I'm just another western guy with desires that I can't satisfy... Did you miss me? Yeah? While I was away? Did you hang my poster on your wall?
Er, quoting Gary Glitter lyrics probably isn't the best way to make a comeback but moving swiftly on. Gremlin Graphics, remember them? If not, you'll probably at least remember some of their games, and in fact if you owned a Commodore 64 and didn't own at least one of them, I think you had something wrong in the brainbox department.
Long story short, they were responsible for one of the most entertaining twitch-shooters of the 8 bit era. The comedic cowboy caper West Bank had nothing to do with Gaza (or Gazza for that matter) but had everything to do with quick reactions, a fast draw and a six shooter.
Step forward West Bang (see what they did there?) which is a cheeky little clone of said game, bringing the tappity-tap shooting along with a reworked graphics engine but virtually the same gameplay. It will cost you fifty nine of the queen's pence (if you're too tight to use your own) so it's worth looking at for a bit of nostalgia value.
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We could be really sneaky here and claim there's been some sort of an odd timeslip because another retro C64 (and indeed Apple II) game has slipped through the time portal and finds itself trapped within the silicon innards of your iPhone / iPod. Though there's been a revival on the Xbox Live Arcade recently, the original Lode Runner was nice and simple but horribly addictive. If you think the new version looks gayer than a pink hairdresser's poodle, then you could just plump for the iPhone version.
Cheeky bastards Arctan are charging £2.39 for this, which considering they're probably violating someone's copyright, is a bit naughty to say the least. It's a pity because it sounds like a peachy version but show them your contempt by waiting till they get their arses sued off by whoever owns the IP now, and point and laugh as the price drops to nowt.
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Lastly in this round up, big balls, big taxi shaped balls. Imagine if some lunatic spliced Crazy Taxi with Super Monkeyball creating some hideous drooling hybrid that stalked the neighbourhoods at night, snatching young virgins from their beds. Thankfully Taxiball from Self Aware Games doesn't quite do that, rather it offers a beautifully presented little puzzler with tilt action for controls and the cutest line in isometric pixel art I've seen in a game in ages. It's also got an utterly genius human beatbox soundtrack which kicks arse.
It's £1.19 and worth having a look at. And if you're tighter than a gnat's chuff, you can always go and have a look at the free version.
Alright, one more squeezed in between the heaving buttocks of this roundup like a butter enema. Graviton from Chillingo has finally hit the apps store after a long wait. Offering up Thrust II-like gameplay, which seems to be de-rigeur at the moment, it's a nice little arcade romp that doesn't exactly live up to its name (ie the first few levels seemed a bit lacking in gravity, to be honest) but for £1.19 it's one of those impulse purchases that might float your boat. I rather like it, despite wishing someone would stop mucking about and just remake Oids for the iPhone. Nicely presented and a rather delicious line in steampunk graphics if I do say so meself.
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This week's shitlist
Apart from Arctan and their disgustingly priced Lode Runner knock-off, there's not really been too much to grumble about in the iTunes store.
Killer Edge is a racing game to be avoided. It plays reasonably well but it's so ugly that it looks exactly like Susan Boyle would if someone literally boiled her in a huge pan of hot fat for ten hours solid. It's certainly not worth the asking price of £1.19. So a tip for the future, if you're going to develop a racing game on the iPhone / iPod touch, go and take a long hard look at Need for Speed / The Fast and the Furious and if your game comes nowhere near that standard, give up and take up knitting.
Second in the shitlist, it's time to start laying into word games. Alphabetic is pretty dreadful, inveigling you by pretending to be some high-falluting word challenge but actually being a letter-picking game that is so dull, the developers should've just dressed it up as some sort of insomnia-curing app. They might've sold more.
Lastly, I've been badgered by a few iPhone / iPod owning friends to dip into Theseus. Not sure why because despite having an excellent core idea (turn based "escape the monsters" style stuff) it's repetitive, dull and the AI loves to cheat its rotund little arse off. If you are the sort of person with a lot of disposable cash, who likes nothing better than to hurl expensive items of consumer electronics at the nearest brick wall, pick it up by all means because that's exactly what will happen when you've played this for ten minutes or so.
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