If you once owned an Amiga or Atari ST, you may have played Doodlebug back in the day. Now you can relive the glory days of late 1980s platformers on your iPad. Princess Lady Bug is waiting to be rescued at the end of five themed worlds, so get to it! If retro games aren’t your thing, don’t miss PAC’N-JUMP, a fresh take on Doodle Jump, and CrosslogicHD, which will give any Soduku fan a run for their money. Last but not least is 100 vs 100 HD, a real-time strategy game that gives you control of an army of stick figure fighters intent on destroying enemy castles. Glory awaits the victor!
Doodlebug ($3.99)
I spent weeks of my first college semester in a new friend’s room, hammering away on his fancy pants Amiga to make my way through Doodlebug. Now my late-teens obession is back, this time on my trusty iPad tablet. What you have here is a full 20 levels of pixelated platform goodness, lovingly wrapped into five uniquely-themed levels. Swipe up to jump, and down to attack. As you progress, you’ll meet vagabond dealers willing to sell you dragons, helicopters, and even space ships to help Doodlebug make his way to Princess Lady Bug, the object of his quest and affections. The secret sauce is Doodlebug’s magic pencils and erasers: Literally wipe out the baddies that stand in your way, then draw umbrellas, balloons, and even time freeze clocks to move ahead. Be sure to keep pencil eraser smart bombs in reserve to take out a mash of enemies with one release. It’s perfect for retro gamers and children alike, so hop on the Doodlebug bandwagon this week. You won’t be sorry.
PAC’N-JUMP ($.99)
Apparently the developers over at NAMCO love Doodle Jump just as much as the rest of us. I think that’s why they lovingly borrowed the “jump higher from ledge to ledge and grab power ups” game theme, and added a decidedly Pac-Man feel to it all. PAC’N-JUMP puts you in control of our hero, Pac-Man, who’s become tired of mazes and just wants to jump. Leap between stationary and moving platforms, grabbing power-ups to eat his arch nemesis ghosts, and gobble fruit to get a blast of vertical life. My favorite part? When the platforms give way to fields of munchable dots, which have the same effect. Throw in the usual raft of Pavlovian sound effects and the Pac-Man musical score, and you’ve got yourself a sure-fire, million-dollar app. Crazy fun for the whole family straight from the App Store’s dollar menu.
CrosslogicHD ($0.99)
Picross fans, it’s time for a new addiction. More than 1,000 nonograms are waiting to be solved. Here’s the gist: You’re presented with a grid of open spaces, and numbers splayed across the top and left side. Your task is to figure out how the numbers apply to the empty boxes. So, if you see 1-2-3 there would be one box, then some space, two boxes, more space, then three boxes. To select a box to fill in, just tap it with your finger. As you uncover correct boxes, a picture emerges. After five “miss” alerts when you guess wrong, it’s game over. If you get stuck click for a hint, but watch time fall off the clock on the later levels as a result. There’s a total of 1,768 puzzles to keep you busy, and you’ll need a mountain of time to solve them all. A must for Soduku fans who will find this a natural extension of their number placement skills.
100 vs 100 HD ($0.99)
It takes the average person less than five minutes to eat a dollar menu hamburger. 100 vs 100 HD is a similar lunchtime treat, easy on the eyes, stomach, and wallet. Your mission, as lord of the castle, is to fend off attacks from stick figure raiders. You can generate warriors of your own and send them off across the field to take down your enemy’s castle. You also have access to special attacks (think tornadoes on command) which can cover a wider area and take down larger groups of enemies. One part tower defense, and another part strategy, 100 vs 100 will keep you fighting for the home castle for a few hours at least. And at roughly 10 times cheaper than a movie ticket, that’s not a bad thing.
