Ngmoco's Eliminate Pro has become incredibly popular in the App Store, now sustaining the #1 spot in the Top Free apps. While we covered many details about the game's energy system and strategies, one power-generating feature that we had described in our preview of the game had remained absent: marketing and promotional offers.

If, however, you're not interested in paying for energy (or waiting the [240] minutes), you can alternatively complete marketing offers in-game to earn additional energy. This method of payment system has seen great success in Facebook games, and I will be very interested to see how it does in Eliminate. The various offers you can complete range from completing a simple survey to signing up for a Discover card, and will change over time.

Eliminate Pro launched without this option available, but it appears it's still a possibility. Ngmoco has flipped the switch on the first offer which is pretty painless to complete. It simply requires you to install and launch Epic Pet Wars and when you return to Eliminate Pro, you will have 15 Power Cells.

With Ngmoco's acquisition of the Epic Pet Wars developer, the reason for the cross promotion is obvious, but does pave the way for non-monetary ways to gain energy in Eliminate. While we haven't heard an update on their plans, we expect they will eventually launch more traditional marketing offers beyond this simple cross promotion. But even so, if they stick with these sort of cross-download promotions, with hundreds of thousands of Eliminate Pro downloads a day, they certainly have a massive audience to leverage for their future games.

To take advantage of the offer, you must click on the Gear Up -> Get Energy -> Special Offers button in Eliminate Pro. Once you relaunch Eliminate Pro you still have to "use" the Power Cells to convert them into energy.

App Store Link: Eliminate Pro, Free

Ngmoco announced today that they had acquired iPhone developer Miraphonic, the developer of Epic Pet Wars [App Store].

Epic Pet Wars is one of the Mafia-type MMO games on the App Store that revolves around picking a pet, training and leveling it up for battle. The game is offered for free and makes money based on the sale of add-on pet races and respect points. The game has a loyal following on our forums and seems to fit right in with Ngmoco's recent push into Free + Paid DLC business model with Eliminate Pro and Touch Pets.

We've never provided much coverage to these types of games here on TouchArcade, but they do seem to have a large following amongst App Store customers.

Much to our surprise, StoneLoops! of Jurassica was recently removed from the App Store. This is particularly unfortunate, as we not only gave the game a glowing review, but I would also include it in any listing of really great iPhone games.

Maciej Biedrzycki, co-founder of Codeminion, developers of StoneLoops explained on his blog today the reasoning behind the recent removal, which all boils down to a complaint filed by Mumbo Jumbo, developers of Luxor:

About 3 weeks ago we have learned that Mumbo Jumbo supplied Apple with a formal complaint and a request to remove StoneLoops! from the AppStore. The reason? Infringing Luxor copyright, confusing customers, stealing Luxor’s look & feel and even stealing their source code!

Codeminion responded to the complaint, and heard nothing of it for several weeks. After assuming their response was satisfactory, they later discovered that StoneLoops had ultimately been removed from the App Store.

This entire situation has left members of our forums both in both the StoneLoops and Luxor threads scratching their heads. While the original version of Luxor was released about 3 years prior to StoneLoops!, neither game is based on an entirely original concept, as PopCap's Zuma was released in 2003, and Puzz Loop (which is also on the App Store) was released all the way back in 1998. We've yet to receive a response from Mumbo Jumbo to get their side of the story.

Ngmoco has announced that their much anticipated first person shooter Eliminate will be free in light of Apple's announcement that free apps can now offer in-app purchases.

More details are said to be following, but Ngmoco has long announced that Eliminate would carry in-app purchases for energy that allows players to earn additional credits. Every player gets a certain auto-renewable source of energy, but once depleted, to earn more credits the player must either 1) wait a certain amount of time for your energy to recharge or 2) purchase more energy. If you don't care about credits, you may also continue to play but simply be ineligible to earn credits during those games. Credits are used for equipment upgrades and leveling up. We had a hands on with the game earlier this month which explains the system in detail and also gives impressions of the gameplay.

Based on comments by Ngmoco about the "aggressive" pricing of Eliminate, we long suspected that Ngmoco planned on making the bulk of its income in these in-app purchases. The move to a completely free game would expose Eliminate to a much larger audience of potential customers and also remove the issue of having a large enough user base to support an online multiplayer game.

Eliminate has been submitted and is awaiting approval from Apple.

Apple has emailed developers today that they have made a major change in the way they deal with in-app purchases or downloadable content (DLC). When Apple introduced the idea of in-app purchases, they restricted this to applications that cost $0.99 at a minimum.

Now, they have extended it to free applications as well:

In App Purchase is being rapidly adopted by developers in their paid apps. Now you can use In App Purchase in your free apps to sell content, subscriptions, and digital services.

You can also simplify your development by creating a single version of your app that uses In App Purchase to unlock additional functionality, eliminating the need to create Lite versions of your app. Using In App Purchase in your app can also help combat some of the problems of software piracy by allowing you to verify In App Purchases.

Visit the App Store Resource Center for more details about how you can add In App Purchases to your free apps.

This will result in some massive changes to the scenery of the App Store. A number of questions and possibilities arise. Developers could, for example, completely eliminate a Lite version altogether, and simply provide a Free version with the rest of the content as downloadable in-app purchases. This, however, also changes the dynamic of the top 100 lists. Such an app would be ranked only in the Top 100 Free and may never show up in the Top 100 Paid.

After a very long and dramatic legal battle between Mobigame and Tim Langdell over a trademark dispute over the name "Edge", the game has once again appeared on the App Store. EDGE [App Store] is a game where you control a colorful cube through a series of 3D isometric maze-like levels packed with puzzles to solve and obstacles to overcome.

Featuring both touch and accelerometer controls, EDGE requires both quick thinking and fast reactions to progress past the first few levels.

We enjoyed EDGE, and recommend picking the game up now — both because it's a great game and also in case it gets pulled again as it's unclear whether or not EDGE is here to stay. An official statement from Mobigame is said to be coming soon.

If you haven't kept up with the "Edge" dispute which has caused quite a stir on the Internet, EA recently petitioned to get the "Edge" trademark thrown out, and Langdell responded calling the petition a "desperate attempt by EA". For a complete background on the dispute, check out the summary provided by TIGSource. Needless to say, the whole situation is unfortunate, and it's sad to see such a great iPhone game caught in the legal crossfire.

App Store Link: EDGE, $4.99

It's been well known that Apple has resisted bringing Adobe's Flash plug-in to the iPhone. As a result, there is no way for iPhone users to play Flash content natively on their iPhone. Many games (such as Canabalt) have been written in Flash, and ports of these applications have been big sellers on the App Store.

Today Adobe announced that they begin allowing Flash developers to export applications directly in "ipa" format to run directly on the iPhone. According to Adobe, these applications are compiled into standard native iPhone executables and will be able to be submitted to the App Store for approval.

Flash Professional CS5 will enable developers to build applications for iPhone that are installed as native applications. Users will be able to access the apps after downloading them from Apple’s App Store and installing them on iPhone or iPod touch

The implications for iPhone gamers and developers is pretty significant, as the porting of Flash content to the iPhone will become much easier. Obviously, changes may still need to be made to suit the iPhone's interface.

Several apps have already been released for the iPhone using an early private version of Adobe's software, but a public beta of Flash Professional CS5 will begin later this year. These early Flash/App Store examples include Chroma Circuit [$0.99], Fickleblox [$0.99] and more.

In what may be a warning shot across the bow of the U.S.S. Plus+ (and the other iPhone social networks), OpenFeint announced today that Digital Chocolate is integrating OpenFeint in select games of theirs. Pretty soon games like Tower Bloxx Deluxe [99¢ / Free] and 3D Rollercoaster Rush $4.99 / Free] are going to be packed with online scoreboards and other OpenFeint achievements along with a few other other Digital Chocolate games.

Readers may remember that Trip Hawkins previously claimed they are the #1 game company in the App Store. While there may be some debate about that particular claim, Digital Chocolate's library does represent a huge base of iPhone users.

Even after this substantial acquisition of new games on OpenFeint, there still is a fair amount of fragmentation in iPhone gaming social networks. Each service offers something slightly different for both iPhone developers and gamers, and different people all prefer the various services for different reasons, but this remains a huge win for OpenFeint.

If you're an iPhone developer and you've been struggling to figure out a way to get your game back on to the top 100, just get a celebrity to mention how they can't stop playing your game on a talk show. Megan Fox appeared last night on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon and explained how addicted she is to the time management game Sally's Spa [$2.99 / Free].

The iPhone chat begins at around 3:20 remaining in the video:

Since Megan Fox's plug on this nationally broadcasted talk show just last night, Sally's Spa is back on the top 100. (Position #92 and climbing as of this writing.) This isn't the first time we've seen celebrities mention iPhone games, between Demi Moore tweeting about battling Ashton Kutcher in Flight Control [99¢] or American Idol winner Jordin Sparks tweeting high scores from Harbor Master [99¢ / Free] among others.

This just goes to show how shockingly mainstream both iPhones and iPhone gaming is becoming, something I'm not sure many people expected when the iPhone and the App Store launched.

We got word from Merdian today that Alive 4 Ever [App Store] had its first major content update submitted to Apple for review. They seem to have listened to some of the criticism that forum members had in the Alive 4 Ever thread and implemented quite a few changes.

Two new game modes are being introduced, "Survival Battle" and "Horde Battle". In survival battle, you try to stay alive as long as you can through endless streams of zombies. If you survive for ten minutes, a special golden Desert Eagle pistol will be awarded. Horde battle has you fighting waves of zombies, and a P90, golden AK-47, and a M4 Super 90 will be rewarded for clearing waves 8, 16, and 24.

Some interface elements have been improved. You can now change the transparency of the dual sticks, and on the scene selection screen a small icon will indicate whether or not you have completed the challenges of that level.

Meridian provided us the following trailer showing the new features of Alive 4 Ever 1.1:

[ Full HD version | Low Bandwidth version ]

We really enjoyed Alive 4 Ever in our review, and with the news of this upcoming patch, we highly recommend all fans of dual stick shooters to give the game a try. The 1.1 patch is coming soon, and should be available inside of the next two weeks if all goes well with the approval process.

App Store Link: Alive 4 Ever, 99¢