Last month we learned that Warner Bros. Studios and developer Square One had a remake of the classic arcade game Tapper (better known as Root Beer Tapper) in the works for iOS, and the game known as Tapper World Tour [99¢/HD] is now available in the App Store. The aim of Tapper World Tour is to keep the original gameplay mostly intact while adding a couple of bells and whistles and wrapping the entire package in the wonderful art of legendary animator Don Bluth. And Tapper World Tour succeeds beautifully at this, creating a game that retains the feel of the original while bringing it into the modern era.

Tapper World Tour has you playing as the quick-on-his-feet bartender Sam from the original game, or his equally capable daughter Nikki. Gameplay involves manning several bar counters at once and serving drinks to the patrons whom are slowly approaching the end of each bar. Dishing out drinks sends these folks back down the bar from which they came, and a level is complete when all patrons have been served and cleared out.

Eventually more gameplay elements enter into the mix. Thirsty drinkers will send empty glasses back at you when they’re finished which must be collected before sliding off the end of the bar and breaking. Also, some customers will leave you a tip at some position along the length of the bar which must quickly be collected amidst all the rest of the chaos to score some bonus points. You have a certain amount of lives for each level, and if you let too many glasses break or leave too many customers without drinks then the level is failed and must be tried again.

A couple of brand new elements have been added to Tapper World Tour which mix up the classic gameplay described above. In later levels customers will request specific types of drinks and you’ll have to switch to the appropriate one using an icon in the corner before serving them. Also, multipliers can be earned by successfully serving consecutive customers which will earn you power-ups like a special drink that guarantees you receive a tip or one that temporarily disables having to serve specific drinks.

Another new aspect is special entertainment shows that are enabled after a certain amount of time in a level. These activate a special sequence, like a sports game on TV or a bull riding show in a saloon, which draws the attention of the customers and causes them to temporarily stop, giving you a chance to catch up on orders. One new addition in Tapper World Tour which falls a bit flat are occasional mini games which can be completed after a level to add to that level’s score. These are simple derivatives of “3 shell shuffle” and “whack-a-mole” style games, and while they do break up the normal gameplay they aren’t very engaging.

These new elements fit right in with the classic Tapper gameplay in Tapper World Tour, making for some frantic and extremely challenging fun. One thing that is a huge improvement over the original is the use of touch screen controls. Simply tapping the taps works incredibly well for serving drinks, and tapping on the screen to move between the different bar counters allows for much quicker reactions than you could get with physical controls. There’s an option for a virtual d-pad and button for a more traditional feel, but I definitely think you’re at a disadvantage when using this control setup.

Tapper World Tour contains a ton of content, with more than 40 levels in Story mode and an additional 50+ expert levels when Story is completed. There is also the Endless Shift mode, which is basically a survival mode that lets you play on any unlocked level for as long as possible until you fail. Each Story level has 3 stars to earn based on score, and every Endless Shift level comes equipped with its own Game Center leaderboard, though at this time it appears the Game Center leaderboard functionality isn’t working properly.

All of the gameplay and content in Tapper World Tour is complemented by the excellent art of Don Bluth and his team. The game takes place across 11 different cities in 3 different countries, each with their own unique drinking establishments and customers. The game just oozes all sorts of personality, and it’s hard not to just sit back and enjoy what’s happening on the screen during play. The fact that the gameplay is so solid just serves to enhance that enjoyment. If you were a fan of the original Tapper games or if you enjoy a good fast-paced arcade experience, then Tapper World Tour will satisfy.

Note: Some players in our forums are reporting that the game is unplayable on their device due to a graphical defect. This issue appears to affect 4th generation iPod touch and original iPad owners as far as we can tell. I had absolutely no issues with the game on my iPhone 4 or iPad 2, and a 1.1 update is in the works to fix these issues and will be released as soon as possible.

TouchArcade Rating:

If you're a thrifty gamer looking for a great deal, then Hemisphere Games has got you covered for today. One of the finest games available, Osmos, is now just 99¢ whether you own an iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, or Mac computer. Osmos was originally released as a PC game back in 2009, and went on to win a crazy amount of awards from all four corners of the media.

It was definitely a heartwarming indie developer success story, but when the game was ported to the iPad last Summer, things got even more interesting as Osmos felt like it was meant for the large touch screen and an already great game was suddenly even better. Then just a couple of months later, Osmos surprised us again by making its way to the smaller screen of the iPhone and iPod touch. Despite less screen real estate, Hemisphere did a fabulous job retaining the awesome gameplay experience of Osmos. Finally, when the Mac App Store launched this past January, Osmos returned to its roots as a personal computer game and played just as well as it ever had.

If you need some more convincing, you can check out our full review of the iPad version of Osmos, as well as our initial impressions on how it played when it released for iPhone and iPod touch. Honestly though, for 99¢ each, they just don't get much better than Osmos. It has a relaxing, puzzle-like aspect to it, but it still remains a challenging game. The audio and visuals make for a unique experience, and it's the type of game that you can just get lost in while playing. It might be too slow going for some gamers, but for myself and plenty of other players around the world Osmos is a must have title.

App Store Links:

• Osmos, $0.99
• Osmos for iPad, $0.99 (iPad Only)
• Osmos, $0.99 (Mac App Store)

Back in January Gameloft revealed that they were working on a new entry in the Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six series titled Shadow Vanguard. We’ve previously posted the official trailer, a hands-on gameplay video, and an interesting interactive trailer that Gameloft created that takes you through part of the first level. After all of that anticipation, at long last Rainbow Six Shadow Vanguard [$6.99] has finally gone live in the App Store.

The game features 11 single player missions where you lead a special elite group of soldiers in taking out a terrorist organization. Unlike your typical first-person shooter, Rainbow Six games rely on tactical gameplay choices rather than an all out run-n-gun approach. Taking your time to investigate each situation closely and determine the best plan of attack will get much better results than just bursting in and blasting anything that moves.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect to Rainbow Six Shadow Vanguard is the multiplayer options. It features a traditional deathmatch mode with up to 10 players in a game, but there is also the option to team up with up to 2 buddies and have a go at the campaign cooperatively.

Gameloft has proven they can create competent FPS experiences with games like N.O.V.A. 2 [$6.99/HD] and Modern Combat 2 [$6.99/Lite/HD], both of which feature great single-player campaigns and robust online multiplayer options. In the case of Rainbow Six Shadow Vanguard, we’ll be holding off our full review for a bit so that the servers can populate with other players first and we can get a good feel for all the online functionality in the game.

Until then, there is a forum thread filling up with early impressions of Rainbow Six Shadow Vanguard if you’re interested in hearing what your fellow gamers have to say about the game. We’ll put it through its paces as well and report back with a review soon.

If you're at the point where your frog breeding factory in NimbleBit's Pocket Frogs [Free] is running at 110% capacity and you're looking to get your next freemium fix, I've got just what the doctor ordered. Ian and David Marsh, twin brothers behind Pocket Frogs has been hard at work on their next game, titled Tiny Tower. They haven't even started beta testing their game yet, so details are still being worked out, but here's what we've been told:

Tiny Tower tasks you with constructing and managing a tower populated with bitizens and businesses. Put your bitizens to work and keep your businesses stocked to earn enough revenue to expand your tower skyward. Unlock and collect one hundred plus floor blueprints that will make your tower stand out from the rest.

Check out the screenshots from an early development build of the game:

What made Pocket Frogs so awesome was that NimbleBit designed the game from the ground up to be a fun game first, and a freemium money maker second. There never really was a stopping point in Pocket Frogs where you had to pay to continue, unlike far too many freemium games where it's entirely too easy to spot all the time sinks and "optional pay walls which rarely feel optional on any level. We've been told Tiny Tower is going to be the exact same way, and I can't wait to give it a try.

One down-side of the sheer madness of planning for, scheduling meetings, and actually attending two back to back conventions (GDC and PAX) was the amount of things that slipped through the cracks during that time. I've been going back and pouring through releases from the last few weeks and one that sticks out is Shadow Era [Free], a collectable card game by Kyle Pool, the man responsible for bringing Battle for Wesnoth [$4.99 / HD]. Shadow Era is universal, and there's even a browser version that can be played at ShadowEra.com. There's also plans for additional clients for PC/Mac/Android, with all of your cards and decks synchronized online.

The one drawback of that kind of cross-compatibility is that Shadow Era requires an internet connection, but as someone who is constantly frustrated by having game saves that are trapped on a particular device, this seems to be a worthy sacrifice. Gameplay seems to be a cross between Magic: The Gathering and the World of Warcraft card game. An in-game tutorial does a great job of explaining how the game works, but if you really want to get in to the strategy of the game I'd recommend taking a look at this thread on our forums as well as the Shadow Era forums themselves.

Judging by the overwhelmingly positive response on our forums about this game, I know I'm in the minority here, but these kind of collectable card games drive me crazy. I've played Magic: The Gathering on a competitive level on and off for close to 15 years now and all of these home-grown CCG games just pale in comparison. The card pool is limited, gameplay feels like an amalgamation of elements from existing games, and so much of the fun of playing a CCG is the social aspect-- Something sorely missing from Shadow Era. But would you pick up on this if you haven't spent most of your life playing collectable card games? I doubt it.

That being said, the way Shadow Era is being sold is a fantastic representation of what freemium games should be. It's totally free to download and try, and you're given one starter deck from the get go that allows you to just go to town playing the game. Similarly, winning games awards you an in-game currency which can be used to buy more cards. You can either slowly grind this currency up by playing, or you can just flip out a few bucks and buy whatever you'd like. Also, because this is a strategy-based game, throwing money at it doesn't necessarily make you any better, so it's not like you're at much of a disadvantage if you only ever play with what you can get for free.

Even though it's easy for me to complain about nitty gritty CCG details that likely few people even care about, I still highly recommend giving Shadow Era a try. I hope the game is wildly successful too, as maybe it will prompt Wizards of the Coast (or Hasbro via EA or whatever corporate dragon is sitting on top of the M:TG pile of gold) to release a iOS version of either the Magic: The Gathering Online client or Duels of the Planeswalkers. I'd be satisfied with either.

All the way back in January of 2010, Ryan Mitchell Games released Necromancer Rising [Free], an RPG of impressive scale. Utilizing their own in-house developed "Soul Engine", the game comes packed with tons of content and customization while still being capable of running well on ancient iOS devices. The graphics look a little dated, but if you can get beyond that you'll be in for 60 hours of gameplay across 50 in-game dungeons with 49 different bosses.

Check out the trailer which shows a bunch of bosses, dungeons, and gameplay:

Anyway, the whole reason that this game is free is because of the launch of Mission Europa, a Sci-Fi themed title based on the same engine which has an additional year of development under its belt. Again, the graphics in Mission Europa are definitely rough around the edges compared to modern video games, but the amount of content and customization is crazy. The 50 hours of gameplay is comprised of 50 different levels over 5 episodes and 170 missions. Also included are 180 different enemies, 50 bosses, and 30 unique armor sets.

Give the trailer a look:

One odd thing about Mission Europa is that it comes in two different editions. First off, there's Mission Europa Collector's Edition HD [$9.99] and Mission Europa Standard Edition HD [$3.99] they seem to be the same game, but the Collector's Edition comes with all of the content while the Standard Edition has it for sale in-game via IAP.

It sounds weird, but people on our forums are absolutely in love with the game. It had a ridiculously huge thread in our upcoming games forum, and now that it's out there's an equally massive thread in our games forum. In addition, there's even a FAQ thread filled with forum members helping others with the game.

I'd definitely give Necromancer Rising a try first, as the game mechanics are similar enough that you'll easily be able to get a feel for whether or not you can deal with how the game feels before getting involved in Mission Europa. Either way, it's impressive seeing indie developers like this releasing games of this scope and scale, so swing by the forums and see what others are saying about the games.

"The alien forces have arrived, but why are they dancing?"

It's to do with all the pixellated collaborative gaming goodness they're bringing to iOS gamers, I'm guessing.

During the mid-week TouchArcade party we hosted out at GDC 2011, Cole Krumbholz of Koduco Games walked up with his iPad and challenged me to a match of his then-upcoming PongVaders Max [App Store], a follow-up to PongVaders: Episode One, his studio's two-player, face-to-face, collaborative mashup of Pong and Space Invaders that sports a lovely retro aesthetic for both the eye and ear. The sad thing is, for one reason or another, we never covered the game. It was released back in August -- and it's awesome.

The game presents a playfield filled with Space Invaders-style aliens bent on pummeling the cities that you and your playmate are defending with swipe-controlled Pong-style paddles at the far edges of the screen. Said playmate is ideally a human friend, but in-game AI can take on the task for the lonely gamer. But whatever the case, it's cooperative play -- both players try to help each other destroy the alien horde.

The field of invaders in the center of the screen fire outwards, towards both players, and those shots can be repelled back upon them to turn their attacks into yours. Asteroid obstacles here and there make things especially challenging. An alien bolt deflected directly to the other player's paddle supercharges the volley and, along the way, various power-ups can be collected to gain special abilities. When the aliens dwindle, shots can be directed in slow-motion by tilting the device, making for some wonderfully animated (in the physical sense) two-player fun.

As mentioned earlier, the original PongVaders: Episode One [$.99] is an iPad-only release that hit the App Store back in August. The big news from Koduco is the release of PongVaders Max [App Store], which landed since our demo at GDC.

The original PongVaders: Episode One featured 10 levels plus a boss fight. After listening to feedback from users, Koduco created a remastered Universal version of the game that runs natively on both the iPhone and iPad, available for free with 10 bundled levels, with 20 more available as an in-app purchase (for $.99). PongVaders Max features tuned physics, power-ups, sound, and visual effects -- still retro -- along with rebalanced levels and a tutorial for beginners. The game includes new invaders, two more boss fights, and new music from Nullsleep.

If all we were talking about here was the original release, we'd be talking about an awesome game. But the new PongVaders Max takes it to the next level. As a free download with 10 included levels, there's no excuse for not grabbing this one for your iPhone or iPad right now -- even if you have no friends.

TouchArcade Rating:

Last month we caught wind of the trailer for Liqua Pop [$1.99], a new color-matching game from iChromo and EA Mobile. We were really impressed with the stunning visuals in Liqua Pop, with bright colors and realistic fluidity of the water droplets used in the game. During GDC, we were able to check out the game in person, and last week Liqua Pop finally went live in the App Store. After playing with the game for the past few days, I can safely say that Liqua Pop achieves what so few games are able to on the App Store anymore: it manages to make a color-matching game interesting again. Unfortunately the package is fairly bare-bones, but the potential for Liqua Pop to take its novel twist on the genre is huge.

In Liqua Pop, the play field is a leaf, with multi-colored droplets falling from the top of the screen. Same color drops can be dragged into one another to create larger drops, and when four of the same color have been combined, a timer ticks down inside the drop. When the timer ticks out, the drop pops, clearing it from the screen. Alternately, a quick flick of the device will pop a large drop, or a double tap will reset the countdown timer so you can time the pops with others to form combos. Each popped drop advances a tiny tree frog named Toadie up a stem to the left of the screen, and a level is completed when enough drops have been popped to move Toadie to the top.

As you progress in Liqua Pop, some drops will come with small bugs inside that will affect the gameplay when released. Some are helpful, like ones that change all surrounding drops to the color of the one that was just popped for easy matching, or bomb bugs that pop all nearby drops when released. Others aren’t so helpful, like bugs that turn all surrounding drops into “void” drops that can only be cleared with bomb bugs.

The gameplay works very well, and dragging drops together using the touch screen feels very natural. I’m not usually a fan of having to shake my device in a game, but in Liqua Pop the function is very easy and unobtrusive, and allows for quick popping of bubbles when the screen is filling up and your fingers are busy making matches.

The only problem I have with the game is that there’s but a single mode which features a linear progression through increasingly more difficult levels. They start to get especially challenging around the 20 level mark, and if you find yourself unable to complete a level there’s nothing to do but quit and start over from the beginning. An endless mode or some sort of challenge mode would go a long way towards increasing the longevity of Liqua Pop, and this is the type of game that could really benefit from an online system like OpenFeint or Game Center.

Just to be clear, though, I like Liqua Pop a lot. The visuals are absolutely fantastic, with support for Retina Displays, and the music is minimal but calming and serene. There’s something very relaxing about playing the game, that is until you get to a level that moves so quickly that you can’t keep up -- then it kind of stresses you out. Liqua Pop's base gameplay is so solid and unique that, with just a few additions, it could be one of the premiere matching games around. As it is now, it’s still a novel game with plenty of enjoyable points, and although it's missing some variety, I still think it’s worth checking out.

TouchArcade Rating:

Back in January, we learned about a new crossover deal between Universal Pictures and Doodle Jump developer Lima Sky that would see Doodle Jump somehow being affiliated with the upcoming movie Hop. At that time we weren’t quite sure if this would tie into the original Doodle Jump [99¢], be an update to Doodle Jump Christmas Special [99¢], or if it would be a completely new game altogether. Today we find out that it’s the latter, as Doodle Jump: Hop the Movie [Free] is now available in the App Store as a brand new separate game.

The premise for the game is that E.B., the son of the Easter Bunny, is set to take over the family tradition of delivering Easter baskets to kids around the world. But before he can take on his new role in life, he needs to become more proficient at jumping. This is where Doodle the Doodler comes in, as he has had more experience jumping than practically anybody.

Doodle Jump: Hop the Movie features 25 levels, with one unlocking each day until the movie’s release on April 1st. Since that’s not quite 25 days away, there are currently 8 levels available to play, which probably accounts for the time it took to be approved by Apple. It’s unclear whether or not there is a traditional endless mode, as each new level is completed by attaining a certain height goal, and there is no sort of score tracking that I can see.

Still, it definitely feels just like a Doodle Jump game, and that means that it’s a lot of fun. The graphics have an Easter flare to them, with platforms made out of jelly beans and Doodler jumping alongside you decked out in his cute bunny costume. It's also a universal app and features graphical support for Retina Display devices. Doodle Jump: Hop the Movie is free to download and play, and as far as games that tie in with advertisements go, it seems to be a pretty solid release and is worth checking out if you’re looking for a new Doodle Jump fix.

The hype machine is in full swing for the release of Gameloft’s newest shooter Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Shadow Vanguard, set to hit this Thursday. Rainbow Six: Shadow Vanguard will feature 11 tactical missions where you’ll be able to direct your AI team of specially trained soldiers or, in a first for iPhone first-person shooters, you can link up with up to 2 buddies online and play through the campaign cooperatively.

In addition to the cooperative mode, Rainbow Six: Shadow Vanguard will feature an online deathmatch mode for up to 10 players. Here are some screens from the 5 deathmatch maps that will be included at launch.

For their latest video for Rainbow Six: Shadow Vanguard, Gameloft have taken an interesting approach at making it interactive. Much like the Choose Your Own Adventure books I read as a child, the video will stop occasionally and give you a choice on how to handle the current situation, with some choices ending up in your team’s demise and others having you come out victorious. The video will only work on a Mac or PC, so if you’re checking this out on your iOS device it won’t pan out:

At first I thought the interactive demo was kind of cheesy, but after running through it a few times it's actually pretty neat. And it shows off a good amount of gameplay for Rainbow Six: Shadow Vanguard, which appears to follow fairly closely to the console titles that I love so much. It will be interesting to see how well the online co-op plays out, and how the deathmatch will be with all the tactical gameplay additions rather than your average kill everything free-for-all. There's been a huge buzz for the game in our forums for some time now, and we're also eager to get our hands on Rainbow Six: Shadow Vanguard this Thursday.

Big news broke this morning: Illusion Labs, the creators of Sway [$4.99] and Labyrinth 2 [$4.99], have announced that it’s working on a follow-up of sorts to Touchgrind [$4.99], a fascinating touch-based skate boarding title that made waves with the touch crowd. This follow-up is Touchgrind BMX, a multi-touch BMX-oriented trick game slated to hit later this spring.

Details are light at the moment, but Illusion Labs did send us over the following trailer and this little nugget: “Your skill and imagination,” Illusion Labs says, “are the only limits to unlocking bikes and locations all over the world.” Dudes are teases, right?

Judging from the trailer, it appears as though this BMX iteration of the series will feature a similar true-to-life physics engine, as well as realistic visuals. The physics are the part we’re super pumped about: Touchgrind tricks were a blast to pull off because of them. We’ll obviously keep our eyes out for this one and we recommend that you do the same, too. Come on Spring!

On our last day out at GDC, I spent some time browsing the many indie titles on display in the Independent Games Festival (IGF) area of the show floor. One of the iOS titles I saw on display is the excellent rhythm puzzler Halcyon for iPad [link] that we reviewed back in December. I spoke with Kurt Bieg at the Halcyon booth who showed me a new title that he and Halcyon's developer Zach Gage will shortly be bringing to the App Store, the platform color-matching game Monster Jam, from Simple Machine.

In the world of Monster Jam, the king loves jam so much that he's eaten up every last piece of fruit in his kingdom. As chancellor, it's your job to put a smile on the king's face and get him his jam. Luckily, you've got a machine that can turn anything into jam. And, it turns out, the king's favorite jam of all is jam made out of monsters. Monster jam, if you will.

And, so, the task at hand is to collect monsters for jamification. The game presents a series of platform screens full of monsters of various types and colors wandering about, across a series of different environments. In order to collect a group of monsters to put through the process, they must be separated out so that each platform only holds monsters of like color. Once all monsters of a certain color have been herded onto a given platform, off they go. Kurt, who walked me through the game, explains the gameplay during the following video demonstration.

Kurt and Zach are working on Monster Jam with Ramsey Nasser and Chris Driscoll, who did the graphics.

Living more than 5000 miles away, it’s hard for me to imagine the tragedy that struck Japan this past week. A devastating earthquake rocked the country from top to bottom, followed by a tsunami that reached practically every Pacific Ocean coastline. Many different organizations have set up channels to offer relief to Japan, and even in our tiny iOS corner of the world two Japan-based developers are doing their part as well.

Sega has dropped the price of every Sonic the Hedgehog game from now until March 20th, with 100% of the proceeds going to the Red Cross Disaster Relief in Japan. 3 of these 4 Sonic titles are emulated Genesis games, with Sonic Spinball being the one that works the best with virtual controls. Sonic 1 and Sonic 2 don’t fare as well, as they require the precision of physical controls, but honestly they work good enough to give you a quick nostalgia fix if you were a fan of the original titles. Sonic 4, on the other hand, is a brand new Sonic game which has been tailored for the touch screen. It’s a bit short overall, but we really liked Sonic 4 a lot in our review.

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Capcom has also lowered the price of one of their flagship titles, Street Fighter IV. From now until March 22nd Street Fighter IV for iPhone will be just 99¢ with all sales going to charity. This version of Street Fighter impressed everybody when it released a year ago with how well it translated to the touch screen for a game that has traditionally relied on physical button controls. Our original glowing review doesn’t even tell the whole story, as the game has been updated many times since then adding new characters, modes, and functionality. It’s practically twice the game it originally was, and if you’re even remotely a Street Fighter fan, this needs to be in your collection.

It’s not always easy to offer support to tragedies like this, especially when many iOS gamers are too young to have a reasonable means of donating to a relief fund. This special promotion gives an easy way to do a small part towards helping, even if all you have is a spare few dollars of iTunes credit to spend. In fact, last month Street Fighter IV dropped to 99¢ for the first time ever and claimed the #1 spot in the App Store charts, so there is definitely potential to rack up a good amount of donation money for Japan. And it’s not such a bad deal for yourself, either, as all of these games are worth owning anyway. If you happen to already have them for yourself, now would also be a great time to gift them to family or friends with iOS devices.

Big Pixel Studios first cut their teeth in the App Store with Piyo Blocks [99¢/Lite] and its sequel Piyo Blocks 2 [99¢/HD], two highly underrated games and easily my favorites among the many, many match-3 games available. They then moved on to a more ambitious project, the wacky dual-stick shooter Meow Meow Happy Fight [99¢/HD], which we really enjoyed back in August when we reviewed it. With their library of titles thus far, Big Pixel has proven is that they are very capable of making games that feature solid gameplay, cute characters, and a colorful visual style.

This rings extremely true in their latest effort Land-a Panda [99¢/Lite/HD] as well. In Land-a Panda your goal is to get the male panda Yang Guang reunited with his sweetheart Tian Tian who is waiting at the end of each obstacle-filled level. You accomplish this by shooting him across the levels using a series of cannons, avoiding all manner of hazards along the way and trying to collect 3 coins on each stage for maximum scoring. If you remember any of the barrel blasting sequences from the Donkey Kong Country series, Land-a Panda is like an extreme homage to these.

There are 4 different worlds in Land-a Panda, each containing 20 levels, with an open spot for additional worlds to come in future updates. With 80 levels, there is a lot of gameplay here. The levels ease you into the mechanics in the game, starting with cannons that will automatically align to the proper angle and fire you in the right direction. As the game progresses, trickier cannons are introduced like ones that rotate and move back and forth, requiring you to fire at the correct time in order to launch to the next cannon. Enemies and environmental hazards like spikes add to the difficulty as well.

All of these elements blend together really well in Land-a Panda. Each level is like a puzzle in how you must figure out the best route to complete it, but the moving platforms and precision firing add a fast-paced component to the gameplay. If earning the highest score possible isn’t a big deal to you, then you’re free to take your time with each level and wait for the proper time to fire each of the cannons, which should suit you if you're typically more of a casual player.

Another big part of the game is predicting the trajectories of your cannon shots, which is something that has been attributed to the allure of games like Angry Birds. I think there’s something to this theory too, as there’s really nothing like firing your cannon and the exact right time to launch Yang Guang in a perfect arc up and over a set of spikes, narrowly between a set of enemies on the way down, and landing squarely next to his darling Tian Tian. One huge draw to Land-a Panda is that it’s incredibly fast and simple to retry a level, so it’s easy to experiment with different methods or endlessly retry a level in the hopes of topping your highest score.

Land-a Panda takes the simple concept of firing from cannon to cannon and builds a wealth of highly replayable content around it. Completing all 80 levels will take some time, and earning 3 stars for each will keep you busy even longer. Then, you can go back and perfect your techniques to earn higher scores and compete on the OpenFeint and Game Center leaderboards. And of course, this is all done using the lighthearted sights and sounds that Big Pixel are known for, with graphics that are crisp, colorful, and Retina Display ready. Players in our forums have been enjoying this game a ton, and if you’re in the market for a cleverly designed physics puzzler with a great sense of style then you can’t really go wrong with Land-a Panda.

TouchArcade Rating:

Nostalgia is powerful. Also, stupid. No matter how faithful a re-release is to its source material, it'll never conjure the meaningful experiences that made you fall in love with the original in the first place. Context is the worst of bugbears.

I have no deep connection to Remedy Entertainment's top-down racer Death Rally, and I consider this a good thing. I can't feel bitter about new design choices that replace the old ones; I can't stomp around about wholesale exclusions; and I can't whine about a lack of spirit. I'm not chasing the dragon looking for that original, glorious high.

Instead, I can just enjoy my extended look at the title, which plays like it was indeed created in 1996. The catch is that it holds up in the iOS arena.

At its heart, Death Rally is a top-down shooter featuring cars. Sure, there are laps, tracks, opponents, and a finish line: racing game trimmings. But the game, perhaps to its own detriment, only dishes out meaningful rewards for violence, for doing things like blowing up other cars or boxes in the road.

It's a weird pretense, the racing, because it's also the weakest part of the preview build I’ve been playing. The AI is programmed in an obvious way: two cars are faster than you, no matter what, while the rest of the pack is glacially slow or average speed. This puts you in the position of needing to kill the two pack leaders at the beginning of the race to win because, otherwise, they'll just zoom ahead of you never to be caught up with. I've had many a race so far that consisted of, basically, just me going around a track three times after dismissing the slower cars. The fast cars tend to be so fast that they even left the camera's field of view.

Also, the racing is just a matter of turning your car around turns without getting caught on geometry. There’s no nuance, no drifting, no power sliding, no split-second decisions.

But -- and this is a big, tone-shifting kind of but -- your car has guns. Shooting is a breeze and the weapons you’ll receive dish out the kind of satisfying damage you’d expect. Enemies will dish it out, too, so you have to be weary of your position and then prepare to best exploit a given situation, which makes for some interesting strategies. I, for example, often don’t take off on the starting line, just so I can more easily tackle the cars while they’re in a pile in front of me.

For starters, your car is equipped with a basic, auto-firing machine gun. As you play, you can unlock a rocket launcher, mines, a shotgun, and a Gatling gun. Additionally, you can level up all of these weapons, as well as speed, armor, and handling attributes on your car, by earning points in races.

These EXP-based systems feel familiar, but the grip is ever real: Death Rally does a great job at making you want to do just one more race for just one more upgrade. This, married with the action it endorses, makes for some entertaining play.

I think where Death Rally excels is in its personality. It's got a mid-90s, southern developer beer-infused and grungy kind of vibe. It celebrates its violence and features many a brown tone, fire, broken objects, dingy environments and attitude, just like, say, Duke Nukem, a character who also appears in the game as an opponent.

I'm not sure if the racing issues are going to be hammered out by release. But these aren't deal breakers -- the shooting feels good, the action can be tight if you play your cards right, the transitions to the next race are snappy, and the upgrades will have their way with you. Death Rally is also pretty imaginative as far as iOS titles go, which I think goes a long way in keeping someone engrossed and entertained.

I may not have an emotional connection with the 1996 version of Death Rally, but I don't want one. I wouldn't have been able to enjoy the game as much as I have with the retro baggage in tow, I'm sure. And, yeah, Death Rally might have some core problems with the racing, but everything else appears to be solid. I’ll be keeping my eyes on this one and we’ll definitely be talking about this one again when the full release rolls around.