Now, many of you out there are surely thinking you need to see another block elimination game like you need a hole in the head, but Dan has managed to deliver a fresh take on the formula that's simple and highly challenging — in fact, it can be downright panic inspiring. It works like this: you start off with a playfield consisting of upwardly advancing rows of differing blocks. Particles that match the rising blocks fall from above and, in the case of a match, eliminate the blocks they hit (and any bordering blocks of the same design) or, if the shapes don't match, add a block to the column in question. The goal of the game is to see how long you can keep the tallest column from touching the top of the screen. The real strategy lies in the fact that you can swap any two of the advancing blocks by tapping one and then the other. The trick is to wisely determine which columns to focus on to keep the game going. It's a pretty frantic affair.

Like BinarySquare's earlier title, Space Out [App Store], the game features a highly-retro, pixellated graphical treatment that lends the title a distinctive look that some gamers (like me) will love. Old school music and sound effects, created using the Commodore 64's famous SID chip, are also featured.

While it's true that the App Store is flooded with block elimination games, Kirplinkus really does deliver a fresh twist on the formula. See BinarySquare's demonstration video for a look at the gameplay.

App Store Link: Kerplinkus, $0.99

Street Fighter 4 gives you control over 8 characters from the console version; Abel, Blanka, Chun Li, Ryu, Bison, Dhalsim, Guile and Ken (in order of appearance). The game offers an impressive move list, featuring all the special attacks from the console version, leaving out the low and medium punch/kick buttons and their respective moves. The purists amongst you may find this too much of a downsize as it undoubtedly poses a change in pace from the original and diminishes the ability to hit those ridiculously high combos. Having said that, there's no doubting its authenticity– this is Street Fighter 4 in all its glory.

It is hard really to see how any additional attacks could have been squeezed in, as the on-screen controls already take up a sizeable portion of the real estate available. Super and Ultra attacks are performed by simply tapping their respective bars (which may irk some), though they can still be pulled off in their traditional, anologue stick fashion via the SP button. This SP button also activates EX attacks and together with a Focus button, complements the kick and punch attacks on the right part of the screen. It should be noted that these on-screen elements can be moved around and have their transparency adjusted, to accommodate left-handers and minimalists alike.

Street Fighter 4 looks and runs exquisitely on the 3GS device we tested it on, with impressive animations and the same gorgeous backdrops we were treated to in the console version. Combat in Street Fighter 4 is fast and fluid, and button input is as responsive as we hoped it would be. The AI does a good job at keeping you on your toes too, and can be configured at 4 difficulty levels from beginner to gruelling. There are a number of game modes, from the standard Tournament mode (against 7 competitors, with Bison featuring as the end boss), to a "Dojo" challenge mode, together with a training mode and a single player versus mode. For those who prefer human competitors, a Bluetooth multiplayer mode is available too.

To round out the impressive feature list, Street Fighter 4 sports a full blown replay system and local leaderboards, to record your matches for later viewing, and to breakdown your winnings in both tournament and versus modes. Capcom has certainly created a comprehensive Street Fighter 4 offering, with only WiFi multiplayer and online leader boards remaining on our wish list, together with the inevitable cries for a more extensive character roster.

Street Fighter 4 is easily recommended to any Street Fighter fan or fighting game aficionado. At its core it is a lightweight port of the exceptional console title, so don't go expecting anything different if you've had your SF4 fill. On the other hand, it is amazing that such a game was ported to the AppStore in the first place and the simple fact that you can now bring Street Fighter 4 around in your pocket should be enough to sway many an eager button masher.

Impressions from our forums are collecting fast and are largely positive. Our readers have noted that there is only minimal slowdown on 3G models compared to the 3GS device we tested, and even 1G users are reportedly happy with Street Fighter 4's performance.

App Store Link: Street Fighter 4, $9.99.

Mole is a game that, on the surface resembles classic Dig Dug, but is really a deeper game (sorry) that's much more about scoring up in order to better equip your character than simple arcade action. In Mole, you start off as a rather ill-equipped Mark the mole that can't do much beyond burrow about the top-most layer of the six-layer underground world that hides the fabled Terracore Gem (in the deepest layer, of course). While burrowing, you can pick up various precious metals and gems, and they can be used to up your gear in the equip shop — and better gear is what really opens up the game. It's a gear-to-gameplay dynamic that's reminiscent of that in Hook Champ.

The aforementioned shop offers air tanks, pick axes, gem detectors, and the like for the player with enough metal. All of them help you on your quest, but the most important upgrade would have to be the air tanks, for, despite the occasional pockets of air that can be found in some (but not all) of the underground layers, you're not going to get very deep without some serious tankage. And the Terracore Gem lies deep.

The game offers very simplistic controls that work quite well; tap out some distance from your mole and he'll move there or just hold and drag in the direction you want to travel. The arrangement of on-screen indicators can be adjusted for left or right players, as well.

See the developer's gameplay video.

This is one of those games that delivers just a really nice balance between light playfield strategy (how deep should you go with your limited oxygen supply?) and asset allocation (how best to spend money in the shop?). If break-neck arcade action is what you're after, then Mole – Quest for the Terracore Gem! will disappoint, but for the gamer that can weigh risks and keep their eye on the goal, this one is a true hidden gem.

In honor of the Game Developers Conference 2010, Mole is free until Sunday, March 14th.

App Store Link: Mole – Quest for the Terracore Gem, Free (limited time, normally $1.99)

The object of the game is simple, you drive your little car across a track drawn out on a chalkboard to reach the finish flag. Buttons on each side of the screen control your movement and the rotation of your car for landing properly off jumps. You can also make your car bounce by tapping the screen. The included maps start out extremely easy, and slowly introduce more gameplay elements such as loops, ramps, and objects you can ram or otherwise interact with using your car.

Much like the JellyCar games, it doesn't take long for these courses to get amazingly difficult and you experience the same sense of satisfaction when you finally beat a level with your car spinning out of control and just barely crossing the finish flag. The levels you can download online vary in quality, but I've had a good time playing through the ones I've tried.

These silly physics puzzle racing games are among my favorite kind of iPhone games, and I've been having a great time exploring the various user submitted levels in Chalkboard Stunts. So much so that this review was delayed by nearly a week because every time I'd sit down planning to write something about it I'd fire up the game and lose an hour to it.

I still prefer the original JellyCar (Mostly because of the awesome music) but if the community generated content in Chalkboard Stunts keeps up, I can easily see it living a long and happy life on my iPhone.

App Store Links:

• Chalkboard Stunts, 99¢
• Chalkboard Stunts Lite, Free

Tilt to Live is at its core, an object-avoidance game wholly utilising the accelerometer of the iPhone or iTouch to maneuver your arrow around the battlefield. I say battlefield, because that's exactly what is going on here– the dots are out to get you and will stop at nothing. And it is remarkable just how much personality One Man Left have managed to inject into such a straightforward concept. These are certainly no ordinary dots– these perilous periods make a point (ha!) of chasing you around the screen; coalescing into arrows and other shapes then hurling themselves at you at breakneck pace, or circling you like vultures, slowly closing in until it is impossible to escape. Make no mistake, touch even one of the hundreds of dots on screen at once, and you are history.

Sounds mind-numbing? Fear not! Our arrow protagonist has a range of very awesome weapons at his disposal to send these dots back to whence they came. Your arsenal really defines Tilt to Live because it shows an attention to detail and knack for the inventive that escapes many games we see on the AppStore. You start off with just a few basic powerups floating around the screen waiting to be collected. The most basic is a nuke explosive (Yes, a nuke is standard fare in Tilt to Live) but you also have a dot-seeking multi-rocket powerup and a haduken-style fireball which clears a portion of the screen in the direction you're facing. Each of the weapons require a different strategy to operate effectively and are useful in varying situations.

This thoughtful design factor continues through to the unlockable weapons, too, where eventually you'll unlock weapons such as a spike shield that lets you hurl yourself at dots as they literally cower away in fear or a vortex attack that sucks all nearby dots (and you if you're not careful) into a black hole, to name just a few. But it's the manner in which they're unlocked that I appreciated the most. Tilt to Live uses the AGON platform to deliver its achievements and leaderboard results. But, it takes the system one step further– integrating in-game rewards for unlocking achievement points– namely in the form of additional weapons. I'm ordinarily not one for achievements, but the added incentive of new weapons was enough to get me to actually pore through the list and attempt most of the nefarious challenges, a fact I found pleasantly surprising.

Tilt to Live is a game that draws you in with its edgy personality and inescapable 'just one more go' gameplay. It is gorgeously crafted and presented and has a wicked sense of humor to boot (just take a look at the loading screens to see what I mean). Completing its challenges and unlocking weapons has the added benefit of enabling you to achieve even higher scores and multipliers, meaning even those not normally counting themselves as completionists may be eager to experience the width and breadth of what Tilt to Live has to offer. This is one game that will remain a fixture on my iPhone for a long time to come.

As expected, impressions coming in from our readers are overwhelmingly positive. Be sure to check out the developer's YouTube trailer above for a preview glimpse of Tilt to Live.

App Store Link: Tilt to Live, $1.99.

For anyone new to the concept (frankly, you've been living under a rock), Sparkle is essentially a Match-3 game spread out over a track, where a long string of various colored balls slowly moves to the end of the path. You fire randomly colored balls at the string in an attempt to make groups of three or more like-colors, causing them to disappear from the playing field. If the string reaches the end of the path, it's game over.

Along the way you'll collect a number of power-ups and items to help your cause, and be introduced to a chain-reaction combo system to really rack up the points. There are three game modes in Sparkle which are gradually unlocked and help to deviate its offering, including a story-driven Quest mode, a time-attack Challenge Mode, and a score-tracking Survival mode. Sparkle also keeps track of your progress through an achievement and stat system, though no global leader boards are available at present.

Sparkle is great if only to rekindle some of that Zuma nostalgia right in the palm of your hand. As we're often finding, the tried and true gameplay works surprisingly well on a touch device, making Sparkle one highly polished and easily recommended action puzzler.

App Store Link: Sparkle, $2.99.

The sequel reveals a more polished title than the original, discarding the hand-drawn art and instead drawing heavily from the steampunk genre to create a rich game world of oiled cogs and shiny bronze contraptions. It is thanks to these machinations that the gameplay in Ragdoll Blaster 2 does vary a little to the original, if still sharing that same overall feel of blasting (and resetting) over and over again until you reach your target in as few shots as possible.

The new objects you'll come across include teleporters, additional cannons, objects that adversely affect gravity, ice blocks and mechanical arms to name a few, along with the expected array buttons, cogs and switches. All in all, levels feel more purposeful thanks to the new mechanics, and we're confident that the 150 levels that make up Ragdoll Blaster 2 will continue to be interesting (and undoubtedly difficult) and show the same attention to detail throughout as the ones we've played up to now.

Backflip Studios have also made the decision to incorporate the Plus+ platform in Ragdoll Blaster 2 to provide high scores for each of the nine 'rooms' which theme the levels. Both a Par score and Best score is displayed at the end of each room as a target to beat for those competitively inclined.

We're enjoying our time with Ragdoll Blaster 2, though it does still feel very familiar. Certainly, if you're a fan of the first title, we see no reason why you shouldn't thoroughly enjoy the new features on offer. (And if you haven't had a chance to try the first, we highly recommended it) Impressions from our readers are collecting in our discussion thread and to date seem largely positive.

App Store Link: Ragdoll Blaster 2, $2.99.

The $0.99 retro-styled game has been getting high praise in our forums for what is a relatively new game mechanic wrapped in a very nice package. The idea behind the game is somewhat similar to Upsi Looper (no longer available), but thankfully implements touch controls rather than tilt.

In Spirit you move your ship around the screen by simply tounching any part of the screen and moving around. The ship moves relative to your finger so it never has to be in the way. The goal is to destroy the enemies by looping them with your ship's trail. If successful, a vortex appears sucking them away to nothingness. Combos and chains improve your score, and all the while you need to avoid running straight into an enemy.

Check out the developer video:

Learning to move your ship accurately is a bit of a challenge, but in that "gotta try one more time" kind of way. The gameplay is also further enhanced by a great visual style and sound effects as well as a good variety of enemies. At only $0.99, if you're looking for a challenging new arcade experience, this one's easy to recommend. The current version does not have global leaderboards, but the developer has indicated Open Feint integration is on the way.

App Store Link: Spirit, $0.99

First, let's step back a moment and take a look at the overall Vector Tanks situation. Peter's original Vector Tanks appeared in the App Store, published by Chillingo, just over one year ago. It delivered a stylized iPhone take on Ed Rotberg's 1980 arcade classic Battlezone, with a large helping of modern-day retro, thanks to the lovely glowing vector effects that make the iPhone's screen feel more like an Atari Quadrascan display than a 3.5-inch LCD. It's some of the best retro gaming to be found in the App Store.

Early this year Peter parted ways with publisher Chillingo and formed his own studio, the aforementioned BlipTime Studios. In that transition, he brought Vector Tanks along — and with an update — but was unable to provide said update for free to those who purchased the Chillingo Vector Tanks release.

As Peter explains it,

…I apologize that there isn't a way to upgrade. I worked with Apple to try and establish and upgrade path for my current customers but the final answer from Apple was that once you change the account under which an app is published, it will always appear as a "new" app and upgrading is NOT possible. I sincerely apologize. I did try and I know it sort of stinks. My hope is that the reduced price will serve as a good-faith gesture to my current customers who wish to pick up this updated version of Vector Tanks.

To soften the blow of the situation to those who purchased the original, and in honor of the release of Vector Tanks Extreme, Peter is offering the latest version of the original, Vector Tanks (Classic Version) [App Store] for free for one week. Everyone reading this post should just go grab it right now.

Now that we've got all that sorted, let's move back to Vector Tanks Extreme. I had, earlier, described the original Vector Tanks as Battlezone on crack. Given that, Vector Tanks Extreme can only be described as Vector Tanks on crack — squared (and on fire, screaming while giving out wedgies). It's one of the most intensive, white-knucle shooters I've ever played on any platform. And this is true even on the easiest setting. But, when you play at the INSANE difficulty level or in the game's unlimited-lives, balls-to-the-wall, 2-minute Rage mode, it's enough to necessitate a heavy dose of beta-blockers.

The game is basically an exercise in GO GO GO, watch the map to dodge enemy fire, swing behind an obstacle for shielding, and lay down the smack as fast and as hard as you can. And if the aforementioned obstacle is slowing you down, just blow it away. Like the original, Vector Tanks Extreme is controlled by left and right thumb sliders at the edges of the screen that guide the action of your tank's tracks. It's a tap to the screen to fire your weapons, and this time around there are more to be found lying about the battlefield. Canons, rapid fire turrets, rockets, rail guns, nukes — not a very good place to get caught in the crossfire.

Notching up the intensity of the virtual battlefield carnage are the encouraging quips of your in-game crew, consisting of the voices of both Jon St. John (the voice of Duke Nukem) and Jeff Straub. When I try to capture the essence of the game experience, I keep conjuring the image of the famous, '80s Memorex advertisement. It's pretty much like that, but on an iPhone. And with glowing vectors.

Vector Tanks Extreme uses the network to track global scoring, but things should get even more interesting when Peter releases the first major update, which will enable network competitive play. I'm quite anxious for that to land, but until then, single play against the game's vicious AI is definitely keeping my hands full.

If all that gets your juices flowing, go grab Vector Tanks (Classic Version) [App Store] – for free (for a few more days) — and give it a try. And if you want to take that experience a fair piece beyond the next level, you know where to look. Vector Tanks Extreme. Can you take it?

App Store Link: Vector Tanks Extreme, $1.99

We explained the basic premise behind Rayman 2 in a preview earlier this week:

Rayman 2 is a 3D platformer released in late 1999 that takes place in a world known as the "Glade of Dreams" that happens to be infested by robot pirates who, lamentably, invaded and destroyed the "Heart of the World". Now it's up to Rayman to seek out the four magic masks needed to awaken Polokus, the spirit of the world, and set things right.

In the graphics and sound department, Rayman 2 is great. It looks just as I remembered it on the Dreamcast, and the soundtrack does a great job of setting the mood of the game. Unfortunately, once you get past how cool it is to be playing a late 90's console classic on your phone, things start to quickly fall apart.

As a 3D platformer, the two most important things are the controls and the camera system. A virtual joystick on the left side of the screen controls Rayman's movements, while a set of buttons handle jumping and tossing orbs to attack. Additional buttons appear when needed, such as a third button to dive while swimming.

The camera can be moved left or right by swiping that direction on screen, and to lock on to enemies a confusing pinching gesture is used. There are also some portions of the game with an obligatory tilt gimmick thrown in for good measure.

I feel like there are a lot of similarities between what I think about Rayman 2 and how I felt about Earthworm Jim when Gameloft brought it to the iPhone last year. The game itself looks great, but even a fantastic looking port of a game I had a lot of fun with when it was first released in the late 90's doesn't outweigh the cumbersome controls that make even the simple tutorial levels much more difficult than they should be.

I can forgive Gameloft for yet another game that doesn't really fit the iPhone with a set of virtual controls plastered on top, because Rayman 2 with bad controls is still better than not having Rayman 2 at all. As you progress through the game, you even start to get used to the crazy camera system and end up falling off ledges much less than you were originally, but something as simple as character movement really shouldn't have a learning curve attached to it.

Where Gameloft completely loses me on this port is in the save system. If you need to answer a phone call, a text message, or quit the game for any reason, the next time you load it you're back at the level select screen and need to start the level you were on over, complete with skipping through any associated cut scenes.

Taking these flaws in to account, Rayman 2 is hard to recommend, especially as your first foray in to the Rayman universe. If you are willing to invest the time in to mastering the game's irritating controls, and can work around the ridiculous save system, you will be rewarded with a classic adventure across tons of unique levels that are loaded with oodles of different hidden collectables.

App Store Link: Rayman 2: The Great Escape, $6.99