MAME for iPhone & iOS

Apple is bound to take this one off the App Store sooner or later, meaning that you really have to hurry. Visit the App Store as soon as possible and download the free iOS version of the venerable MAME arcade emulator. It's brilliant, comes bundled with an eclectic selection of classics and, well, just hurry. 

Winter Walk - a Festive Freebie

As far as seasonal games go, well, Winter Walk is definitely the festivest of them all. And an incredibly stylish, humorous and simple to play offering too. Grab it now for your iOS thingy or Android contraption; it is gloriously free and one of the preciously few games that require you to hold on to your hat.

More Text Adventures for the Road

Following the post on interactive fiction player Twisty for Android, Kristian Still and Stadtgorilla let me know of more text adventure related goodies and, well, I thought I really should pass those tips on to you lovely readers. There's two of them, you know. No, wait, there's three!

So, better start off with the new interactive fiction interpreter: Hunky Punk. It is apparently and according to Stadtgorilla more stable than Twisty, supports covers and metadata, likes connecting itself to the IFDB and is obviously free to grab. It also is available on the Android Market.

Following this, both Android and iOS gamers should grab the freeware and pretty excellent The Things That Go Bump In The Night. It's a polished text adventure by Tim Hamilton that sports a fantastic and pretty intuitive touch-based interface, auto-saves, a choice of fonts and a particularly engrossing plot. And it's not too difficult either. Download it via the App Store or the Android Market.

Finally and as The Things That Go Bump In The Night has been created with it, I simply have to point the more creative among us towards the pretty amazing Quest. It is, after all, an excellent and happily free to grab interactive fiction authoring tool that impressively also let's you publish on Android and iPhone! Think I might actually be using it very soon. 

Twisty Android Interactive Fiction

Text adventures and interactive fiction, despite what everyone else might tell you, will never die. Not as long as people care for stories and enjoy playing around with text. Not as long as Infocom, Level 9 and Magnetic Scrolls are remembered and definitely not as long as the vibrant, modern interactive fiction community keeps creating dozens of excellent new games.

What's more, you can enjoy the world of text adventuring on your Android phone too with the help of the brilliant Twisty app. It is absolutely free, comes bundled with one of the best horror adventures I've ever played and supports everything from Infocom's classics to modern day freebies. Get it over at the Android Market. 

Sonic CD: the iOS revival

Sonic CD, a Sonic game originally released for the Sega CD / Sega Mega CD back in 1993, was much more than just a brilliant game. It was one of the best Sonic offerings ever, a properly huge platformer and a game that really showed off what the storage space of CD-ROM could be used for: top graphics, tons of levels, lovely animated sequences and a fantastic soundtrack. It was, in a nutshell, a game that promised a new era and an oddly overlooked (compared to other Sonic games, that is) classic.

And now for the good news. Sonic CD has been ported to iOS in a most excellent version. You can grab it over at the App Store and enjoy a brilliant, innovatively designed and frantic game complete with a ton of extras, multiple soundtrack options, achievements and more. Oh, and according to this most informative Sonic CD review by Toucharcade the quality of the emulation is simply unbelievable.  

Grand Theft Auto 3 (iOS)

Grand Theft Auto 3, a true modern PC gaming classic, has just been released for the iOS platform, meaning that iPod Touch, iPhone and iPad gamers will finally be able to shoot and drive their way around Liberty City, while listening to some truly brilliant (virtual) radio stations. GTA 3 for the iOS sports updated HD graphics with new 3D models, custom controls and all the gameplay and locations of the original. 

You can buy Grand Theft Auto 3 over at the App Store for a very reasonable $4.99. 

ScummVM Android

ScummVM is the ultimate retro adventure gaming tool. Things are really that simple. It's an excellent piece of software that easily, freely and intuitively let's you play the vast majority of classic graphic adventures, by supporting all Lucasarts releases (from Maniac Mansion and Monkey Island all the way to Full Throttle and The Dig), most Sierra games and a huge variety of offerings by other major developers; it even supports quite a few modern, indie AGS-crafted releases.

Happily, you can now enjoy the retro brilliance of ScummVM on your Android phone. It costs absolutely nothing, played everything I tried on it perfectly and can be downloaded from the Android Market.

Spy Mouse free for a day!

I've already provided you luvs with a Spy Mouse review and now I'm in the happy position of letting you know that you can grab this excellent offering for free over at the App Store. Better hurry though; the offer will only last for a day.

Evertales iOS for free

Time for another freebie for the iOS crowd it seems. Time for you to grab the pretty impressive Evertales. It will run on anything from the 3GS to the iPad 2 and 4S and will let you enjoy an excellent and very arcade-y mix of platforming and fighting in a fantasy world. What's more, Evertales comes with three playable heroes, dozens of weapons, a particularly weird plot, impressive bosses, lovely graphics and a ton of other features. Its one drawback? It's pretty short, it is. 

Air Penguin for free (Android)

Air Penguin, one of the more successful iOS games, has not only been ported to Android, but has apparently become a free app in the process, which is quite lovely. The game is after all an excellent arcade offering with lovely graphics, good graphics and some truly responsive tilt controls. You can grab it over at the Android Market. 

Tiger Arcade: the Android arcade Emulator

The Tiger Arcade itself is reason enough to actually own an Android phone. It is an amazing arcade emulator that lets you play over 500 classic games from three different platforms (CPS1, CPS2 and Neo Geo). It features incredibly decent touch controls and save states and is happily available for free. You can download it from SlideMe.

12 Indie Apps for Christmas

Bundles, they are all the rage these days, aren't they? Indie bundles especially, but when it comes to the iOS, bundling stuff can be pretty tricky to achieve, what with those App Store restrictions and all. And that's why we don't exactly get bundles, but lovely initiatives like the 12 Indie Apps for Christmas. 12 independent game developers have each pledged 25% of the sales of their 12 indie games for the entire month of December to Child's Play or Doctors Without Borders.

The 12 games are Galcon Labs, Christmas Air Hockey, Sword of Fargoal, Harbor Master, Velocispider, Disc Drivin', Tilt to Live, Full Deck Word Games, Red Nova, Trainyard, iBlast Moki and Smiles HD. Not bad, eh?

Icarus-X free on iOS

Icarus-X is one of the better iOS shmups around and, should you hurry, a most excellent freebie. Just click yourselves over to the App Store and grab the iPhone/iPad version of the game free of charge. Better do so within the next 24 hours too. As for the game itself, well, it is a vertically scrolling sci-fi themed shoot-'em-up with great graphics and surprisingly decent controls. Definitely worth your time.

Angband for Wiz

Care for a rogue-like RPG on the go? Would you rather have it for free? For your Wiz too? Excellent, go grab Angband then.