Whoa, hey, Capcom Mobile is on a roll. After releasing a pretty hefty and free content update to Street Fighter 4: Volt this morning, the publisher has released two new (old) games on the App Store. Starting now, you can re-live some of your old coin-op beat-em-up memories with Final Fight iOS [$.99]. Or, if classic Street Fighter is more your thing, you can also check out three different versions of Street Fighter 2 in Street Fighter 2 Collection [$3.99].

Final Fight, as you’ve probably noticed, is carrying a promotional $.99 price tag, which strikes us as pretty appropriate considering you’ve probably purchased this game in some shape or form a billion times already. This specific version, however, does roll in virtual controls and a finishing move button. Also, if you’ve got pals with phones, you can connect with one via Bluetooth for co-op action. And before you ask: dibs on Haggar.

In bummer news, Street Fighter II Collection is also shackled by Bluetooth. In much brighter news, it’s a heck of a package for fans of the series -- it rolls in the original game, Street Fighter II: Championship Edition, and Street Fighter II: Hyper Fighting all in one app. They all appear to be relatively untouched content-wise, but like with Final Fight the notable iOS tweak is an “easy-to-use one button finishing move.”

One note: both games require iOS 4.1 (or better) and don’t support a lot of older devices. Check the game notes before you go nuts.

Hey, more sales! We’re not too sure if SEGA is celebrating Labor Day with its Sonic the Hedgehog sale or just cutting the price because it can, but it doesn’t matter. At the end of the day, the games are a hair or two cheaper for a limited time, which means you can walk away with a heavier wallet if this is the first time you’ve bothered looking at the games. And, really, at these prices you should.

Here’s the short list, and just in case anything else comes up, we’ll update accordingly:

• Sonic the Hedgehog - $4.99 → $3.99
• Sonic the Hedgehog 2 - $4.99 → $3.99
• Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode I - $6.99 → $4.99

Sonic fans give Sonic the Hedgehog 4 a lot of grief — if you’ve ever read the Internet or Googled the game's name, you probably already know this. This is why I feel like I need to add that we loved it and think it feels exactly how Sonic should on the iPhone and iPod Touch. Check it out.

Just last week we brought you the news that several employees of the now-shuttered Bizarre Creations had formed a new studio, Hogrocket, with a new iOS property hitting the App Store in September. Well time flies, September is here and so is that title, which we're now at liberty to discuss. It's called Tiny Invaders [$3.99] and it's a quest to take over humanity -- from the inside out.

In Tiny Invaders you control microscopic aliens who are here to dominate the human race. To take on such a gargantuan task they delve into the bloodstream of the first person they find, a hick stereotype that just so happens to be in the path of their crash landing. Once inside his body they race through his bloodstream, collecting his white blood cells (or so I assume his "human orbs" to be) and infecting him piece by piece. (more...)

Fuzzy Professor Head’s Puppysaurus [$3.99] isn’t the Pokemon clone that we expected it would be when our all-seeing eye initially caught it earlier this summer. Inarguably, it cribs a lot from Game Freak’s overly formulaic and mega popular franchise, but it also packs a few important twists -- namely within the barrier of entry -- that gives it some measure of distance. Because of the anticipation surrounding it we thought it would be wise to go ahead and give you a run-down and, sadly, tell you why it isn't for you.

The short version is that it's Baby’s First Pokemon, a very rudimentary take on the series with spectacularly base mechanics and systems seemingly designed for kids. The long version is that it takes just about everything important to Pokemon -- the world navigation, the battle system, the training, and the catching of beasts -- and simplifies it to a point where it’s hard to stomach as a grown-butt dude, but might end up being perfect for little ones looking for a light sort of RPG immersion. (more...)

Firemint sales used to be a much more rare occurrence, but they still have an electricity to them that other creators can’t capture with their own price-slashing parties. I’m guessing it has more to do with the quality of the wares, than it does with dramatic price shifts. While I pointlessly ponder this, go ahead and grab Real Racing and Real Racing 2 for the iPhone or iPad. All four games have been dramatically reduced in price for this weekend in celebration of… well, nothing that we can discern. Still! They’re cheaper!

• Real Racing - $4.99 → $.99
• Real Racing HD - $6.99 → $3.99
• Real Racing 2 - $6.99 → $2.99
• Real Racing 2 HD - $9.99 → $4.99

Real Racing 2 is, we reckon, the best racing game Firemint has produced. That doesn’t mean the original Real Racing is a slouch, though. Fans of simulation racing games can and will enjoy both; it’s just that Real Racing 2 is a fantastic iteration on that original foundation. If you want to know way more about either of these titles, we’ve got your back. You can check out a review of the follow-up here and a review of Real Racing here. Non-spoiler: they’re good.

Spellsquares [$1.99 / HD], an atmospheric word puzzle game from Benthic Games, hit the App Store with its iPad version back in June. We missed out on it then, but we picked the game up on its iPhone release this month. It's right at home on the small screen, maintaining an enchanting mix of exploration and challenging puzzles.

In Spellsquares' story mode, you find yourself wandering a castle with a mystery to solve. A mysterious stranger has left notes to guide you on your way (kind of him, since you're out to foil his nefarious plan). Each door, treasure and point of interest is blocked with a word puzzle that you'll need to solve. The puzzles are crafted like Sudoku for words. A square grid is laid out with a few letters already in place. A pool of available letters sits to the side. Your job is to use those letters to make words in every row and column at once -- easy puzzles require three-letter words and the hardest require five. Solving them takes a little bit of logic and a touch of vocabulary. Once you factor in hints, you'll also need a dash of strategy.

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With adventure games seeing a serious revival on iOS, it should come as no surprise the ports keep on coming. Case in point, Beeworks Games took to bringing over Success' Touch Detective [Free] from the Nintendo DS, a five-year-old game that never saw massive sales on its initial release, but is given new life on iOS. The game got lukewarm reviews when initially released, but an innovative release methodology on iOS helps break it apart from the rest of the pack.

With each of the game's four chapters you'll be taking on the role of Mackenzie, a fledgling detective who has just received her first case. In the demo chapter, you'll need to solve the mystery of stolen dreams, and in later chapters you'll solve a disappearance, an assault and help a stranded person. There are also a series of side missions and a bonus escape the room mini-game.

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I think I fell in love with Mega Mall Story [$3.99] the second I activated, inadvertently, a “frenzy” that showered my six-story mall with pieces of confetti. A dude walked in, rode my brand new elevator up to the third floor, strolled into the super market, and purchased $10,000 worth of organic goods. Hearts popped up over his head a little later, which gave me enough points to research the bookstore I had my eye on. With his cash (and others) in-hand, I built it and decided to put the rest towards a community project that would bring in even more customers.

Moments like these happen once every five-to-ten minutes in Kairosoft’s latest simulation, which puts you in the shoes of a bustling mall’s planner, a mall's coordinator, a mall's CEO, and a close-proximity real estate tycoon. The last conceit is the most compelling one: few tower games give you control over more than the tower itself. Being able to raise up a community by purchasing house, parks, parking lots, and more gives you a unique stake in the outside world. It makes you feel like the universe is your baby, not just the mall.

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Just last week, we were filling your juicy brains with the knowledge that Kairosoft, the preeminent developer of cutesy mobile simulation titles including the highly lauded Game Dev Story [$3.99/Lite], was getting ready to release their latest title on US soil. We were fairly certain that his next title would be Mega Mall Story, as we spotted a banner for the game on their official website. And in fact, as of right now, our suspicions have been confirmed, as Mega Mall Story [$3.99] is now readily available in the US App Store.

Gameplay appears somewhat similar to the popular Tiny Tower [Free] where you are tasked with populating a fledgling mall building with various stores, staffing them up with qualified employees, and creating a successful and profitable mega complex of commerce where everybody wants to go to shop.

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Just so we're all on the same page from the start, Bravo Game Studios' Xtreme Wheels [$3.99] is whole heck of a lot like RedLynx's Trials series. Actually, it's almost identical, but while many have tried to bring the painfully difficult motocross physics-puzzle-style to iOS, Xtreme Wheels is probably the closest to getting it right.

If you've played Trials, you'll know what to expect from Xtreme Wheels and it gets the job done confidently enough. If you haven't, Xtreme Wheels is a physics based motrocross game that requires you to traverse an environment and get from one point of the map to the other by accelerating and leaning your character and bike in the correct directions to get through a series of obstacles.

That all sounds simple enough, but the joy (or rage) of Xtreme Wheels is in the fact you have to finesse your way up and over exploding barrels, ninety-degree walls and across tiny platforms. Like its pedigree, this isn't a game for the faint of heart and while the first few levels are far too easy, the last ten are truly a pain to get through.

The goal of each track is to get through it alive once, then to head back and improve your time. You'll receive medal awards based on your time and the number of crashes. Usually, you'd spend your time beating friend's scores on the leaderboards, but right now the Game Center boards are pretty screwed up, with the top times listed as zero. For this type of game, fixing this needs to be on the top of Bravo's to-do list.

You'll have four different control schemes at your disposal, two styles of analog sliders, a digital pad and tilt controls. For the most part, the analog slider is going to be the go-to for Trials fans, but newcomers might find the other controls more to their liking.

Whichever control scheme you chose, you'll be rolling with it over the course of 25 levels in five themed areas. Again, if you played Trials, you know what to expect here -- the level progression, although a bit slow at first, ramps up considerably and awkwardly at the mid-point (like Trials, actually). If you haven't played a game like this before, you're going to run into some serious trouble early on because the game doesn't do a particularly good job of teaching you how to play it. Simple things like bunny-hops are going to frustrate newcomers pretty quickly and even old hands will have a little trouble getting the hang of them with the control schemes.

That actually brings up one of the problems with Xtreme Wheels, the physics are a little loose compared to the responsiveness of the controls and since the level design facilitates some ridiculous situations, the physics don't always respond as you'd expect. It's only jarring because the controls are so reactive, your character will lean and move exactly as you'd anticipate, but the bike doesn't always respond. Then again, that might simply be the sixty-plus hours I've poured into Trials HD tainting my view a little.

One of the other major problems comes in the form of framerate hiccups. Both on a 3GS and an original iPad the game has serious slowdown after explosions and in some of the more complex areas. This isn't a good thing in this type of game and it's almost impossible to recover from. There are a ton of checkpoints throughout each level to keep this from being too aggravating, but for those looking to go gold on every level it'll only make the game even harder. The same goes for your inevitable fail animations, which seem to drag on as the system stutters.

From early screenshots, the game looked like it was going to be a real stunner. The environments hold up to the screenshots and look great, but the animation on the rider is a little stiff. This only matters because your rider's position is key to getting through tougher parts and it's occasionally a little difficult to figure out exactly where he's positioned. Of course, I'd have preferred a steady framerate over fancy visuals any day, so we'll see if they can scale the graphics down to add some smoothness in the future.

Despite those flaws, the game is a faithful rendition of a Trials-style game, but it would have been nice to see a little more innovation in the environmental art or at least more of its own style instead of a nearly direct clone of Trials. Even still, if they can get the framerate up, it'll be one of the better renditions on the App Store, even if it's lacking it's own constitution.

Ronimo Games’ Swords & Soldiers [$2.99 / HD] is a stripped-down, side-scrolling RTS that offers a decent amount of creative situational content inside a shell that otherwise doesn’t torture standard genre tropes. The gorgeous visual direction and whimsical writing emits an unusual, but comfortable warmth. Most levels boast sharp, sometimes dramatic change-of-pace mechanics or objectives with different factions. And there’s several different types, and modes, of play mixed into and out-of its feature-complete and content-rich campaign. Yet, at its core, this is still a game that revolves around troop spam just like all the others -- it's this other stuff that makes it a unique offering.

Sword & Soldiers first appeared on downloadable console platforms in 2009 and later on PC and Mac. Nothing I’ve noticed has been added since those respective debuts aside from the touch implementation found in this specific version, which is smooth to the point that it feels natural, as if this was the lead platform.

There are three goofy, well-animated factions: the Vikings, the Aztecs, and the Chinese. The campaign mode boasts three separate mini-campaigns using each where you’ll see the qualities that separate each faction from the other. The Aztecs boast mechanics that revolve around death. The Vikings, on the other hand, heal with spells and use defensive structures, while the Chinese can conjure statues that bolster spell casting. The mini-campaigns' weaves are a part of the whole tapestry and they spin into each other after a few missions. These plot points are as satisfactorily offbeat as the overall aesthetic.

To the game’s credit, it often leverages the unique abilities of each faction in missions, but the moment-to-moment action revolves around “troop spam” tak. It counts on it, in fact, because the game, at its core, is about management: can you manage building gold miners while also babysitting an upgrade tree and spitting out troops? That's the typical question it asks throughout the campaign, which does, despite being somewhat mechanically dull with its defend-the-castle missions, hold up over the haul.

Part of what makes Sword & Soldiers satisfying is that you don’t have to budget build orders, consider micro-details, or give much of consideration to strategies. You build and fight with a small number of troops in manageable streams, while complimenting your troop attacks with muddle, attack, or defensive-minded spells. This is RTS stripped to its core, and for what it's worth, it's a nice, easy-going approach that I enjoy. You're afforded time to zone out and simply enjoy the experience.

The game has a tendency to break down in some specific instances. When the AI decides to toss out globs of enemies to attack your streams of individual troops, there's not much you can do about that other than buckle down and hope you've picked the right troops in your streams, else they'll be knocking at your door soon. Also, some of the missions in the campaign mixes the action up by giving you simple defend objectives, no gold supply, or limited resources to work with. In some of these missions, it's obvious the designers want you to use a specific tool, and if you don't, you'll lose fast and hard annoyingly.

There is no online multiplayer, but it does offers a horizontal local two-player mode. I don’t have a pal that would be interested in giving this a go with me, but just in general testing I’ve noticed that, like in the campaign, mass and smart spell usage are the keys to success.

Sword & Soldiers might be shackled to side-scrolling RTS convention, but it’s smart and vibrant where it counts. The HD version in particular is the best, as the extra screen space goes a long way in bringing the game to life in a comfortable and manageable way. If you're in the mood for a full-featured title, this wouldn't be a bad one to scoop up. I dig it, at least.

Note: Although Chillingo is currently advertising Swords & Soldiers with us, advertising has no effect on coverage or review outcomes. For more information, take a look at our advertising and editorial policies.

Kairosoft’s Pocket Academy [$3.99 / Lite] takes the best and worst elements of its prior releases, Game Dev Story [$1.99 / Lite] and Hot Springs Story [$3.99 / Lite], blends them together, and then applies them to a school environment. It’s not remarkable on the surface. It has the same cutesy art direction used in these prior games. It also re-hashes a lot of mechanics, continues to shroud a lot of its crucial foundational and tycoon elements in mystery, and it controls like crap. But it does still deliver in the form of the studio’s should-be patented carrot-on-the-stick design approach and fleshes out a crucial, but oft-forgotten, driver in all simulation games: the people.

Provided the gun to my head wasn’t real, I’d argue until the moment the trigger is pulled that Pocket Academy isn’t as much of a school simulation as it is a over-the-top student simulation game because, at the end of the day, this game isn’t about how pretty your school is or about how many trees you’ve planted. It’s about what your kids are learning and how well they can prove that your system, either totalitarian or social-focused, works.

On the top end, this game puts you in the shoes of an administrator planning out the next greatest thing in education. You’re in charge of building classrooms, researching new facilities like restrooms, libraries, and nurses’ offices, and creating statistical bonus zones with bonus-laden objects like shrubbery, trees, or even rocks. Chaos is frowned upon, as the careful planner who puts like buildings together can string together dramatic bonuses to student-side factors like learning and school spirit.

This is where the one real rub rears its head: Pocket Academy isn’t good at telling you what is “good” versus “bad.” It hides a lot of bonuses and mechanics from viewing. The only solid way to find out what works well with something else is via experimentation, which is a costly and horribly slow, pace-chewing endeavor. Even buildings and research subjects have terrible descriptions that can lead to hair-pulling strategic misfires.

Like Game Dev Story understood, to some extent, the development process and let you lead it, Pocket Academy allows you to do the same with a school. The end product is a well-learned student body, and you get several years to turn kids’ mush into iron. Ample classrooms and activities are a necessity to do this, as well as teachers. Students come in once a year or through transfer if your school is attractive enough. Teachers, on the other hand, need to be hired and then leveled up. Satisfactorily, you are put in charge of what statistics receive boosts upon leveling up, which lets you mold a curriculum that feels... well, you. It's pretty redeeming building something in your own image.

Science, math, English, Spanish, and history are the subjects each student can learn. As they sit in classrooms, they’ll automatically receive points in these areas. As they roam and participate in other facilities, they’ll earn additional points that you can then, in turn, spend in classrooms to boost their core attributes or apply to research. This is the push and pull: do you spend these points in order to get more areas for interaction, or do you spend them to educate the students more?

I usually go with the latter since it’s the real meat of the game. In order to attract more kids, you need to compete in challenges based on those core subjects. The higher the IQ, the likelier they are to pass the challenge. Also, schools as a whole are rated and a lot of funding, as well as those ratings, depends on end-of-semester test scores. The goal is to be the best school in the world, so the students actually matter. But the other decision is a fundamental one, too. Without interaction, you don't get points for research or tests.

Weighing these two options, as dull as they sound, is entertaining. I think it helps that there's always something you could be doing in the process or, at least, building towards.

To its credit, Pocket Academy really fleshes out who these kids are. They’re all named and you deal with them over the course of several years. You’ll also see them make friends, attempt to date other students, get frustrated, succeed, and fail. Students all have certain disposition traits, too, which factor into how they learn and where they learn the best. As if that wasn’t enough, there are also activities they favor which you can cater to by building clubs or more facilities.

After spending years with these kids and using them in the right way, you do tend to bond with the character, as silly as that sounds. But it’s that connection, as flimsy as it is, that makes this simulation game much more satisfying than most. You have a stake in the systems, at least.

I could go on and on about the systems at play, what you can do, and the billions of little things that you’ll end up doing to improve the experience. There are tons of mechanics and little touches at play in Pocket Academy, all of which are satisfying to some extent to use, deal with, or think about. The game starts brutal, so be prepared.

I have a feeling that, like Game Dev Story, you’ll run out of meaningful things to do in Pocket Academy after an epic several-year run but I don’t think that hurts. As it is, there are plenty of things -- perhaps too much in places -- to do for several, several hours. For those of you who didn’t download sight unseen, no worries: this is a sharp little simulation game packed with depth and, oddly enough, a little emotion. It might be hard to penetrate at first, but stick with it and you’ll be rewarded with an awesome game.

We've been sort of Kairosoft crazy ever since they released their phenomenal game company simulation Game Dev Story [$1.99/Lite] last year. Then, Kairosoft followed up that release here in the States with Hot Springs Story [$3.99/Lite], an even more refined simulation that let you manage and expand your own Japanese spa. Since then, Kairosoft has been releasing tons of differently themed simulations using their trademark character and style, but so far none of them have made it out of the Japanese App Store and into the US.

Back in April we took a look at one of those titles, which through our powers of mediocre translation we were calling Pocket School Story 2. It turns out that the game is actually called Pocket Academy [$3.99/Lite], and it has just gone live in the US App Store. Pocket Academy looks extremely similar to Hot Springs Story, except that you are creating a successful school from the ground up and managing all of the different aspects of it rather than a Japanese bath house.

We'll be putting Pocket Academy through its paces and come back with a full review soon, but since there are no doubt many of you who will buy a new Kairosoft game sight unseen (myself included) I figured that the decent thing to do would be to let you know of its availability and provide you with a link to the game. You can also check out the early impressions from gamers in our forums who have picked up the game, and we'll be back with more on Pocket Academy soon.

Update: A lite version is now available too.

There are plenty of popular car racing games in the AppStore; Real Racing 2 [$6.99/HD], Death Rally [99¢] and Reckless Racing [99¢/Lite/HD] spring to mind, to name a few. However, moto-racing is less frequently represented, so it's nice to find a new game about Italian motorcycles which looks pretty sweet. Ducati Challenge [$3.99/HD] from Ducati and Digital Tales opens with a montage of Ducati motorcycles in action, complete with pumping music. If you're a motorcycle, Ducati or racing game enthusiast, check this out.

The game features three modes: Quick Challenge, Championship and Multiplayer. Quick Challenge allows you to practice before a race, to familiarize yourself with the bike and track. You choose the difficulty level and number of laps. Championship Modes include easy (4 races), medium (6 races) and hard (12 races), which must each be beaten in turn as they're locked initially. Each Championship begins with qualifying practice laps which determine who scores pole position, followed by the race itself. Multiplayer mode lets up to four petrol-heads race via a local wi-fi connection and works with a combination of iPhone and iPad devices.

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Laser Dolphin [.99 / HD] is a criminally under-produced game plagued by issues that wouldn’t be permissible if Laser Dolphin was anything else but a mindlessly fun game about a dolphin with a laser gun strapped to its back.

It’s obvious that Laser Dolphin is a game built on a tight budget or the end product of a rookie game development team. Its animations are stiff, while the story presentation is even stiffer; the assets are endlessly regurgitated, the level design is haphazard, and the action is loose, unpolished, and lacking substance, control, and refinement.

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