Last week we posted the video for the upcoming platformer 1-bit Ninja from developer Kode80. Taking huge inspiration from Super Mario Land on the Game Boy, at first glance 1-bit Ninja looks like a simple platformer with monochrome colors and blocky pixel graphics. It is all those things, incidentally, but it also contains an interesting twist.

At any time during play you can shift the entire level perspective, revealing that it’s actually modeled completely in 3D. This opens up some interesting new mechanics as hidden passageways and items are only revealed once you look at the level from a different angle.

Kode80 has just released a new gameplay video for 1-bit Ninja that shows an uninterrupted run through the first level in the game:

Since 1-bit Ninja only has 2 control inputs - a button for running and one for jumping - there is a big emphasis on striving for that “perfect run” through a level, since you cannot freely move back and forth to collect missed coins or kill enemies. Though the mechanics aren’t entirely the same, 1-bit Ninja sounds like it will have the same type of replay appeal of a current platforming obsession of mine, Mos Speedrun [99¢].

For that reason, I’m really excited to check out 1-bit Ninja, and it’s slated to hit sometime before the end of this month. Until then you can check out the discussion thread in our forums for more information.

Crescent Moon’s epic role-playing game Aralon: Sword and Shadow HD [$4.99] has just received a nice update that adds the ability to save your game progress into the cloud and transfer it between devices. In addition, the game is currently on sale for $4.99 for a limited time.

It’s great that Aralon is a universal game, as it’s nice to be able to play it on both my iPhone and iPad if I choose. The problem is that it’s such an extensive experience, containing dozens of hours of gameplay, that it’s a drag to not be able to play off of the same save file no matter which device I happen to be playing on.

This is no longer an issue with the new cloud saving. There is now an option on the main menu for Cloud Storage, and you’ll need to register an email address here to get sent a special PIN number that allows you to access the cloud. Once you have your PIN, you can choose to upload any one of your save game files from one device, and using your email address and PIN you can then download them to a different device and continue on with your progress.

It’s a pretty painless process, and it transferred my iPhone save game over to my iPad without a hitch. With the ever-increasing popularity of iOS gaming, and with new games coming out that are bigger and more complex than ever, it’s going to be essential that developers begin adding this sort of cross-device save functionality into their games. I’m certainly glad to see it hit Aralon, that’s for sure.

Be sure to check out our extensive review of Aralon: Sword and Shadow HD, or drop by the massive forum discussion for more information on the game. If you enjoy Western-style RPGs, or would just enjoy exploring a gorgeous expansive world, then don’t hesitate to check out Aralon while it’s on sale for 50% off.

There have been some seriously nice freebies as of late, and now we have one more to tell you about. Developer Tooko’s MotoTrialz [Free] has just gone free for the next several days. MotoTrialz is a side-scrolling motorcycle stunt game that’s pretty similar to RedLynx’s Trials HD. In fact, MotoTrialz originally launched last October as iTrials, but RedLynx felt it was a little too similar to their popular franchise and didn’t want gamers being confused thinking that iTrials was an official iOS version of Trials HD created by them.

The result was that Tooko had to pull iTrials down for a couple of months and make some changes to differentiate it from Trials HD. This turned out to be a good thing though, as iTrials rematerialized back in March as MotoTrialz with the same fun gameplay and additional enhancements.

The 27 levels in the game remained the same layout-wise, but the previous indoor warehouse environment was replaced with an outdoor nighttime stadium. The graphics also received anti-aliasing treatment which made them look much nicer and less jagged than before. Finally, OpenFeint replaced Agon as the online social network for MotoTrialz.

Out of the many side-scrolling motorcycle games on the App Store (and there are a lot), MotoTrialz is easily my favorite of the bunch. Having to take the game down and make changes to it has thrown a wrinkle into Tooko’s original update roadmap, but they still have additional levels and features planned for the game in the future. Players in our forums have really enjoyed this one since its original release, so make sure and pick up MotoTrialz during this free promotion.

Capcom has been a big contributor to the App Store. So when they announced a new smartphone-focused publishing arm last month, I was looking forward to seeing what they'd come up with. Beeline Interactive has now released its first two games: Who's That Flying!? [99¢], which we enjoyed, and Glo Flo [99¢ / ], a casual puzzle game created by Gametantra.

Glo Flo is a simple little game. The only goal is to connect matching glowing bugs on a grid by drawing lines. The lines can never cross, and there are often several groups of bugs to match. It's a nice mechanic, one we've seen as a mini-game or the foundation of other puzzle games. It's probably best suited to those roles, because once you've got the hang of Glo Flow, there isn't much challenge. What works when you're connecting two pairs of two bugs still works when you're connecting three triads. Though things get more complex as you move through the game, nothing ever gets terribly hard.

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This week’s Freebie Alert is brought to you by wind. Not the kind that shakes acorn from limb or screws up your hair. Fake Wind, like the kind seen in Spaces of Play’s Spirits [Free / HD], which makes the award-winning puzzle game possible.

If you’re not catching my drift, both versions of Spirits are free on the App Store this afternoon, meaning you can download the games right now without a care or a thought as to the health of your wallet or your children’s dwindling trust funds. What a deal, right?

Spirits is a neat game in which you are tasked with guiding several fungus monsters to an end goal, all the while transforming them into a variety of environmental objects needed to traverse the game’s winding, art-fartsy hand-drawn pathways.

As you should have seen in the above, Spirits is a beautiful game with puzzles that require some measure of thought. Control is indirect much like a Lemmings joint, so thinking around obstructions is necessary. Plus, wind plays a huge role in the direction and flow as both barriers and pathways.

For what it’s worth, we gave it high marks in our review. But you’re already grabbing it for the price of $0, right? I mean, really, it’s zero bucks. Just do it!

Nintendo broke at least two hearts this morning. The publisher confirmed that the Nintendo 3DS’ personal App Store, the e-Shop, won’t be released at the end of this month as was planned. Instead, it’ll see a release on June 6 in the US and June 7 in Japan.

The shop will be introduced via a firmware update, which also packages in the device’s mobile Internet browser and, perhaps, some other fun tweaks and features that Nintendo isn’t letting the world know about yet.

We’re interested in the e-Shop for a pretty simple reason: it’s like the App Store. What kind of games will we see? What will the price points be? Will we see any notable re-releases from mobile developers?

Perhaps it’s just me being cynical, but I’m most interested in the platform because it might be a test bed for future iPod Touch and iPhone releases, much like the PSP Minis initiative has proven to be. The 3D effect that the 3DS requires of its games will prove to be a barrier, though, so it’ll be interesting to see how developers might overcome that.

[Via AndriaSang + Destructoid]

Back in December 2010, Telltale Games released the first episode of its Monkey Island 'Tales' [$6.99] series on the iPad. No further releases have seen the light of day since, but it’s not like the studio doesn’t want to push the rest of the games out -- it still does.

At least, up until this April the studio was making its intentions clear. In an official forum posting, Telltale staff member Alan Johnson said more Monkey Island episodes, as well as Back to the Future, were in the pipe. BTTF Episode 2 [$6.99] released last month on the iPad.

Other staff members backed him up in this thread, stating that other, later Tales episodes have been ported to the iPad and are now in some sort of testing phase.

It was a concern of more than a few MI fans after the release of the first Tales game that Telltale would abandon the series. It’s a valid thought; the studio has since admitted to dropping the Sam & Max [$6.99] and Wallace & Gromit [$6.99] series’ ports after their initial debut on the App Store. I think you could argue that MI clicks more with the iPad adventure crowd, though.

Interestingly, a wrench appears to have been thrown into initial release plans. In February, Telltale said the second episode of the Tales series would hit in March 2010. It didn’t. Nor have the rest of the four episodes been released this month as was said they would.

Perhaps it’s not all the studio’s fault -- when confirming that the episodes would indeed see releases in 2011, Telltale senior vice president of marketing Steve Allison told Joystiq that that releases “all depends on the Apple process."

I’ve independently asked Telltale what the deal is. And while I’d appreciate candor, I suspect I’ll get something similar to what Pocket Gamer did when reaching out to Alan Johnson:

“We’re planning to release the remaining four episodes of Monkey Island and the complete series of Back to the Future on iPad, but [we have] no announcements to make at this time in terms of a release schedule,” Johnson told the site.

I wouldn’t be surprised if it all comes down to bandwidth. If you didn’t know, Telltale has become quite the busy bee of late. The studio plans to unveil its Jurassic Park, The Walking Dead, and its King’s Quest series at E3 this June 7. That’s, like, a lot of games.

[Via Sir Awesome's TA forum thread, thanks!]

When it comes to campy, over-the-top horror movies that should theoretically make good games, nothing really tops Army of Darkness. Despite its seemingly perfect fit, its cult following and its pedigree, there have been very few games based on the Evil Dead universe. Thankfully, Backflip Studios took on Army of Darkness: Defense [99¢ / HD] with their own spin on the castle defense genre slapped with a thick layer of fan-service paint.

At its core, Army of Darkness Defense is a casual castle defense title with light RPG elements. Despite those RPG elements, you're not going to get a very deep experience here, but if you're a fan of the series you'll probably be happy with the end result. Most notable among the fan-fodder is the massive collection of voice clips found throughout -- something around the ballpark of over 100 different clips from the movie are included and scattered randomly about. Even with that many clips in the mix, they do get a bit repetitive as the game moves on, but that's what the mute button is for.

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Bungie Aerospace has made its first public move: the company recently filed a trademark for “Crimson,” a bit of “computer game software for use on mobile and cellular phones,” according to the official USPTO filing. Color us red. I mean, intrigued.

We don’t know what Bungie Aerospace is, but we do know that Halo developer Bungie is responsible for its incorporation in Delaware and Washington. It might be a front or the start of another memorable ARG. Either way, the company has made a move to secure a trademark for mobile devices, which I fancy is entertaining to be aware of.

As Game Informer notes in its report, Bungie has recently made it clear that it wants to do something in the mobile realm; the studio is hiring for several positions linked to mobile phone development. What this project actually is, however, is still shrouded in a cloud of secrecy and, presumably, really hardcore non-disclosure agreements.

My gut says Bungie Aerospace and “Crimson” are connected to the studio’s next project, an original IP set to be published by Activision. Word on the street is that this game is a shooter MMO -- an MMO that might just offer increased connectivity via mobile apps.

Bungie’s recent talks certainly suggest that connectivity is something the studio values with this new IP. At GDC Online 2010, Bungie staff writer Joseph Staten posed the question "Wouldn't it be great if we could make a world that was always there for you, with lots of stories to tell, like a big, infinite storytelling horizon?”

He then said, “Man, that would be great,” which is the PR equivalent of “Yeah, we’re going to try our best to do just that.” But, shhh, everything is secret now.

This past week we took a look at the upcoming Paper Monsters from developer Robots vs. Wizards. The game employs a 2.5D perspective with a charming cardboard-cutout art style, and in a follow-up post we learned from the developer that Paper Monsters is aiming to be more of a traditional platforming game along the lines of a Mario Bros. title.

While the wonderful visual style of the game is what caught our attention, savvy forum goers may remember that Paper Monsters was actually announced back in September of last year, and used to look quite a bit different. The idea was still basically the same, a 2.5D platformer with cardboard cutout-style characters and backgrounds, but it looked more in line with a previous Robot vs. Wizards title called Doodle Monster [99¢].

Now, we’ve come to find that the sudden drastic change in visuals is due to Crescent Moon Games jumping into the fray and lending their expertise in art design to the development of Paper Monsters. You may recall that Crescent Moon Games has done similar extreme makeovers on both Gears [99¢] and Aralon: Sword and Shadow [$9.99] in the past with fairly stunning results. Crescent Moon will also be publishing Paper Monsters when it finally releases.

Just for fun, here are a couple of before-and-after comparisons of Paper Monsters so you can see just how far it has evolved (click to enlarge):

Paper Monsters is still a ways off, and there is no set release date or pricing known at this time. But it’s definitely interesting to see the transformation the game has undergone since last September, and based on Crescent Moon’s previous reputation of overhauling games during development I’m really excited to see how Paper Monsters turns out.

There’s a busy thread in our forums where members are discussing the game and both Crescent Moon and Robot vs. Wizards are dropping nuggets of new information, and we’ll definitely keep our eyes peeled for more news about Paper Monsters in the coming months.

Last month we told you the news that Donut Games would be revisiting their entire back catalog and updating each of their games with universal iPad support, Retina Display graphics, and Game Center integration. Just a couple of days later, the first of these updates hit the game Traffic Rush [99¢] and beyond adding the mentioned goodies it also contained an entirely new game mode called Rail Rush.

Now the second game to receive such an update is Rat On A Skateboard [Free], and Donut Games has dropped the price to free in order to celebrate. Rat On A Skateboard launched last November, and offers 2 different randomly generated endless modes as well as 30 challenge levels each with a 3 star grading system. This new update also includes an additional 10 new levels to play through in challenge mode. Here is an excerpt from our full review of Rat On A Skateboard:

The basic gameplay has Ratty moving automatically from left to right across the screen on his skateboard. Tapping the screen makes him jump (or ollie, to be precise) and tapping the screen while he is in the air performs tricks. You can perform up to four tricks in the air based on how many taps you can pull off before Ratty hits the ground. These tricks in order are a kickflip, a 360 flip, a triple kickflip, and a master flip, and you'll earn more points by executing multiple tricks in one jump. This adds a slightly more strategic element to the game where you can effectively earn more points by performing a lot of in-air tricks during well planned jumps, rather than only having your score increase solely due to collecting items or traveling a long distance.

Suffice to say, Rat On A Skateboard is a must-download during this free promotion. The Retina Display graphics look beautiful on my iPhone 4 and the game plays really well on the iPad too. One thing to note about all 3 of Donut’s universal titles is that while playing on an iPad the game doesn’t completely fill the screen. This is likely so they didn’t have to redraw all the artwork to fit the iPad’s larger screen, which I can totally understand. It definitely doesn’t ruin my enjoyment of the games, but hopefully all brand new titles going forward will be formatted to fit the iPad screen properly.

Make sure to pick up Rat On A Skateboard while it’s free, and if you have an extensive collection of Donut Games titles on your device like I do then keep your eyes peeled for more updates adding universal support, Retina Display graphics, and Game Center in the coming weeks.

Capcom has been making good on their promise of adding new titles to their wonderful little emulator app Capcom Arcade [Free], and a new update has just hit that adds two new classic titles to the package. They’re both winners, too.

The first game is Super Ghouls’n Ghosts, the third title in the original Ghosts’n Goblins trilogy. Interestingly, Super Ghouls’n Ghosts was never an arcade game at all, and first appeared on the Super Nintendo back in 1991. That’s not a bad thing at all though, as it was easily one of the finest action-platformers from that system.

It’s also hard as nails, just like the previous games in the series, and the virtual controls don’t help matters any. They’re totally workable, but these games were brutal even with the precision of physical controls, and if you’re able to beat Super Ghouls’n Ghosts on iOS then you have won my admiration and deserve some sort of major award.

The second new title is Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo, the competitive gem matching game that features chibi-style characters from Capcom's various fighting games. Considering how many quarters I pumped into this game in arcades back in the day, I’m ecstatic to now have a full version that fits in my pocket. It features 3 different single-player arcade modes against AI opponents, but best of all it also has local Bluetooth multiplayer for two players. Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo is decent fun solo, but is absolutely fantastic with a real life competitor.

Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo also controls pretty well on the touch screen. There’s an option for having a smaller screen size with onscreen virtual buttons around the border so as not to cover up the action. Or, you can go full screen and use simple swipe and tap gestures to control your gems. Both options work fine, though the swipe method can be a bit imprecise when the action speeds up in the game.

As we detailed in our review of Capcom Arcade, the game is initially free to download with 3 free tickets given out per day that are each good for one play of any game. You can also buy token packs as IAP which give you a single play per token, or you can just outright buy an entire arcade machine which gives you unlimited play of that game. To celebrate this latest update, you can currently get Street Fighter II, 1942, 1943, Ghosts’n Goblins, Ghouls’n Ghosts, and Commando for the sale price of 99¢ each. The rest of the games, including these two new ones, can be purchased for their regular price of $2.99.

I really like Capcom Arcade, and was overjoyed when they added Final Fight last month, one of my all-time favorite games. I’m glad to see them following that up with another set of solid titles, and with the extensive catalog of excellent games Capcom has under its belt I can’t wait to see how Capcom Arcade will grow and expand in the future.

The BAFTA-nominated Home Sheep Home [$.99] began its life as a free Flash game. Now, after 80 million impressions, it can be found on the App Store for 99 cents. I tend to dig what indie houses do with their Flash ports. There are some sloppy ones, sure, but as a whole, small studios tend to push out phenomenal, detail-oriented variants of their core game on touch devices. Home Sheep Home doesn’t deserve this level of praise, however it is still a sharp puzzle game with the right amount of content, color, and character.

The setup is simple: Home Sheep Home gives you control of three sheep, each of which has different attributes based on its respective weight. The goal is to take all three sheep from one side of a level to the other while navigating a physics puzzle molded around the fact that one sheep is small, the other medium, and the other huge.

Perhaps this is a kickback from its mobile roots, but Home Sheep Home's puzzles are designed with few variables; in fact, the game as a whole is casual-focused and linear, so don’t expect to cranium-busting challenges. On average, I get the gist and start executing on the correct solution within a minute or so of viewing a level.

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I figured I'd take a break from our regularly scheduled programming to discuss a game that completely changed the way I look at free to play games: League of Legends. Originally released in late 2009 by Riot Games, League of Legends is a free to play game available for the PC. (There's also a very beta OSX client that takes a considerable amount of witchcraft and wizardry to get running.) Gameplay is very similar to Defense of the Ancients in that you play in teams, either 3v3 or 5v5, and have control of a single champion unit that behaves a lot like the hero units in Warcraft III. You can level up various abilities, buy items in a shop to enhance your character, and engage in some pretty wicked player vs player combat as each team attempts to destroy the opposing team's base. It's a ton of fun, and with 76 available champions (as of this posting, more are added constantly), each game is always vastly different.

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Cashing in on the success of an IP like Gameloft does with its regurgitated, oftentimes hobbled re-imaginings is a double-edged sword; the studio profits based on established interest, but there are expectations and legacies that it has to keep in check in order to continue to make dough. For example, with its follow-up to its Halo homage, NOVA 2 [$6.99 / HD], Gameloft has to fulfill the promise of post-release content much like Bungie did with the actual series.

Good thing Gameloft has. In the game’s latest update that just hit this afternoon, three new competitive maps have been added -- Floating Rocks, Aquarius Beach, and Icy Bridge are the names and, well, you don’t need much more description than that. I suppose I should note that Gameloft notes that each of these maps has a confrontation focus. Floating Rocks is for close-range, Aquarius is mid-range, and Icy Bridge is for massive battles.

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