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. Or rather, the last fourteen days, as I missed last week due to the holiday in Japan. Well, that just means more genuinely noteworthy stuff and less “Toy Match Blast of Clans gets fifty new levels" fol-de-rol, so that’s not horrible. 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!
ANOTHER EDEN, Free Another Eden gets another update and I make this same joke another time. It’s all a cycle, isn’t it? Anyway, this update adds new story content with a new map and area. There’s a new class unlocked for Amy, and some new encounters. Toova (Another Style) and new character Elga have been added. Rounding things out are some bug fixes and adjustments to the text to correct some mistakes.
SEGA Heroes: RPG Match 3 Games, Free The biggest part of the latest update to SEGA Heroes is the arrival of Chu Chu Rocket characters to the roster, no doubt to tie in with the new game on Apple Arcade. Chuih is the first character added from the game, but three more will be coming soon. The pesky cat is now one of the boss enemies you’ll encounter, and he is very troublesome. There are some other new enemies that have nothing to do with Chu Chu Rocket. Some of the Golden Axe baddies will now be riding Chicken Legs, which is pretty neat.
Jetpack Joyride, Free Great Scott, Marty! It appears that when that lightning bolt struck the time machine, it brought us back to the tie-in we did with Jetpack Joyride during the anniversary celebration a couple of years ago! Well, this at least gives players yet another chance to get all of the goodies and limited time items like the Hoverboard and the DeLorean before we have to return once more to our own time!
Death Road to Canada, $14.99 Aw yeah, Rocketcat update. These are always pretty good. Let’s see what we have here. AI weapon locking to prevent the dumb CPU followers from dropping the sweet weapons you give them. Nice. Some new events, that’s good. A new trader with heavy ordinance, most excellent. A bunch of new weapons? Wow, they really went all out here. Wait, what’s this? Dogs now have a realistic poop system? That’s… that’s… that, my friends, is the stuff coveted UMMSotW awards are made of! Not literal dog poop, because that’s gross. But the effort to create realistic dog poop, representing the drive every human has to create something closer to the Platonic form of an object. We continue to fail, but in striving for perfection, we inch ever closer to an ideal dog poop system.
DOOM, $4.99 I think I’m always going to be up and down on this new version of DOOM. There were just so many things the Carmack port did better than this, and not little things, either. Like… the controls. Oh well, it is what it is. This new update fixes the music, which was running a little slow, and tries to fix the lighting to generally better results. I’ve heard some say they think it runs smoother? Not sure about that, personally. But if you want to believe it, it will become true from a certain point of view. The second game got the same set of updates, but no double entries for you, DOOM!
Phoenix HD, Free Every once in a while, I like to highlight an older game that gets updated with support for newer hardware and devices even if it’s not really adding anything new in terms of content. And here we are. The grand shoot-em-up Phoenix HD now has iPhone X and iPhone 11 support, along with support for iOS 13. While the fine developers were in there, they also fixed a weird bug involving Phantom. I love seeing this game continuing to live on after so many years. Keep up the good work, devs!
Marvel Contest of Champions, Free Contest of Champions continues its celebration of Marvel’s 80th anniversary with the addition of yet another new character from the archives: Vision! No, not that Vision. Not the weird Jarvis-Vision from the movies either. It’s the 1940 alien cop Vision! That’s another neat deep cut. He has lots of cool powers that are quite different from the Vision we know and love, and his design is delightfully vintage. And yes, this update also includes bug fixes and performance improvements. That is also delightfully vintage, but unlike Vision, it never goes out of style. Oh snap, burn on Aarkus.
MARVEL Strike Force: Squad RPG, Free Marvel Strike Force also got a big update recently, bringing Agent Coulson, the Invisible Woman, and Graviton to the game. Alliance War Leagues are on the way, giving you a new way to compete with other Alliances. Some characters have had their abilities adjusted and updated, and many of the game’s caps have been raised so that players pushing the edge of the content have somewhere new to go. A new low-performance option has been added so you can save a bit on your battery, and lots of bugs were fixed.
Dr. Mario World, Free I’m not sure if I’d call this a course correction or what, but Dr. Mario World certainly has a lot of changes in its latest update that are almost completely in the favor of the player. You can now continue twice in stage mode instead of once, and the Doctor’s Orders have been made a lot easier, with shorter wait times. You can check details on characters you haven’t earned yet, and you can check out your opponent’s character in versus mode. Will this help the game pick up again? No idea, but it’s nice to see Nintendo trying to address some complaints, at least.
Subway Surfers, Free The Subway Surfers are on the move again, this time heading to Singapore. Oh kids, don’t break any laws there. Things won’t go well. You get to surf the subways past skyscrapers and jungle markets, pick up orchids to earn rewards, and maybe even get your hands on the new Lion Board. The new character is Jia, and there’s a special Surf Bundle available right now that will unlock Maeko and the Retro Wave Board.
That about wraps it up for the last couple of weeks’ worth of 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!
