Last we heard from iPhone developer Mach Kobayashi, he had impressed us with his simple but effective dice roller called Mach Dice [App Store].

The $0.99 dice roller provided a realistic dice simulator that allowed you to choose how many dice you want to roll and how many sides (up to 100) each die should have. It was simple but effective.

Well, Kobayashi hasn’t been sitting idle. In fact, we’re amazed by the dedication this developer has to his app. The latest 2.0 update offers an impressive number of new features.

Watch the developer demoing 2.0:

iLounge took a look at seven of the Mahjong games available on the App Store to provide a brief summary of each and a relative score.

The game of Mahjong (or Shanghai) is a tile-based solitaire game in which matching tiles are removed from the board. At the start of the game, tiles are stacked in a certain pattern and there are rules about which tiles may be removed. As tiles are moved, they reveal new tiles underneath. Rules for individual games may differ, however. A summary of their findings is provided here (prices link to the App Store):

Aki Mahjong ($9.99, B-) - good soundtrack
iMahjong ($0.99, D+) - “mediocre rendition”
Mahjong Solitaire ($9.99, B-) - for beginners
Moonlight Mahjong ($4.99, B+) - for experts
Shanghai Mahjong ($4.99, A-) - wide variety of layouts, tiles, download more
Yulan Majhong Solitaire ($4.99, C) - not worth the asking price

It should be noted that Moonlight Mahjong is available as a free “Lite” version [ App Store ] that contains 4 levels (instead of the 12 levels of the full version).

A more in depth look at each app can be found in the iLounge review.

The cheapest price an App can be without being free is $0.99.

But what’s strange is that when you run across a $.99 app, you’re never quite sure if you should be happy it’s cheap or annoyed they bothered charging anything at all. App commenters in iTunes also reflect this internal struggle.

So we decided to take a look at 10 of the games in the App Store that fall into this $0.99 limbo to figure out which are worth $0.99 and which aren’t.

As expected, we found some great values as well as some duds.

(more…)

Sunsoft will soon bring Mahjong Solitaire, an iPhone implementation of the ancient Chinese game of skill, strategy, and calculation, to the iTunes App Store.

As the YouTube video demonstrates, Mahjong Solitaire utilizes the iPhone’s multitouch interface to allow easy zooming and scrolling of the game board as well as direct manipulation of tiles.  The game features 30 different map types that are unlocked based on the player’s progress as well as difficulty and hidden tile preference settings for each.  Game state is preserved upon exiting the app or in the event of an incoming call, allowing for easy playing on the go.

Pricing for Mahjong Solitaire is undecided at this time.