Somebody go wake up Brad Nicholson. In mid-September, we caught wind of a new Kairosoft game released in Japan called Oh! Edo Towns. The game was quite similar to the classic SimCity in that it has you building a town from scratch and managing the various resources and responsibilities that come with city planning, as well as keeping your citizens happy, with the ultimate goal of creating a thriving metropolis. The quirk here was that your city building took place in 17th Century Japan, rather than a contemporary setting.

At that time, we donned our speculation hats and ventured that Oh! Edo Towns might be hitting the US App Store sometime in October. Well, as it turns out, October came and went with no sign of the game, but just a few hours ago Oh! Edo Towns did indeed pop up in the US App Store. Sure, we were a few days off, but that's still some impressive guesstimating as far as I'm concerned. Miss Cleo would be proud.

Here's a bit of video of the Japanese version of Oh! Edo Towns from our friends at AppBank:

Now, you might remember about a week and a half ago we spotted yet another Kairosoft town-creating sim, called Zaibatsu Towns, that was released in Japan. The key difference with that title compared to Oh! Edo Towns, it seemed, was that it didn't have you building a traditional Edo period Japanese style town, and instead had you creating a city in modern times more akin to SimCity. I'm going to go ahead and start the speculation train, and I'll put out there that we'll be seeing a US release of Zaibatsu Towns before the end of the year. Go ahead and mark that down, dear readers, because if it turns out I'm wrong you can point and laugh in my face.

While it's fun to guess the future and all, let's not forget that there's a brand new Kairosoft title available to us in the US right now. As with most of their releases, it's a pretty good bet that it will be a strong simulation title, so might be worth just diving right in with the link below. Otherwise you can check out impressions in our forums, and you can also be sure we'll have a review of Oh! Edo Towns in the very near future. In fact, despite it being 3am where he's located, I'm calling Brad right now to tell him to download it.

Not to be left out in the holiday liquidation going on in the App Store at the moment, Namco Bandai has been conducting some price-slashery magics of its own. Starting today and rolling into the weekend, you can save oodles on the publisher's stable of titles. Games like Pac-Man and Mr. Driller and even its Universal selection of titles including Fossil Feast are available at either at $.99 to $3.99. That's not bad, really, considering what price these things usually sit at when there isn't a holiday to celebrate. Yay, Halloween!

Here's the full list of the sales we've caught so far:

• Buccaneer Blitz - $2.99 → $.99 [Universal]
• Fossil Feast - $1.99 → $.99 [Universal]
• Isaac Newton's Gravity - $2.99 → $.99
• Mishap - $4.99 → $1.99
• Mishap for the iPad - $4.99 → $1.99
• Mooniacs - $1.99 → $.99 [Universal]
• More Brain Exercise with Dr. Kawashima - $4.99 → $1.99
• More Brain Exercise with Dr. Kawashima for the iPad - $6.99 → $1.99
• Mr. Driller - $1.99 → $.99
• Ms. Pac-Man - $4.99 → $1.99
• Ms. Pac-Man for the iPad - $4.99 → $1.99
• Pac-Man - $4.99 → $1.99
• Pac-Man for the iPad - $4.99 → $1.99
• Pole Position: Remix - $2.99 → $.99
• Pool Pro Online 3 - $1.99 → $.99
• Pool Pro Online 3 for the iPad - $1.99 → $.99
• Puzzle Quest 2 - $4.99 → $3.99
• Star Trigon - $1.99 → $.99
• Tamagotchi: 'Round The World - $4.99 → $1.99

I'm a huge fan of Puzzle Quest 2, and even though it's hovering around a "premium" price point during this ale, it's still worth picking up. The match-3 component is as rich and strong as ever, and the dungeon-crawling and RPG aspects do wonders for the title. You can check out our review here.

Back in the depths of 2008, we had our hearts broken by I Love Katamari. The controls were problematic, there were performance issues, it was Katamari, but it was a mess. Now Namco is taking another shot at winning our love with Katamari Amore [Free].

Full disclosure: I'm a Katamari fan from way back. I got in on the ground floor with Katamari Damacy on PS2 and I've played every console release since. Over the years the formula has become a little stale, the craziness has started to feel a little forced, but I'm still a person who loves to roll things up. Sushi, cats, Ultraman, I'm not picky. So it's with a heavy heart that I tell you that Katamari Amore is a loveless thing.

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Later this year in Japan, Namco Bandai plans to capitalize on fresh hardware fever with a launch iteration of Katamari on the PlayStation Vita. It’s also giving us iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch owners a little something, too, with Katamari Amore this Thursday. Slated to hit in both paid and free-to-play versions, this latest Katamari looks to put you in some familiar shoes: you’ll play as the Prince’s Katamari and, as usual, be tasked with wrapping up various items to increase its size.

Expect 24 missions at launch, six of which are “completely new stages.” Also, expect to play across four different modes, including a regular campaign, a time attack mode, “Exact Size Challenge,” and “Eternal Mode.” For you Pac-Man fans out there, Namco is rolling in a special themed level complete with dots, ghosts, and a controllable Pac-Man. Neat!

The free version of the title will include Time Attack mode, while the full $3.99 version (special price) will have all of the aforementioned launch content from the get-go. Namco has promised that more content is on the way, too, which is cool because if Amore is able to overcome the technical woes its predecessor I Love Katamari [$6.99] had, it should absolutely rock. I mean, the last one did until the framerate took crazy dives, at least.

Whoa, hey, Capcom Mobile is on a roll. After releasing a pretty hefty and free content update to Street Fighter 4: Volt this morning, the publisher has released two new (old) games on the App Store. Starting now, you can re-live some of your old coin-op beat-em-up memories with Final Fight iOS [$.99]. Or, if classic Street Fighter is more your thing, you can also check out three different versions of Street Fighter 2 in Street Fighter 2 Collection [$3.99].

Final Fight, as you’ve probably noticed, is carrying a promotional $.99 price tag, which strikes us as pretty appropriate considering you’ve probably purchased this game in some shape or form a billion times already. This specific version, however, does roll in virtual controls and a finishing move button. Also, if you’ve got pals with phones, you can connect with one via Bluetooth for co-op action. And before you ask: dibs on Haggar.

In bummer news, Street Fighter II Collection is also shackled by Bluetooth. In much brighter news, it’s a heck of a package for fans of the series -- it rolls in the original game, Street Fighter II: Championship Edition, and Street Fighter II: Hyper Fighting all in one app. They all appear to be relatively untouched content-wise, but like with Final Fight the notable iOS tweak is an “easy-to-use one button finishing move.”

One note: both games require iOS 4.1 (or better) and don’t support a lot of older devices. Check the game notes before you go nuts.

Hey, more sales! We’re not too sure if SEGA is celebrating Labor Day with its Sonic the Hedgehog sale or just cutting the price because it can, but it doesn’t matter. At the end of the day, the games are a hair or two cheaper for a limited time, which means you can walk away with a heavier wallet if this is the first time you’ve bothered looking at the games. And, really, at these prices you should.

Here’s the short list, and just in case anything else comes up, we’ll update accordingly:

• Sonic the Hedgehog - $4.99 → $3.99
• Sonic the Hedgehog 2 - $4.99 → $3.99
• Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode I - $6.99 → $4.99

Sonic fans give Sonic the Hedgehog 4 a lot of grief — if you’ve ever read the Internet or Googled the game's name, you probably already know this. This is why I feel like I need to add that we loved it and think it feels exactly how Sonic should on the iPhone and iPod Touch. Check it out.

Just last week we brought you the news that several employees of the now-shuttered Bizarre Creations had formed a new studio, Hogrocket, with a new iOS property hitting the App Store in September. Well time flies, September is here and so is that title, which we're now at liberty to discuss. It's called Tiny Invaders [$3.99] and it's a quest to take over humanity -- from the inside out.

In Tiny Invaders you control microscopic aliens who are here to dominate the human race. To take on such a gargantuan task they delve into the bloodstream of the first person they find, a hick stereotype that just so happens to be in the path of their crash landing. Once inside his body they race through his bloodstream, collecting his white blood cells (or so I assume his "human orbs" to be) and infecting him piece by piece. (more...)

Fuzzy Professor Head’s Puppysaurus [$3.99] isn’t the Pokemon clone that we expected it would be when our all-seeing eye initially caught it earlier this summer. Inarguably, it cribs a lot from Game Freak’s overly formulaic and mega popular franchise, but it also packs a few important twists -- namely within the barrier of entry -- that gives it some measure of distance. Because of the anticipation surrounding it we thought it would be wise to go ahead and give you a run-down and, sadly, tell you why it isn't for you.

The short version is that it's Baby’s First Pokemon, a very rudimentary take on the series with spectacularly base mechanics and systems seemingly designed for kids. The long version is that it takes just about everything important to Pokemon -- the world navigation, the battle system, the training, and the catching of beasts -- and simplifies it to a point where it’s hard to stomach as a grown-butt dude, but might end up being perfect for little ones looking for a light sort of RPG immersion. (more...)

Firemint sales used to be a much more rare occurrence, but they still have an electricity to them that other creators can’t capture with their own price-slashing parties. I’m guessing it has more to do with the quality of the wares, than it does with dramatic price shifts. While I pointlessly ponder this, go ahead and grab Real Racing and Real Racing 2 for the iPhone or iPad. All four games have been dramatically reduced in price for this weekend in celebration of… well, nothing that we can discern. Still! They’re cheaper!

• Real Racing - $4.99 → $.99
• Real Racing HD - $6.99 → $3.99
• Real Racing 2 - $6.99 → $2.99
• Real Racing 2 HD - $9.99 → $4.99

Real Racing 2 is, we reckon, the best racing game Firemint has produced. That doesn’t mean the original Real Racing is a slouch, though. Fans of simulation racing games can and will enjoy both; it’s just that Real Racing 2 is a fantastic iteration on that original foundation. If you want to know way more about either of these titles, we’ve got your back. You can check out a review of the follow-up here and a review of Real Racing here. Non-spoiler: they’re good.

Spellsquares [$1.99 / HD], an atmospheric word puzzle game from Benthic Games, hit the App Store with its iPad version back in June. We missed out on it then, but we picked the game up on its iPhone release this month. It's right at home on the small screen, maintaining an enchanting mix of exploration and challenging puzzles.

In Spellsquares' story mode, you find yourself wandering a castle with a mystery to solve. A mysterious stranger has left notes to guide you on your way (kind of him, since you're out to foil his nefarious plan). Each door, treasure and point of interest is blocked with a word puzzle that you'll need to solve. The puzzles are crafted like Sudoku for words. A square grid is laid out with a few letters already in place. A pool of available letters sits to the side. Your job is to use those letters to make words in every row and column at once -- easy puzzles require three-letter words and the hardest require five. Solving them takes a little bit of logic and a touch of vocabulary. Once you factor in hints, you'll also need a dash of strategy.

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With adventure games seeing a serious revival on iOS, it should come as no surprise the ports keep on coming. Case in point, Beeworks Games took to bringing over Success' Touch Detective [Free] from the Nintendo DS, a five-year-old game that never saw massive sales on its initial release, but is given new life on iOS. The game got lukewarm reviews when initially released, but an innovative release methodology on iOS helps break it apart from the rest of the pack.

With each of the game's four chapters you'll be taking on the role of Mackenzie, a fledgling detective who has just received her first case. In the demo chapter, you'll need to solve the mystery of stolen dreams, and in later chapters you'll solve a disappearance, an assault and help a stranded person. There are also a series of side missions and a bonus escape the room mini-game.

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I think I fell in love with Mega Mall Story [$3.99] the second I activated, inadvertently, a “frenzy” that showered my six-story mall with pieces of confetti. A dude walked in, rode my brand new elevator up to the third floor, strolled into the super market, and purchased $10,000 worth of organic goods. Hearts popped up over his head a little later, which gave me enough points to research the bookstore I had my eye on. With his cash (and others) in-hand, I built it and decided to put the rest towards a community project that would bring in even more customers.

Moments like these happen once every five-to-ten minutes in Kairosoft’s latest simulation, which puts you in the shoes of a bustling mall’s planner, a mall's coordinator, a mall's CEO, and a close-proximity real estate tycoon. The last conceit is the most compelling one: few tower games give you control over more than the tower itself. Being able to raise up a community by purchasing house, parks, parking lots, and more gives you a unique stake in the outside world. It makes you feel like the universe is your baby, not just the mall.

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Just last week, we were filling your juicy brains with the knowledge that Kairosoft, the preeminent developer of cutesy mobile simulation titles including the highly lauded Game Dev Story [$3.99/Lite], was getting ready to release their latest title on US soil. We were fairly certain that his next title would be Mega Mall Story, as we spotted a banner for the game on their official website. And in fact, as of right now, our suspicions have been confirmed, as Mega Mall Story [$3.99] is now readily available in the US App Store.

Gameplay appears somewhat similar to the popular Tiny Tower [Free] where you are tasked with populating a fledgling mall building with various stores, staffing them up with qualified employees, and creating a successful and profitable mega complex of commerce where everybody wants to go to shop.

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Just so we're all on the same page from the start, Bravo Game Studios' Xtreme Wheels [$3.99] is whole heck of a lot like RedLynx's Trials series. Actually, it's almost identical, but while many have tried to bring the painfully difficult motocross physics-puzzle-style to iOS, Xtreme Wheels is probably the closest to getting it right.

If you've played Trials, you'll know what to expect from Xtreme Wheels and it gets the job done confidently enough. If you haven't, Xtreme Wheels is a physics based motrocross game that requires you to traverse an environment and get from one point of the map to the other by accelerating and leaning your character and bike in the correct directions to get through a series of obstacles.

That all sounds simple enough, but the joy (or rage) of Xtreme Wheels is in the fact you have to finesse your way up and over exploding barrels, ninety-degree walls and across tiny platforms. Like its pedigree, this isn't a game for the faint of heart and while the first few levels are far too easy, the last ten are truly a pain to get through.

The goal of each track is to get through it alive once, then to head back and improve your time. You'll receive medal awards based on your time and the number of crashes. Usually, you'd spend your time beating friend's scores on the leaderboards, but right now the Game Center boards are pretty screwed up, with the top times listed as zero. For this type of game, fixing this needs to be on the top of Bravo's to-do list.

You'll have four different control schemes at your disposal, two styles of analog sliders, a digital pad and tilt controls. For the most part, the analog slider is going to be the go-to for Trials fans, but newcomers might find the other controls more to their liking.

Whichever control scheme you chose, you'll be rolling with it over the course of 25 levels in five themed areas. Again, if you played Trials, you know what to expect here -- the level progression, although a bit slow at first, ramps up considerably and awkwardly at the mid-point (like Trials, actually). If you haven't played a game like this before, you're going to run into some serious trouble early on because the game doesn't do a particularly good job of teaching you how to play it. Simple things like bunny-hops are going to frustrate newcomers pretty quickly and even old hands will have a little trouble getting the hang of them with the control schemes.

That actually brings up one of the problems with Xtreme Wheels, the physics are a little loose compared to the responsiveness of the controls and since the level design facilitates some ridiculous situations, the physics don't always respond as you'd expect. It's only jarring because the controls are so reactive, your character will lean and move exactly as you'd anticipate, but the bike doesn't always respond. Then again, that might simply be the sixty-plus hours I've poured into Trials HD tainting my view a little.

One of the other major problems comes in the form of framerate hiccups. Both on a 3GS and an original iPad the game has serious slowdown after explosions and in some of the more complex areas. This isn't a good thing in this type of game and it's almost impossible to recover from. There are a ton of checkpoints throughout each level to keep this from being too aggravating, but for those looking to go gold on every level it'll only make the game even harder. The same goes for your inevitable fail animations, which seem to drag on as the system stutters.

From early screenshots, the game looked like it was going to be a real stunner. The environments hold up to the screenshots and look great, but the animation on the rider is a little stiff. This only matters because your rider's position is key to getting through tougher parts and it's occasionally a little difficult to figure out exactly where he's positioned. Of course, I'd have preferred a steady framerate over fancy visuals any day, so we'll see if they can scale the graphics down to add some smoothness in the future.

Despite those flaws, the game is a faithful rendition of a Trials-style game, but it would have been nice to see a little more innovation in the environmental art or at least more of its own style instead of a nearly direct clone of Trials. Even still, if they can get the framerate up, it'll be one of the better renditions on the App Store, even if it's lacking it's own constitution.

Ronimo Games’ Swords & Soldiers [$2.99 / HD] is a stripped-down, side-scrolling RTS that offers a decent amount of creative situational content inside a shell that otherwise doesn’t torture standard genre tropes. The gorgeous visual direction and whimsical writing emits an unusual, but comfortable warmth. Most levels boast sharp, sometimes dramatic change-of-pace mechanics or objectives with different factions. And there’s several different types, and modes, of play mixed into and out-of its feature-complete and content-rich campaign. Yet, at its core, this is still a game that revolves around troop spam just like all the others -- it's this other stuff that makes it a unique offering.

Sword & Soldiers first appeared on downloadable console platforms in 2009 and later on PC and Mac. Nothing I’ve noticed has been added since those respective debuts aside from the touch implementation found in this specific version, which is smooth to the point that it feels natural, as if this was the lead platform.

There are three goofy, well-animated factions: the Vikings, the Aztecs, and the Chinese. The campaign mode boasts three separate mini-campaigns using each where you’ll see the qualities that separate each faction from the other. The Aztecs boast mechanics that revolve around death. The Vikings, on the other hand, heal with spells and use defensive structures, while the Chinese can conjure statues that bolster spell casting. The mini-campaigns' weaves are a part of the whole tapestry and they spin into each other after a few missions. These plot points are as satisfactorily offbeat as the overall aesthetic.

To the game’s credit, it often leverages the unique abilities of each faction in missions, but the moment-to-moment action revolves around “troop spam” tak. It counts on it, in fact, because the game, at its core, is about management: can you manage building gold miners while also babysitting an upgrade tree and spitting out troops? That's the typical question it asks throughout the campaign, which does, despite being somewhat mechanically dull with its defend-the-castle missions, hold up over the haul.

Part of what makes Sword & Soldiers satisfying is that you don’t have to budget build orders, consider micro-details, or give much of consideration to strategies. You build and fight with a small number of troops in manageable streams, while complimenting your troop attacks with muddle, attack, or defensive-minded spells. This is RTS stripped to its core, and for what it's worth, it's a nice, easy-going approach that I enjoy. You're afforded time to zone out and simply enjoy the experience.

The game has a tendency to break down in some specific instances. When the AI decides to toss out globs of enemies to attack your streams of individual troops, there's not much you can do about that other than buckle down and hope you've picked the right troops in your streams, else they'll be knocking at your door soon. Also, some of the missions in the campaign mixes the action up by giving you simple defend objectives, no gold supply, or limited resources to work with. In some of these missions, it's obvious the designers want you to use a specific tool, and if you don't, you'll lose fast and hard annoyingly.

There is no online multiplayer, but it does offers a horizontal local two-player mode. I don’t have a pal that would be interested in giving this a go with me, but just in general testing I’ve noticed that, like in the campaign, mass and smart spell usage are the keys to success.

Sword & Soldiers might be shackled to side-scrolling RTS convention, but it’s smart and vibrant where it counts. The HD version in particular is the best, as the extra screen space goes a long way in bringing the game to life in a comfortable and manageable way. If you're in the mood for a full-featured title, this wouldn't be a bad one to scoop up. I dig it, at least.

Note: Although Chillingo is currently advertising Swords & Soldiers with us, advertising has no effect on coverage or review outcomes. For more information, take a look at our advertising and editorial policies.