If you listen to The TouchArcade Show, you'll know that we often joke about just how silly the culture of price changes is on the App Store. Even the most obscure of holidays are fair game for entire-catalog 99¢ sales. Anyway, long story short amounts to me goofing around on Twitter mentioning how my birthday almost seems like a more relevant holiday for iOS sales than Presidents Day. I didn't really think anyone was going to do it, but it turns out there's a small number of developers observing my birth as reason to drop prices. So, if you've had your eyes on any of these games, I guess thank my parents. Oh and SlotZ Racer Caterham Special has always been free, but if you play it today, you'll get a special track. Exciting, eh? If you're looking to find more games on sale on days that aren't today, the best Read More

Rockstar is running a holiday promotion through December 29th that cuts the price of GTA III by 40% to $2.99. But, that isn’t the only deal going on, a ton of developers are running sales through the holiday inlcuding the previously reported EA-catalogue $.99 sale. Notable Deals: And the list goes on and on. Check to see if your favorite developers their apps on sale before the App Store freeze today and report your findings in the comments and we'll update the list accordingly. Looks like those iTunes gift cards stuffed in everyone’s stockings could go a long way this holiday season. Read More

Hope you had a great holiday yesterday! As expected, the App Sales are continuing through the weekend, and in addition to what we've already spotlighted, here are a few more. Whew! The App Sales will all continue through the weekend, so we'll likely have even more posts with dropped prices in them to come. Next week on Cyber Monday there will be yet another round of deals, but you can expect the sales waves to continue through the holidays until all those new iPhones and iPads get unwrapped. Stay tuned! Read More

by Rockstar, the studio behind Grand Theft Auto, has dropped another teaser video for Max Payne 3, its much-delayed, highly anticipated third-person shooter. The Max Payne series began in 2001 and quickly gained attention for its dark subject matter and noir aesthetics. The gameplay was tight and made liberal use of a slow-mo, “bullet time” effect. Max Payne 3 diverges in style from the first two games with an older-version of Max who has given up his New York lifestyle (and graphic novel appearance) to work in São Paulo, Brazil, in private security. As you can imagine, things go badly and Max is forced to fight his way through the criminal underworld. The video above is the first one in Rockstar’s new Design and Technology series, which takes a behind-the-scenes look at the mechanics of how its top tier games are made. The video explains some of the gameplay features such Read More

Dragon Fantasy is a new 8-bit adventure game for the iPhone that really brought back the memories of gaming well over a decade ago. While playing this app, I felt like I was playing on my old NES. Dragon Fantasy, is now my new favorite iPhone app. I start my adventure, greeted by a short story and and then brought back to the present where the queen’s son is about to be crowned prince. Out of nowhere, skeletons rushed in and tried attacking the guards. That’s where I come in. I confronted one of the skeletons and had four options: fight, magic, items, or run. We got into a melee battle, and after hitting the “Fight” option several times, I finally won the battle, giving me some experience and gold. On the next skeleton, I tried using Magic but failed due to having nothing in my inventory to create a magic Read More

I'm torn on spotlighting Wizardry here -- on the one hand, it's a pretty successful rendition of the old computer role-playing games made for the Apple II and other platforms. Once you figure it out, the turn-based gameplay is nicely complex and provides for some pretty fun dungeon crawling, running your party of various classes and characters through a first person 2D dungeon. The problem is that getting to that point can be a pain, and if you don't have a lot of experience with this type of game, you might be completely lost as to what you're supposed to do and how to do it. This version of Wizardry's interface is annoying at best and confusing at worst. There's little to no explanation of what your options do and roaming off into the dungeon (if you can figure out how to do that) will likely get you killed and make Read More

Role-playing games (RPGs) are a long and proud tradition. From the Final Fantasy school of turn-based battling to Roguelikes that offer random dungeon generation, the genre is varied and still going strong. Known for their depth and often packing narrative, there are plenty of offerings on iOS. Check out our picks for great adventures you can have on your morning commute! Read More

The iPhone 4S is now out and in customers' hands, and that means a flurry of App Store action as those customers fill up their new iPhones with apps to match. Developers are, of course, looking to take advantage of all of those apps sales, so here are some of the many price drops (in addition to what we saw yesterday) going on this weekend. Have at 'em! Lots of great games and apps in there, so for just a few bucks you can pick up plenty of app goodness to play with and use on your new iPhone. Read More

Dragon Fantasy is basically a love letter to the early age of console RPGs, when Dragon Warrior and Final Fantasy ruled the land. It's got classic 8-bit tile-based graphics, random encounters, silly villains and a nice chunk of content to explore and level up through. There's a nice, original soundtrack and a plucky bald-headed hero named Ogden. The one bummer, is that you're only playing with one hero -- even most console games had you building a party. But that's just nitpicking, really. Dragon Fantasy is $2.99 on the App Store right now, and if you like these old-school Nintendo-era RPGs (and know how to play them -- this one can be a little confusing if you're expecting a game with a more modern take on the genre), take a look. And there's an extra bonus here, too: the developers have a nice set of content planned out, including new story Read More

There is no shortage of fantastic retro-RPGs in the App Store at the moment, but Muteki Corporation's Dragon Fantasy [$2.99] hopes to set itself apart from the rest with tongue-in-cheek dialogue and an authentic 8-bit look and feel. The game sticks to its roots in more than just its look, the world is populated with things you've seen before like trees, mountains, plenty of grassland and monsters. But where most retro-RPGs are content to ape not only their context, but also their story and heroic mannerisms, Dragon Fantasy sidesteps the hero-journey slightly by offering a different take on the hero and his enemies. You take on the roll of Ogden, an ageing bald man with a beard who ends up resigning his post as the captain of the royal guard. Does that sound familiar? Well, before you do that, you first get transported to an old man's house after an evil Read More