanks to the device's processor and graphics hardware, both of which are far more powerful than that found on even the very highest end Mac systems of the day. (There's even anaglyph 3D — red / blue glasses –support.) You move from battlefield to battlefield, collecting flags and power-ups and blasting enemies using one of three different view modes: first person, over-the-shoulder, and 2D top-down. Direction and weapons are controlled via touch; steering is accomplished via either an analog virtual stick (default) or a digital control square in the lower-left corner of the screen while weapons and jump are controller by virtual buttons at the lower-right. The controls, analog in particular, are responsive and work quite well. It's simple but a lot of fun, especially for those who remember the days of 68020 and 68030 Macs.

Things really get interesting in the multiplayer modes, however. As I mentioned, there are four multiplayer games: Arena, Capture the Flag, Flag Rally, and Base Raid. Up to four players can compete locally via Bluetooth and up to 16 players can get in on the fun over the Internet or local WiFi. The game has just hit the App Store and, as such, there are not that many players online — no surprise. But I was happy to see that most of the game servers available feature AI bots that offer up a rather solid online game experience. The action gets downright frantic. It's Spectre as I never saw it back in '91 — pretty "white knuckle," really.

As I said earlier, Spectre 3D is an absolute instant buy for anyone who enjoyed the title back in the day. And, while it doesn't steal the crown from Vector Tanks Extreme for the ultimate iPhone Battlezone experience, Spectre 3D has multiplayer support going for it, and is a good deal of fun. I hope to see kill you online sometime soon.

App Store Link: Spectre 3D, $4.99

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Adult Swim's game portal is absolutely loaded with fun Flash games, quite a few of which have since went on to become both iPhone and iPad games. Robot Unicorn Attack is one of the few Flash games I find myself regularly playing, as the Canabalt [$2.99] style gameplay mixed with Erasure's Always creates an experience that is quite honestly too awesome for words.

In the game, you play as a unicorn and have three wishes (lives) to score as many points as possible by double jumping and dashing to ram through stars. According to an Entertainment Weekly exclusive, fans of Robot Unicorn Attack will soon be able to chase their dreams on the iPhone.

Adult Swim plans on launching the game on June 1st for $2.99. If this is the first you've heard of the game, head on over to the Robot Unicorn Attack page on Adult Swim's games and give it a spin. It has sound, so make sure you're playing somewhere that you can fully enjoy some Erasure before clicking.

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In late March we first caught wind of Warblade, an impressive looking vertical shooter that has already lived a long life on the PC. (Starting originally with the Amiga.) The plot of Warblade is extremely simple, an alien race is invading Earth and you must stop them by shooting up every enemy ship that crosses your path. While the game likely won't win any awards for story telling, the recently released gameplay video really looks great:

The graphics look awesome, and they even go through the shocking number of weapons you can buy in game while playing through quite a few levels. Also, as mentioned in the description of the video, Warblade will come loaded with 100 levels along with 15 time trial levels and boss fights. The game also runs at 60 FPS, but it isn't clear on which devices.

According to the EMV Software Twitter, the free version of Warblade was recently submitted. The last mention of the full version of the game is from May 6th, where a new beta version was sent to testers.

I was excited for Warblade when I first heard about the plans to bring it to the iPhone, and after seeing the game in motion, I can't wait for it to get here. Hopefully the free version comes with a decent amount of content to hold us over while the paid version is finalized.

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