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. We’ve got a few games in here that we don’t include all that often, so I hope it has a refreshing lemon-lime flavor that will help you get your week started properly. Of course, you can keep an eye out for updates yourself using AppShopper or by participating in the TouchArcade forums. This weekly summary is just here to fill you in on the things you might have missed. Let’s go for it!
Jetpack Joyride, Free Set phasers to… sigh… set phasers to fun in this new update for Jetpack Joyride. So hey, we’ve actually got a completely new event here. It’s based on Star Trek, which I suppose is as good a license to pull in as any. Waiting here for my Rocketeer event, though. There are fan favorite characters from various series available, a new Starfleet mech (Starfleet has a mech?), and a Starship jetpack. Those are all event rewards. On top of that, there’s a Phaser jetpack, a Borg Cube jetpack, four new vehicle skins plus a new SAM, and four new backgrounds you can keep forever. And yes, getting your hands on most of this will involve opening your wallet. That’s the business now.
PicoPico - 8bit Retro Games, Free A new update for PicoPico usually means new games, and it’s no different this time. Five new Famicom titles make the scene, and while they’re not the most famous of titles any expansion to a library like this is welcome. Data East’s Golf Club: Birdie Rush, Great Monster Debrass, Little Magic, and Soccer League: Winners Cup have been added, along with Compile and Tokuma Shoten’s Gorby no Pipeline Daisakusen. Well, sort of. It’s had Mikhail Gorbachev’s image and name scrubbed from it, in places very clumsily. Kind of amusing. There are a few other tweaks here, including a schedule that shows you which games are free to play on which days. Note that the games are generally still in Japanese, so some of them can be a bit tough to play if you can’t understand the language.
TSM Game, Free It’s wild how EA keeps on juggling two free-to-play Sims apps on the App Store but couldn’t even keep one awesome Mirror’s Edge game up. Oh well. The new update for this one mostly involves the winter season, with the Winter Wonderland Treasure Hunt sitting in the middle of it all. Some cool new winter decorations are available. The other event is the Charming Crafts Sweet Treat Showdown, where you can earn an odd collection of items including a vintage mannequin, a rocking chair for knitting in, and a sewing table. Alrighty.
Real Racing 3, Free New car time, everyone. It’s the McLaren 765LT, and it’s pretty darned fast. You’ll have to be faster if you want to add it to your collection, as you’ll need to come out on top in a new event. If you can’t get that one, you can try your hand at earning the Lamborghini Essenza SCV12, a rare and stylish hypercar. The Formula 1 season wraps up with two more Grand Prix events, a couple of other Lamborghini-themed events, and some new series that you can unlock by fully upgrading the Aston Martin Valkyrie and the Chevy Corvette C6.R GT2. Lots to do, but can you clear any of it and claim the prizes? Good luck.
PUBG MOBILE, Free It’s been a bit since the last update for PUBG Mobile, with its cool Metro cross-over event adding a cool new flavor to the familiar action. This new version is going in a very different direction, going into the realm of fantasy. It describes it as Runic Power, and it allows you to make use of special runes to activate amazing powers. There’s also another chapter of Metro Royale on the horizon, and this update sets up some of the pieces for that. Indeed, there’s quite a bit in this update that won’t be seen for a little while, so it seems like PUBG Mobile players can look forward to quite a bit of cool new stuff in the weeks ahead.
Rules of Survival, Free We may as well check on another reasonably popular game in the genre and see what Rules of Survival is up to. The answer is: not that much this time. The biggest new addition is the Weapon Archives, which allows you to view and compare various weapons. To go with that, weapon proficiency and proficiency rankings have been added to the game, with players who attain a particularly high proficiency earning a limited-time title of Gun King. Honestly, that sounds less like royalty and more like a seedy gun shop in the bad part of town, but okay. Some bug fixes round things out here, as they do.
TEPPEN, Free Version 3.0.0, eh? That’s a big, round number. So what does it mean for the card battler Teppen? Apparently a new Sengoku Basara-themed card set, The Battle of Amatsu no Kuni, plus the new hero Oichi. She’s Nobunaga Oda’s little sister, so uh… be nice. You don’t want that guy after you. Some UI elements have been adjusted to make the experience easier for everyone, and a new Ranked Match is planned. And that appears to be the lot of it, making for a rather low-key update given the big version number assigned to it. Well, I guess that’s how things go sometimes.
ANOTHER EDEN, Free Another fairly routine update for the excellent Another Eden, but I suppose new content is new content. And in this case, that new content is a new character named Yukino, who arrives with a new Fateful Encounter. There’s also a new achievement that gives you a Holy Prayer as a reward for clearing Chapter 10 of the main story. You’ll receive the achievement even if you already finished that chapter before this update hit, so don’t worry if you’re ahead of the game. You will not be punished for your dedication. You will, however, be punished for your frankly shocking lack of pants. Look, I know no one is around, but have a little dignity.
Gardenscapes, Free Valentine’s Day is coming in a few weeks, and I guess that’s where Gardenscapes is heading with its latest update. Romantic Season kicks off at the end of the month, and you can get all of the season’s rewards with the Golden Ticket. Yes, even the free-to-play puzzle games are selling season passes now. Anyway, the idea is to create a nice romantic mood in the garden to set up a perfect date. There’s another event called Flaming Hearts where you get rewards for attaining certain achievements, and a barbecue contest that will somehow bring you one step closer to figuring out what happened with Calvadori. Top-tier drama, no doubt.
The Battle Cats, Free The Battle Cats is a weird and fun game about various cats engaging in battles, perhaps showing the futility of war. At the very least, the futility of war among long cats. At any rate, a new collaboration event is starting in the game today. Well, not totally new. It’s the return of the Street Fighter V: Championship Edition event, giving you the chance to play with Sagat, Vega, Balrog, M. Bison, and E.Honda. There are some new things in this event, so it’s not exactly the same as the previous one. Give it a look and see what’s what. For combining bizarre cats and the Street Fighter characters, I’ll give this the coveted UMMSotW award for this week.
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!
