As wonderful of a thing as the App Store is, it comes with a heck of a seedy underbelly of unscrupulous developers and I really hate how often it seems like we're posting these rip-off alerts lately. Shameless clones are one thing, but flat out stealing a game's assets is an entirely different animal. Today's victims are the guys from Ironhide Game Studio, who currently have three different Flash games out in the wild. Kingdom Rush is their most popular, which is currently ripping up the charts on the various Flash game portal sites, and is boasting 40 million total plays worldwide. You can add one more to that number by clicking here and checking it out, it's a pretty cool little tower defense game.

In late July, Ironhide Games released Kingdom Rush, and in the last few weeks of October, My Yayi released the same game on the App Store… Although, you'll notice that the Ironhide and Armor Games logos have been removed, making the whole thing that much more damning. In fact, if you want to see a ton of other ripped assets, click the above image for a full-size comparison of multiple levels.

The guys from Ironhide Games have already explored all the regular channels to get the game taken down, including sending copyright infringement notices, contacting Apple, and even hiring outside consultants to help get it removed. Yet, it remains. We've heard the actual process of getting a stolen game removed can be rather slow from other developers who have experienced similar problems, but it's no-doubt incredibly painful for the original creators to look at the game up on the App Store in the meantime.

Wonder no more: after a fun mystery trailer Simogo has revealed its next game alongside IGN. It's called Beat Sneak Bandit; and as we guessed, it's a rhythm-cross-stealth game featuring all the adorable art your eyeholes can handle and a one-touch action model that appears to be as great as the one utilized in the studio's last game, Bumpy Road [$2.99].

In Beat Sneak, you'll play as the Beat Sneak Bandit as he reclaims all the clocks Baron Von Clockface has stolen and tucked away in his curious mansion. You'll move, er, sneak by pressing a finger to the screen in beat with the game's oddball music. The wrinkle here is that you'll also need time your timing in order to avoid roving guards or other things that can spot you and end your home invasion.

Simogo is one of the most creative App Store developers out there, so we're definitely stoked to give Beat Sneak Bandit a go. In fact, we've been talking with Simogo and it seems like we'll be able to give you a pretty good taste of what's to come in the very near future.

Oh! Speaking of the future, Beat Sneak Bandit will release at some point in early 2012 for the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad.

[Via IGN]

Artillery games remain the rage on the App Store courtesy Angry Birds silly success, but we've just spotted a new one that's actively innovating in the space: Sabor Studios's Pota-Toss.

In brief, it's a one-on-one fling game starring, of all things, potatoes of differing shapes, sizes, and character. Outside of its especially sharp art direction, we've been drawn to Pota-Toss because of its promising geo-location mechanics.

Pota-Toss's levels are two-sided and each half is generated based on your location and time -- if you're playing in Las Vegas at high noon, for example, your side of the level will have a few artfully designed landmarks and a searing midday sun. The other player's side of the level will have its own look based on his or her actual location.

Score a hit, and the level is regenerated to present a bigger challenge. The plan is to launch the game with hundreds of levels and keep updating the title with more and more well after release. We're hoping more potatoes are added, too.

The two designers on the project alerted the world to their ambition with a Kickstarter page and received the funding they're looking for. Obviously, we're not the only dudes out there thinking this might be The Next Awesome Thing. Take a look at its video and get drawn in like we were.

It's easy to see why cover is so widely used in every modern game with a gun in it, but it doesn't excuse how boring the systems usually are. Epoch [$5.99] stands out because its cover mechanics are actually fun to play with. They smartly combine agility and athleticism to the standard pounding and popping, while also offering an alien uptempo pacing, courtesy of Uppercut Games's exploitative enemies. The cover system is strong enough, actually, to carry the game to completion, which is an important note to make since, aside from the story hooks, the game doesn't have a lot more to offer outside of a standard weapons / items upgrade model.

Think of Epoch as a bizarre "what if" scenario come true. It's sci-fi Infinity Blade with guns, and it's pretty thorough with its adaption of that game's upgrade model and on-rails structure. The key departure is within Epoch's action model -- instead of hacking and slashing, you'll be whipping, sliding, jumping around, ducking or crashing your robot into pieces of cover as enemies sling bullets and lasers at you. If you're moving tactically, enemies will lose their bead on your metallic frame, and you will then be subsequently free to target them and fire without worry. (more...)

One of the pleasant surprises of last month's releases was King Cashing: Slots Adventure [99¢/Lite], the slot machine game with an RPG twist. I'm of the mind that you can throw experience bars and upgradeable weapons on just about anything and it will be a better game for it, and King Cashing is a great example of this.

You play as a King on a quest to rid the world of an evil being who's holed up in his dark castle. You progress through the game battle by battle, and combat is handled by a unique slot machine mechanic. Each wheel of the slot machine represents things like your party members, weapons, bonus items, and enemies. You'll give the 3 wheels a spin and stop them either individually or all at once. The things that you manage to line up horizontally across the wheels determines the actions that take place during the battle. It may sound strange, but it's actually a pretty ingenious idea, and it works beautifully in the game.

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I expected to love Evertales [$0.99]. Its trailer is stylish and charming, it looks a tiny bit like Trine, and it's by Thunder Game Works, the folks who made the Trenches series, and Crescent Moon Games, the studio that brought us Pocket RPG, Aralon, Gears and other great games. We were optimistic in our previews. But here's the thing about expectations -- sometimes they leave you disappointed.

Despite its impressive pedigree, Evertales falls totally flat. It's short, and it's got a few kinks that still need working out. It's excessively straightforward. But far worse than any of that, it's just not very much fun.

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One of our long-time favorites around the TouchArcade offices is Adult Swim's Robot Unicorn Attack [99¢/HD], and to a lesser extent its siblings Robot Unicorn Attack Heavy Metal Edition [99¢] and Robot Unicorn Attack Christmas Edition [99¢]. I say "to a lesser extent" not because we don't enjoy the gameplay as much in the latter two titles, mind you, but because it's a scientifically proven fact that humans are incapable of enjoying any game more than one that runs Erasure's Always on an endless loop as its soundtrack, even if the gameplay is identical in each game. You can't argue with science.

Anyway, Adult Swim Games has just released new updates for the regular Robot Unicorn Attack as well as Heavy Metal Edition which add Retina Display optimized visuals into the games. This is something I've personally wanted ever since the release of the iPhone 4, and I've heard many requests from other users since then as well. But, it appears that it wasn't as simple as just flipping a switch to enable Retina Display in these games. Much of the artwork looks to have been redrawn and reworked, which could explain the delay in bringing these updates to market. You can see before and after examples in the screens below (click to enlarge):

At any rate, they both look fantastic now. It's a huge step up from the blurry, jagged visuals Retina Display device owners have been enduring for the past year or so. The Christmas Edition version of the game has not been updated, and it isn't clear if there are any plans to do so. But, with Christmas looming next month, perhaps Santa has a graphical update waiting in the wings for our Rudolph-costumed unicorn? We'll have to wait and see, but in the meantime, be sure to update your copies of Robot Unicorn Attack vanilla and Heavy Metal Edition and enjoy the new eyeball-scorching crispness.

Hey it's Wednesday again! This week is especially fabulous, not only because of a whole heck of a lot of great iPhone games coming tonight, but also because of great console games. MW3 yesterday, but more importantly, Skyrim on Friday… In fact, we might just have to hang one of these "Will Return" signs up on TouchArcade when everyone gets their copies.

I fear Brad has already been lost to the world of Skyrim.

Anyway, here's what you've got to look forward to tonight at 11:00 PM Eastern, or potentially much earlier if you're east of our side of the planet:

Asteroids Gunner, Free - Forum Thread - This game looks suspiciously similar to Space Miner, which I suppose makes a lot of sense considering that Space Miner was also inspired by Asteroids.

Blueprint 3D, 99¢ - Forum Thread - I'm super stoked for this game. You rotate blueprints in 3D to put together the correct images. It sounds like a more complicated version of eBoy FixPix.

Chocohero, $1.99 - Forum Thread - The latest game from Com2uS only further reinforces my belief that cakes are jerks. You play as Chipster, and try to escape the imprisonment of cakes and free your friends. Sounds like an episode of Adventure Time.

Corpse Granny, 99¢ - Forum Thread - There are a bazillion physics-centric puzzle games on the App Store, but have you played one yet that involves killing zombies?

EPOCH, $5.99 - Forum Thread - We already extensively previewed this game, and now you can see what all the fuss is about. It's a cover-based shooter that's just great.

Evertales, 99¢ - Forum Thread - Crescent Moon Games teams up with Thunder Game Works to release this radical-looking side-scrolling beat-em-up. 3 characters, massive boss fights, iCloud, AirPlay, 99¢ sale, need I go on?

Gangstar Rio: City of Saints, $6.99 - Forum Thread - It's Gameloft's next iteration in the Gangstar series. Predictably, this looks to be better than the previous installment, although it remains to be seen how it will stack up against the inevitable release of Grand Theft Auto III.

INC, $1.99 - Forum Thread - From the creators of Meganoid and Stardash comes another awesome side-scroller. The art style looks cool, and please don't let the blurry video throw you off. I know first hand how irritatingly difficult it is to shoot good iPad video.

Ninja Throw, 99¢ / Universal HD - If there's a limit to the number of physics puzzle games the App Store can hold, Chillingo is going to find it. This one focuses around tossing ninja stars, and the bouncy clouds make it look like things get pretty crazy in later levels.

Rocket Riot HD, 99¢ - Forum Thread - This seems to be a pixel-powered action game that seems highly reminiscent of a 2D version of the old Rocket Arena mod for Quake if there's anyone out there that still remembers that.

The folks over at XBLAFans have received a tip about a possible upcoming port of The Simpsons Arcade Game coming to Xbox Live Arcade, and if recent history is any indication, there's a good possibility that it could be coming to the App Store as well.

Twitterer @lifelower notes that the Australian ratings board has rated The Simspsons Arcade Game and attached Backbone Entertainment as the author. As you may already know, Backbone Entertainment is like a golden god of porting old arcade and console titles to the various digital mediums of today, and are already responsible for bringing two classic Konami brawlers to consoles in recent years with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in 2007 and X-Men late last year.

Now, consider that about 6 months after the release of X-Men on XBLA and PSN, a port of that port was brought to the App Store as a Universal game for both iPhones and iPads. The X-Men game did considerably well on the App Store too, which would lead me to believe that should one of their other highly regarded brawlers of the 90s arcade era, The Simpsons Arcade Game, come to XBLA then it would make good financial sense to see the game come to iOS as well.

Plus, iOS has already proven to be a great platform for old-school side-scrolling brawlers with Final Fight [$2.99], a great remake of Double Dragon [$1.99], 64th Street [$1.99], the Streets of Rage trilogy, and many more. As a huge fan of The Simpsons Arcade Game (and just The Simpsons in general), I would love to be able to have the game on my iOS devices, and while were at it that totally goes for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles too (why hasn't this happened yet?!).

One wrinkle in my rampant speculation is that, as you may recall, we've already seen a Simpsons game on the App Store. Electronic Arts released The Simpsons Arcade [99¢/Lite] almost two years ago in December of 2009. It was a side-scrolling brawler similar to the arcade original, but wasn't actually based on that game at all. It's a pretty fun game to be honest, if not a bit repetitive, but it's certainly not the same as having a port of the original arcade game. I have no idea if there is any sort of licensing issues with The Simpsons brand that might prevent a port of Konami's game making it to the App Store, but it's a possibility.

We'll certainly be keeping our eyes out for a more official announcement that The Simpsons Arcade Game is coming to the console downloadable space, and if it is, I'll be keeping my fingers and toes crossed that it eventually hits the App Store as well. In the meantime, check out this feature XBLAFans ran this past May discussing what they'd like to see in an updated The Simpsons Arcade Game port.

[Via XBLAFans]

Luke Schneider's awesome take on Space Invaders, Super Crossfire [$.99 / UHD], is now bigger than ever thanks to an early November update. Version 1.1 specifically adds a new "dark mode" that includes 150 harder waves complete with new backgrounds and a "new perspective" on the game's story. Super Crossfire is also now more stable than ever; Schneider went back and dropped in some performance improvements for older generation phones, nipped a nasty save bug, and addressed several minor problems.

The most exciting addition for us is the one that couldn't be noted officially: Super Crossfire HD now supports the iCade. Just switch to "ARCADE" in the configuration and you're good to go. It's nice to see some new iCade games out there, eh?

Oh! And if you're particularly interested in the HD version -- and you should be since we're huge fans of it and are never wrong about these things -- know that its price has been reduced. For a spell, the game is being offered at $.99 instead of its usual $2.99. Neat!

It's sort of a slow news day, and it's no secret around here that we love cats, so chew on this: Halfbrick's movie tie-in follow-up to Fruit Ninja, Fruit Ninja: Puss in Boots just had a solid update land that you should totally wrap your proverbial claws around. We thought it was great in our review, and the new bandito mode makes Puss In Boots well worth the price of admission:

Bandito mode is new, and very cool. Fight your way through a gauntlet of randomly chosen challenges. The challenges are all about slicing, of course, but they mix the situation up. You may need to slice 15 apples in amongst an intricate and ever-changing pattern of bombs, or 20 lemons while a giant bomb bounces around the screen. There's quite a variety. Each challenge is on a tight time limit -- fail or hit a bomb and you'll lose one of your three lives.

Those lives need to keep you through 12 challenges across three areas that also serve as difficulty levels. Each challenge you complete adds to your score, ranking you on speed, precision, and just how thoroughly you can obliterate your goal. Your total score for the mode hits the leaderboards when you finish the final bonus challenge, which a cute departure from the game that I won't spoil here.

Aside from some bug fixes and additional customization options (new swords), the meat of this update is 10 new challenges in bandito mode. Bandito mode was already our favorite addition, and seeing such a massive content boost for it is always welcome. If you were holding out on picking up Fruit Ninja: Puss in Boots to wait and see if Halfbrick was going to give it their normal update love, I'd say it's safe to download now.

Playing Junk Jack [$2.99] for the first time, you may experience a strong sense of déjà vu. It brought to mind my first delve into Minecraft, with the feeling of overwhelming choice, the lack of any clear idea what to do next, the need to visit YouTube and wikis to learn exactly why I was punching all those trees. But while there are any number of blatant Minecraft knockoffs on the App Store, Junk Jack distinguishes itself in nearly every category -- but one.

One of Minecraft's biggest weaknesses (one that's improved over the course of its development) is its lack of direction, and Junk Jack takes that flaw and runs with it. For a game designed around crafting, building and exploration, Junk Jack is aggressive in its lack of assistance, leaving you without even a way to keep track of your craft notes (schematics) until you find the right note for the job. Luckily, developer Pixbits has already acknowledged that problem and is working up a fix as we speak, so we can focus on this game's charm and potential.

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In early September, RedLynx brought us the sequel to 2009's innovative line-drawing racer DrawRace [$2.99] with the Chillingo published DrawRace 2 [99¢/HD]. This new entry in the series brought an extra level of sophistication with its realistic visuals and physics system, but kept the unique line-drawing aspect that made the original such a standout title.

You can read all about this in our review of DrawRace 2, but if you've still had reservations about if this unique type of game was for you or not, then today you have another alternative. RedLynx and Chillingo have just released DrawRace 2 Free Multiplayer [Free/HD] as a way to let you take the game for a test drive before deciding if it's your cup of tea.

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Hey, guys, Atari is resurrecting Asteroids and making it a free-to-play game -- no, really. The other afternoon, Atari sent us its first word on Asteroids: Gunner, a re-imagined take on the classic arcade space rock-obliterator that combines new dual-stick controls, fancy 3D visuals, wave-based play, power-ups, ship upgrades and the usual free-to-play trimmings including IAP ad removal and IAP unlocks.

Obviously, this isn't the Asteroids we grew up with, but this is definitely the kind of game that's doing particularly well now and the kind of game that fits Atari's new metric-driven direction. If you're especially interested in diving into Gunner, but want to get your expectations in line beforehand, go give the Slide2Play preview for it a read. Spoiler: Gunner sounds like a well-rounded and easy to pick-up-and-play action game built for all audiences.

Here's some screens:

Gunner is set to hit this coming November 10 at $0, so the wait isn't much longer. Oh! And for this generious price, you'll get the first 50 levels.

[Via Destructoid]

At first glance, Sad Robot [Free] doesn't seem to offer anything that hasn’t already been done on iOS. This is simple obstacle-avoidance arcade game that offers pseudo cave-flyer gameplay. Similarly, the retro-inspired graphics have been seen countless times during the resurgence of retro in the iOS games universe. But while Sad Robot’s components are not unique, they're executed well and form a cohesive whole that has some equally good core action to offer.

In the game you control a humanoid as he goes from galaxy to galaxy dodging obstacles while collecting coins and power-ups. Mechanically, Sad Robot plays like most other vertical cave-flyers, with the difficulty always starting slow and ramping up the longer you stay alive. There really isn’t much else to the core experience, although the game does manage to pace itself in such a way that each run doesn’t appear to be too easy or hard. However, Sad Robot is probably not for gamers looking for substantial depth. (more...)