Hello everyone, and welcome to the week! It’s time once again for our look back at the noteworthy updates of the last seven days. This was a really exciting week for 64-bit updates, with games like Final Fantasy Tactics, Aralon: Sword and Shadow, Baldur’s Gate 2, and Lunar all getting much-needed jolts of life among many others. Besides those, there were also some very nice updates along the regular, content-granting lines. I’ve picked some of the best to feature here. Of course, you can keep an eye out for updates yourself using AppShopper or by participating in the TouchArcade forums. This weekly summary is here to fill in the things you might have missed. Let’s dig in!
Typeshift, Free CONTENT FOR THE CONTENT GODS! Er, that’s just my friendly way of saying that TypeShift has received its monthly update of new packs to play. This time, there’s one free clue puzzle pack courtesy of a fan, along with five paid packs. Two of those are clue puzzles, and three of them are standard puzzles, so whichever kind you like, you’re covered. This update also reduces the frequency of ad and fixes a few bugs. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to find a Scrabble board to sacrifice.
The Revenge of Shinobi Classic, Free All of the SEGA Forever Genesis games got an update to their emulators this last week. I just picked The Revenge of Shinobi because we haven’t written much about it so far. I don’t think it’s an especially great game to play with touch controls because it’s a pretty challenging one that makes use of all of the buttons, but if you have a controller this is a real classic. Oh, the new emulator is a little better in most ways, but the sound is still a little weird and heaven help you if you’re downloading anything in the background. That’s all!
World of Tanks Blitzâ„¢, Free I haven’t seen a community turn on a game as hard as the fanbase has on World of Tanks Blitz in quite a long time. I’m not sure what Wargaming can do about it aside from rolling back to how things were several updates ago, and that’s not going to happen. Oh well. This update adds a new French vehicle, the Bat.-Chatillon 25 t, and a new French map based on the Nazi-built Atlantic Wall in Normandy. They’ve also made some tweaks to certain tanks to give them a little more kick. I wonder if they’ll have a tank parked outside of the venue again this year at Tokyo Game Show?
Dashy Crashy, Free With the Outrunner carved into the history books, Dashy Crashy moves on to its next weekly event honoring arcade racing legends. This time the car is the Tofu Drifter XR, which is of course an homage to the Toyota Sprinter Trueno AE86 from the Initial D series of racing manga. I’m not sure if the games based on Initial D have made it that far outside of Japan, but they’re pretty much the most popular arcade racers here and have been for quite some time. As before, you’ll have to use the car an awful lot before the deadline is up if you want to keep it. That deadline is… Thursday. Well, ganbatte everyone!
Rayman Adventures, Free Poor old Rayman. After playing second banana to the Rabbids during most of the last generation, it looked like he was finally making a little turn-around on the backs of a few great platformers for consoles and mobile. Then he gets snubbed by Smash Brothers and has to suffer the indignity of those Rabbids palling it up with Mario and co. in one of the best strategy games in years. Meanwhile, what’s he got going on? A silly pirate event in his free-to-play auto-runner game. Awesome. To be honest, the only reason I’m even writing about this is that I’m hoping Rayman can get me Rabbid Peach’s autograph. He’s probably not considered important enough to talk to her, though.
Noblemen: 1896, Free Okay, so I made a typo when I was writing this up initially, and now I really want to see Noblemen: 1986. Instead of soldiers and battlefields, it could be John Hughes characters and shopping malls or something. I don’t know. You can have that idea for free, Foursaken. As for this game, this update adds a new free daily crate type, adjusts damage to enemy HQ bombardment in later levels to prevent one-hit kills, and increases the amount of silver earned through various means. In general, you get better rewards. This update also fixes some bugs, does some balance adjustments, and changes some of the crate prices. The initial response to this game seemed to be on the side of it not being generous enough to the player, so I’d guess this update is addressing that for the most part.
Doodle Jump, $0.99 Uh, yes, it’s a Doodle Jump update. I guess they thought it would be fun to do a special theme built around retro-style graphics, so here we are. Apparently this is meant to look like Commodore 64 or ZX Spectrum visuals, but I’m not sure it’s really hitting either all that successfully. But hey, a bunch of retro homages in a new level. I can neither complain about that nor hand out a coveted trophy for it. This update also applies to the HD version, which I am not linking because it is not in the spirit of celebrating retro games.
MARVEL Future Fight, Free Marvel mutants. Open the door a crack and you’ll soon have a whole mansion full of them. Honestly, can’t some of you hooligans go bother Capcom? No? Fine. Marvel Future Fight is rocking an Apocalypse event right now, and the new characters include Quicksilver (apparently not a mutant anymore?), Scarlet Witch (also not a mutant I guess?), Cable (okay he’s a mutant for sure), and Apocalypse (definitely a mutant, also kind of a dork). You also get Apocalypse Event World Bosses to fight, and spiffy new Age of Apocalypse-inspired costumes for Cyke, Logan, Hank, and Rogue. Sadly, none of these characters are Spider-Man or even Spider-Man adjacent. Well, yes, Young Cyclops is in the Champions with Miles, but that’s really tenuous, don’t you think? Either way, no coveted award here either.
Warlock of Firetop Mountain, $7.99 Oh ho ho, some expansion packs for Warlock? Yes, please. The Goblin Scourge adds three new heroes, each with their own new quests, and one new location in the mountain. Meanwhile, the Goblin Gauntlet pack holds six playable monsters and a special streamlined version of the mountain that features permadeath and tons of souls. These are some great new ways to enjoy the game, and since goblins and spiders seem to go hand in hand, I think we’ve finally got a winner for this week’s coveted UMMSMotW award! Congrats, Tin Man!
That about wraps it up for last week’s significant updates. I’m sure I’ve missed some, though, so please feel free to comment below and let everyone know if you think something should be mentioned. As usual, major updates will likely get their own news stories throughout this week, and I’ll be back next Monday to summarize and fill in the blanks. Have a great week!
