Three games we recently previewed all have since made their way on to the App Store. If you've been looking for some games to get your kiwi flying, hockey playing, zombie shooting fix, look no further.

Fly Kiwi Fly!, 99¢

From our preview:

In Fly Kiwi Fly, you play as a small yellow kiwi who wants to fly, much like the unrelated YouTube hit video "Kiwi!" (which you should really watch if you haven't seen it before).

Motivated by watching the Space Shuttle on TV, you take flight and somehow earn money by constantly jumping off a cliff. This money is then spent on upgrades in the in-game shop that will allow you to jump higher off the start, briefly glide, or even rocket forward among other things.

I shot my own hands-on video of early gameplay, but this recently released trailer gives you a much better idea of what the game is like once you buy some upgrades:

Stinger Table Hockey, $1.99

From our preview:

Stinger Table Hockey effectively duplicates the same insanity of a real hockey table, and while the controls are still in the process of being tweaked, I thought they worked pretty well. Basically, dragging up and down on a track moves that player back and forth, and swiping right or left on the same track causes the player to spin around. It's pretty intuitive, and works well enough to be fun.

There is a single player mode that allow you to play against an AI opponent which is a little on the lame side since the fun part of hockey tables were always playing with another person. Thankfully, Stinger Table Hockey has both bluetooth and wifi multiplayer that I can't wait to try out. There are also tournament modes, and skill tests that feature shootouts and other challenges.

Zombie Cannon Carnage, $1.99

From our preview:

In Zombie Cannon Carnage, zombies from outer-space have crash landed on Earth. Instead of sticking around to endlessly munch on succulent Earthling brains, they decided to build a makeshift cannon from spare circus parts to fire themselves back in to space. With semi-randomized gameplay, various purchasable power-ups, all kinds of obstacles to run in to, and tons of explosions, Zombie Cannon Carnage is one of the better (and substantially more hectic) cannon firing games I've played recently.

Gameplay is similar to other cannon firing games in that you aim your cannon, fire, and see how much stuff you can hit. Each zombie is equipped with a jet pack that has a limited amount of fuel which is capable of sending you flying forward for a brief period of time. When you finally crash in to the ground, you can self destruct for even more points.

Aside from the official trailer, we also shot some gameplay footage:

Last month we reported that a number of highly notable retro titles are on the way as DLC for Manomio / Kiloo's C64 for iPhone [App Store] emulator. We've just gotten an update from the developers, naming the first of the upcoming releases.

The first new games out of the gate will be Super Pipeline and Super Pipeline II from Taskset as well as Paperboy from Elite. The Super Pipeline games will cost $0.99, while Paperboy will go for $1.99 as in-game DLC. Following these first titles into the app will be several as yet unnamed free titles.

The developers previously indicated that the app's forthcoming v1.5 update will be focused on usability and playability, with some control and UI tweaks. Kiloo has just pointed further down the road to the v1.6 update that will follow, which they indicate will bring the notable update of customizable controls. We're glad the folks behind C64 for iPhone are keeping the ball rolling for retro fans like myself.

Keita Takahashi, game developer and apparent future playground designer, is best known for Katamari Damacy and its sequel We Love Katamari. Both games are extremely creative and have spawned an incredibly devoted fan following, there's even an iPhone game– I love Katamari [$4.99 / Free]. Takahashi kicked things up a notch with his next game, Noby Noby Boy which was first revealed at a Sony event in 2007, and didn't make it to the PS3 PlayStationNetwork store until 2009.

In the PS3 game, you take control of a multicolored worm character that the game refers to as "BOY". With the analog sticks you can move BOY around the 3D environment filled with various buildings and animals. You can also stretch BOY, and points are accumulated by making BOY grow as long as possible. As players stretch their respective BOYs, points are collected by an online character called GIRL which causes GIRL to stretch through the various planets of our solar system as more points are submitted by everyone playing Noby Noby Boy.

This surreal sandbox PS3 game saw generally favorable reviews, but there was a clear division between those who absolutely loved the game for how crazy it is and those who hated it. For instance, Eurogamer said the game "inspires creativity, curiosity and simple, careless glee" while ArsTechnica said "Noby Noby Boy has no point, or fun".

In honor of the one year anniversary of Noby Noby Boy's release on PSN comes Noby Noby Boy [$1.99] for the iPhone. So far reactions to the game seem extremely polarized, with people either absolutely loving the game, or not understanding why anyone would waste their time with it. In the iPhone version, you have access to a full toolbar of toys for you to play with. BOY can be stretched across maps utilizing the iPhone's GPS, you can write and store memo's using BOY's body for a notepad, use BOY as a clock, and oodles of other crazy things ending in you submitting your BOY's length to GIRL online.

Here is the first of a twelve part series of movies made showing the various features of Noby Noby Boy:

I'm not sure there's much point in attempting to "review" this game, as Noby Noby Boy is just a collection of toys that you will either love, or not understand at all. If you're among the group of people who were crazy about Noby Noby Boy for the PS3, chances are you will like the similar insane sandboy play of the iPhone game. If you've never heard of Noby Noby Boy, you can attempt to watch the previously mentioned series of videos to try to make some sense of it, but much like the thread on our forums I expect the reaction to this story is going to be similarly split between people who are excited the game exists and people who don't know why we would bother posting about it.

App Store Link: Noby Noby Boy, $1.99

Last week was absolutely loaded with sneak previews of games, and thanks to the wonderfully fast App Store approval turnaround time so far this year, B-Boy Beats, Robot Rampage, and Drift Sumi-e are all available for download.

B-Boy Beats, $2.99

From our preview:

The gameplay of B-Boy Beats amounts to keeping your index and middle fingers on the screen of your iPhone and moving them in time with the red and green circles to dance to the songs. This actually seems to take quite a bit of getting used to, as instead of most rhythm games where you're just tapping things along with a beat, you often need to keep one finger down while you move the other one around. Doing well takes an awful lot of brain power as when the songs speed up you almost instinctively just try to go back to quickly tapping like you do in Tap Tap Revenge and other games.

Despite quite a few naysayers in both the comments of our preview article, YouTube comments, and the forum thread, this game is one of the better rhythm games I've played on the iPhone largely because of how different it feels playing it compared to the typical tap to the beat rhythm game. B-Boy Beats comes loaded with nerdcore and once you get in to the gameplay, dancing with your fingers is a lot of fun. (And even more fun if you draw some Nike Dunks on your finger tips.) This is a game that badly needs a lite version, as you really need to get a feel for the game to fully appreciate it.

From our preview:

Robot Rampage is a seemingly endless survival game where you play as a gigantic robot armed with a super laser. Your massive robot is controlled with a variety of touch gestures. Tapping on the side of the screen causes the robot to move in that direction, holding a finger down on the screen fires the laster in that direction. The robot can also punch and stomp by tapping on either side of the robot's torso to punch, and tapping its legs to stomp. As you destroy your surroundings, a gauge in the top left corner fills up. Once full, you can tap and hold the robot to charge up a massive attack that clears the screen.

If you like giant robots, cheesy Sci-Fi B-movies, and destroying cities with huge lasers and robot fists of fury, it's safe to say you'll enjoy this quirky survival game. Gameplay is a little on the simple side, as all you do is rampage through a seemingly endless and random cityscape destroying buildings, soldiers, tanks, and other meager human defenses. OpenFeint integration should provide quite a bit of replay value if you enjoy competing in online leaderboards.

From our preview:

The game involves drawing a single stroke along the racetrack as the path for your car. You must try to hit and connect all the red clipping zones and try to make it through the course as fast as possible. After you draw your single stroke, you sit back and watch the playback in 3D as your car drifts around the corners. Multiple camera angles are provided along with drifting smoke effects. Your ultimate score is based on the smoothness of the line and speed of your run.

Drift Sumi-e is an interesting blend of gameplay reminiscent of Draw Race with a really cool looking sumi-e art style. Gameplay is simple, although it seems to take a back seat to the extremely elegant graphics as most of the game is spent watching your car drift around corners and taking snapshots with the unlockable in-game camera.

Late last month IUGO announced their new dual stick shooter, Daisy Mae's Alien Buffet [App Store] which appeared for download not long ago. In the game you play as Daisy Mae, valiant heroine of a desert trailer park, who defends Earth from a never-ending swarm of aliens with nothing other than her good looks and guns… lots of guns.

The atmosphere of the game is straight out of a classic B-movie, with everything from the numerous ridiculous weapons, to the silly looking aliens, and Daisy Mae's clothing which gets more and more skimpy as you unlock additional outfits. There whole game is even wrapped in a film grain filter that I think looks really cool but is easily disabled in the options if you don't like it.

Gameplay is standard for a dual stick survival shooter. You have three lives, and can restore lost lives by picking up lipstick power-ups. As you kill more and more aliens, a meter fills in the bottom of the screen that you can tap to taunt nearby aliens, which apparently makes them drop dead. There are a bunch of different aliens to kill, and even some giant aliens which take up a huge chunk of the screen.

My favorite thing about Daisy Mae's Alien Buffet is that it seems to be one of the few dual stick shooters that actually has collision detection with obstacles in the game world. You can use the old cars, signs, and random garbage strewn about to your advantage, and it really adds a lot more to the game compared to other dual stick shooters where you can usually just run in circles killing everything that's chasing you.

Daisy Mae is certainly one of the more newbie-friendly shooters out there, thanks to the three control options it includes. Aside from the standard dual sticks you can just use one virtual joystick and a button to fire, or simply just use the virtual joystick and let the game handle firing for you. With this third control option the game basically plays itself, and you really don't even have to move until the meaner aliens start spawning.

Daisy Mae's Alien Buffet is a fun survival shooter with tons of weapons and a cool atmosphere to it. An in-depth stat tracking system keeps track of kills with each of the weapons, total play time, and numerous other stats. Scores are even seamlessly submitted online without needing to register, but like other IUGO games you can optionally participate in the IUGO VIP system. The taunts and unlockable outfits are equally ridiculous, but the addition of terrain collision detection easily makes Daisy Mae worth trying, even if your device is already loaded with other shooters.

App Store Link: Daisy Mae's Alien Buffet, $1.99

In 1989, influenced by Tetris and tic-tac-toe, Dave Akers and Mark Stephen Pierce created Klax, originally programmed in just a few weeks in Amiga Basic. Nearly 20 years later, Mark Stephen Pierce flying solo with the help of Super Happy Fun Fun released Star*Burst [App Store], a matching game with tons of particle effects and all the gameplay from classic Klax turned upside down as the rights to the original Klax seems to be trapped somewhere in Midway's bankruptcy-powered licensing purgatory.

If Klax was before your time, or you just never got around to pumping quarters in to a Klax machine, here's the basic gist of the Star*Burst– Randomly spawning bricks come down a conveyor belt towards a paddle which can catch and hold up to five bricks at once. Moving your finger around controls the paddle, and swiping down throws a brick back up on to the conveyor belt, while tapping the paddle throws the brick up to the five by five grid at the top of the screen.

Blocks on the top of the screen are cleared by matching them horizontally, vertically, diagonally, and other more complicated layouts such as forming arrows, an X, or stars. The more blocks you clear the more points you earn, and as blocks are removed the existing blocks compress to fill any spaces that may have been created as blocks disappear– Allowing you to chain massive combos (and earn point multipliers) if you can set them up.

When you get farther in to the game, wild blocks that will match any color and bomb blocks appear that can destroy nearby blocks on the grid. Just like Klax, achieving high scores involves thinking ahead and intelligently managing which blocks you keep on your paddle, which blocks you flip back up on to the conveyor belt, and how you arrange the blocks on the grid. The game is over when you either fail to catch five blocks from the conveyor belt, or you run out of spaces on the grid to place new blocks.

If you were a fan of the original Klax, you need to have Star*Burst on your iPhone. The touch controls work well, and really my only gameplay criticism is that the on-screen button to make the conveyor spit out blocks (the small square with two arrows near the top in screenshots) seems to be awkwardly positioned. You really only need to speed up the block conveyor in the earlier levels when blocks come slower, so this is a very minor issue.

Star*Burst has online scoring and tons of achievements, but unfortunately uses Facebook instead of Plus+ or OpenFeint so the online scoring/achievement functionality is fairly primative and seems to be limited to your Facebook friends and spamming your Facebook wall. With a better online scoring system, Star*Burst would be amazing.

App Store Link: Star*Burst, $1.99

We just got word from Chillingo's Clickgamer that an Angry Birds [App Store] update is in the works that adds 40 new levels, two new environments, and complete Crystal integration for online leaderboards, achievements, and all the other fun stuff Crystal provides. They're planning on submitting the update "very soon", and even released a new trailer for the game that is easily one of the better iPhone game trailers I've seen recently:

Angry Birds is a catapult game where you assist several angry birds as they seek revenge on a gang of egg-stealing green pigs. From our review:

Players are haphazardly tossed into a level in which several angry-looking red birds are gathered around a primitive slingshot, with a small wooden tower harboring a little green pig to the right. Touching and dragging backwards on the bird that is currently mounted in the slingshot will prime your disturbed little critter for launch. From here, your goal is to aim your shot effectively and take out a weak point on the pig's tower, causing him to fall to his little piggy doom.

We also discussed Angry Birds in our recent podcast, and I really recommend giving the game a look, as I've sunk an unbelievably amount of time recently in to total pig destruction. This new update (especially with online leaderboards) is just going to make this great game even better.

App Store Link: Angry Birds, $1.99

Vertical shooters are one of the oldest genres in gaming, and developers have been trying to figure out a way to create games that stand out amongst the crowded market for just as long. Eveningstar [App Store], developed by Divine Robot, does a good job of mixing up its tried-and-true gameplay with a unique element: a secondary weapon that's controlled in a unique and interesting way.

There is a backstory for Eveningstar that's accessible in text form through the main menu, but it's not really important. The important thing is that you are a dude in spaceship with a deadly magnetic ball called "the Eveningstar" orbiting you. The Eveningstar does major damage to anything it touches, and while it can't be controlled directly, it can be manipulated by moving your ship around to create a slingshot effect. Your ship is controlled by touching anywhere on the screen and dragging, and the Eveningstar follows behind. People in our forums found it quite difficult to control the Eveningstar at first, but reported becoming much better at it after spending a little time with the game.

Aesthetically, Eveningstar impresses. Each of the game's nine levels are set in different elementally-themed locations that draw from unique color palettes. These levels and the enemies that populate them are extremely well drawn, with animation that looks great and feels appropriate for the game's art direction. The occasional 3D effects on some objects seems a little strange, but despite the inconsistency in which items are 3D and which items are not, everything looks good. Complimenting Eveningstar's pleasant graphics is the orchestral soundtrack, which is of professional quality. The epic score makes headphones highly recommendable, as they can add to the overall experience in a way that really shouldn't be missed.

Unlike many other vertically-scrolling shooters, Eveningstar's camera is extremely slow to scroll, making the game intentionally slow-paced. This might be for the best, as there's a pretty cool physics system in the game attributed to some objects that can be manipulated by a well-placed whack with the Eveningstar. To keep levels at a reasonable length, most of the game's nine levels are extremely short (from a physical length perspective, not the time that it takes to beat them). It won't take long to beat the game, but completing all nine levels will restart players at the first level with their current score, encouraging endurance runs for those who wish to go for high scores.

Unfortunately, there is no online leaderboard support to speak of in Eveningstar, so players will be hard-pressed to find incentive to play through the game more than a couple times. The inclusion of easy, medium, and hard difficulty settings (the latter of which is a real challenge) was a wise move on the part of the developer that will add replay value to the game, but online leaderboards seem like an absolute must if Eveningstar is to totally connect with its audience. Even with the omission of leaderboards, Eveningstar is an attractive game that's well worth checking out.

App Store Link: Eveningstar, $1.99

On the eve of what could be the biggest Apple announcement since the iPhone, Battle of Puppets [App Store] somehow is successfully holding my attention over obsessively refreshing every tech blog on the planet looking for more tablet tidbits. (A lofty accomplishment, to say the least.) While at the heart of the game it's little more than a castle vs castle battle, Battle of Puppets is absolutely oozing character and charm through its amazing art style and other really clever features.

If you've played one castle vs castle game, the gameplay mechanics will be instantly familiar to you. If not, here's the genre in a nutshell: Two castles are on opposing side of a battlefield, you need to manage various resources to produce units, often limited by a unit cap that may change on each level. You must formulate a strategy based on the different strengths of your units playing off the weaknesses of your opponents units to fight your way to their castle and eventually destroy it.

The battlefields in Battle of Puppets are amazingly cute stages with scenery that moves around depending on the time of day, and when a unit dies it's yanked off stage. Continuing with this theme, each of the armies in game are themed after a different classical opera, with everything from spanish forces themed after Carmen and to asian themed armies inspired by Madame Butterfly.

Compared to other castle vs castle games, the amount of thought and small touches developers Small Wonders put in to the game is awesome. The animations are great, each army feels a little different, and there's even three save slots so multiple people can be playing the game on a single device. The following gameplay trailer should give you an idea of the atmosphere of the game:

There are a bunch of castle vs castle strategy games on the App Store, but few can come close to rivaling the look and feel of Battle of Puppets. Playing as each of the different opera forces should provide a decent amount of replay value for people who become engrossed in the game, but under the hood it's still a castle battle game. If you haven't been interested in them in the past, the eye candy in Battle of Puppets likely won't be enough to sway you over.

App Store Link: Battle of Puppets, $1.99

There's no doubt that the App Store is absolutely loaded with different physics games, and many with very similar gameplay to Tumbledrop [App Store], but few are anywhere near as cute, colorful, or filled with rainbows for that matter.

Gameplay amounts to making your way through the 60 included levels (with more coming soon per the iTunes description) by tapping on screen to remove pieces in order to guide the star at the top of the pile safely to the ground– Very similar to game modes in the Topple series, Finger Physics, and others.

What interested me in Tumbledrop was the forced delay in between removing the pieces that comprise the various structures of each level. Other games you could pretty easily cheese your way through the challenges by just quickly removing pieces as fast as possible while guiding the goal item back to the ground. In Tumbledrop, you have to plan your movements carefully as you can only remove one piece every three seconds.

Tumbledrop isn't particularly original, but if you're a fan of these types of games you likely have several similar ones on your phone already. If you want to give the game a try, there's a free version you can play in a web browser, you just have to download the Unity browser plugin. It's worth a look, if only to see how happy the star you're rescuing gets when its on the ground accompanied by the fanfare of rainbows and multi-colored confetti before progressing to the next level.

App Store Link: Tumbledrop, $1.99