Screenshots © Armor Games; used with permission.

The beauty of many, if not most, video games lies in their ability to distance players from the real world by taking them into a fantastical alternative reality. So imagine, if you will, that you live in a world covered with elaborate castles made from wood, iron, and stone, but that are held together without mortar or indeed any sort of connective material between pieces. Further, imagine that it was your task to kill all the inhabitants of these castles armed only with a trebuchet and various projectiles.

It is to this world that the game Crush the Castle for the iPhone/iPod Touch takes you. The mechanics of the game are simple: You simply tap the screen once to start the trebuchet in motion, and tap again to release the projectile(s). Should you want to change ammunition, two more taps will take care of that. Your task is to crush the castles, as the name states, but most importantly to kill any and all the people in each castle.

These people — who are meant to look like kings, ladies of various kinds, and guards — don’t fight back, and won’t even move as giant boulders or bombs streak through the air, raining doom upon them. If that makes the game sound easy, it isn’t. Sure, you’ll earn a gold medal on some castles on your first try (the kind of medal you earn depends on the number of shots you need to kill all the people, and is based on each castle’s difficulty). But some castles will have you tapping Reset to start over again at zero shots, and desperately trying different trebuchet release points until you find something that works. One castle took me well over twenty tries to crush, and then I only just managed to earn a bronze medal.

Screenshot © Armor Games; used with permission.

I leaped at the chance to play the iPhone game, because I’d played the original Flash game and its sequel online, and thoroughly enjoyed both. The iPhone game has many very different castles from the online versions, and at least one new projectile type as well (I have yet to finish the iPhone game, so can’t be certain it stops at one). So even if you’ve played the originals, you’ll find lots new with the iPhone version, but the fundamentals are still the same.

It’s a great game for kids, too. Yes, you’re trying to kill people, and yes, when they die there is a little splatter of blood. But the people never move on their own, so it’s unrealistic enough that it’s not likely to traumatize or desensitize anyone. And the mechanics are so dead simple that any kid who understands how to tap the iPhone screen can play.

Crush the Castle is $1.99 from the iTunes App Store, and will provide hours of entertainment. If you’re unconvinced and want to try it out before spending money on it, there is a limited free edition of the game available as well.

Wired: Way more fun than it has any right to be, really, and well worth dropping $1.99 on.

Tired: Some of the castles were a bit more frustrating than necessary, I thought. But if it weren’t challenging, it wouldn’t be much fun, would it?

(Full disclosure: I received a free copy of the $1.99 version of the game.)

Here’s a quick test to see if you’d enjoy the Voltron iPhone game: Do the phrases “Activate interlock!” and “Form feet and legs!” invoke feelings of nostalgia, and can you recite the next lines? If so, I can virtually guarantee this game is for you; if not, you’ll probably still enjoy it.

I loved the Voltron TV show when I was young. I was old enough to recognize that the plot was always pretty much the same in each episode, and to notice that it looked a little odd when characters would talk because only their mouths would move. When I say I loved Voltron, I mean of course that I loved the Lion Force version, because the Vehicle version was just not as good: there were too many characters to keep track of, and, let’s face it, a giant robot with lion heads for hands and feet is much cooler than one with cars and such. I never understood why nobody ever made a Voltron video game — I mean, it seemed like such an obvious idea.

But now, with the 25th anniversary of the show’s creation, a video game has finally appeared, and the good news is that it’s a mobile game, and that it’s really well-done. First, the game makers were smart enough to include some of the actual animation from the show, so when the game starts up and bookending each Robeast challenge, you’ll get a clip that will, if you’re anything like me, cause you to grin like a little kid. You can skip these cut scenes, but I can’t imagine why you’d want to.

The game plays like a series of episodes: In each “act” there are five “stages,” one for each lion, and then there’s a Robeast challenge. There’s written dialogue in each stage, which is just cheesy enough that it might actually have come straight from the show. There is some audio speech as well, mostly in the form of encouragement from the characters (e.g., Hunk saying “All right, there’s a job to be done. Let’s do it!”). There is a definite story arc through each act, and an overall arc as well; for instance, you start the game with Sven piloting the blue lion, which should provide some foreshadowing to anyone who watched the show as much as I did.

The game mechanics are very straightforward and easy to master: You have a set of four arrows on the left side of the screen which control the movement of the lion, and three action buttons that will fire a missile, use the lion’s paw to hit something or swat away an enemy missile, or invoke the lion’s special power. Each lion has a unique special power, which provides a nice distinction between the missions. In the Robeast challenges, you are of course playing Voltron as a whole, sword and all, so your available actions are to strike the Robeast (in two different ways), duck or shield against its attacks, or do a special attack once you build up energy to do it. Once you’ve defeated a Robeast, it will unlock in the “Zarkon Arena,” which you can access from the game’s main menu, allowing you to fight as the Robeasts themselves against one-another. There are also quite a few “achievements” you can unlock throughout the game, and the game even has Facebook integration should you want to boast about it to your friends.

The Voltron game for the iPhone / iPod Touch is $3.99 on the iTunes app store, and well worth the price. It’s a lot of fun for those of us who remember the show fondly, and for many of those who’ve never seen it at all — I let my kids play it a number of times, and they had a blast, too, despite having virtually no idea what the story was about.

Wired: A well-crafted game that’s both easy and fun to play. And the way it evokes the world of the old TV show made me grin every time I played it.

Tired: It would be nice if you could have more than one game going at a time. As it is, while you can go back and replay old missions, you can’t start the game fresh without wiping out all progress that’s been made. This makes it very difficult for two or more people to share the game on a given device.

(All screenshots are copyright Sony Pictures Television. I was not given a free copy of the game.)

A trailer for the game is included after the jump.

Image: Southpeak Games

When I first received this unsolicited but free review copy of My Baby: First Steps, I thought, oh great, it’s going to be another cutesy game that even the kids wouldn’t like. I was wrong, for a variety of reasons. This game is pretty authentic. Right down to the dirty diapers, bath time, monotonous feeding regimen, doting grandmother and cute toddler. The only thing that seems to be missing is any kind of misbehavior on the part of the baby (though it’s possible that comes later, since I didn’t make it to the end of the game).

When you start the game, you can choose your baby’s gender, or get a surprise. If you choose boy or girl, you can also choose the ethnicity of the child. I chose to get a surprise and ended up with an Indian girl and named her Nola, after my great great aunt. All of the babies that I’ve seen are adorable. You’re only able to have one baby going at a time, though, which is frustrating when you want to share the game with other family members. But when you’re done raising one baby, you can raise another.

The goal of the game is to raise your baby from 15 months old to 30 months old. It is a sequel to My Baby Girl and My Baby Boy, which deal with younger babies. The game is broken down into months, and each month you are given two teaching goals and some new extra tasks and activities. As time goes on, some of the things that you teach her are walking, talking, running, climbing stairs, jumping and variations on those skills. You also get new challenges with feeding, diaper changing, bath time, outdoor play, bedtime reading and so on. She also has toys to play with. Some of the tasks can be really tricky to get just right. It gets frustrating to not make progress, since you can’t move on to the next month until you’ve taught your baby what she needs to know for the current month.

As your baby gets older, the game expects you to be paying close attention to her noises and gestures, as there are fewer and fewer clues as to what your baby needs. If you’re paying attention, this isn’t too difficult, however. You can also go shopping and buy her clothes, and take pictures of her at just about any time. As time goes on, your baby’s hair grows, she matures and she can do more on her own. There is a also pediatrician who checks in on you from time to time to make sure you’re caring for the child well enough.

Since it is a pretty authentic game, I found it fairly boring since I’ve already done all of that with my own kids. In real life, you have more personal triumphs. In the game, it’s less personal. It’s too much like real life for me to want to play it all the way through, though I did get about halfway. But then again, I’m not in the age demographic for which it is designed. It is an excellent tool to teach patience to children looking to babysit or to have their own kids one day. My kids are very much drawn to the game. My daughter is very nurturing, and my son just loves babies.

Game play can be frustrating at times because you get so focused on teaching the tasks to your baby and then the game interrupts you to do things like change a diaper or have mealtime. Of course, that’s like real life as well, since once you have a child, it’s impossible to get anything done in one sitting.

The retail price of $29.99 (for DS or Wii versions) is a bit more than I would pay, unless I had a child who was really interested in learning how to care for a baby. I’m not sure if the Wii version is exactly the same as the DS version that I tried, but it seems to me that it would be harder to be exact with diaper changing and bath time with a Wiimote than with a DS stylus.

Wired: Good variety in tasks to complete, cute babies, game progresses as you take care of your baby, you may develop a small connection with your virtual child.

Tired: Game is a bit too authentic at times, and it can be frustrating to have to do the baby-raising tasks without as many of the real life joys that usually come along with it.

Image: Wikipedia

One of my fondest childhood memories is of dropping a token in the Battlezone machine in the side room of the pizza restaurant near our house, stepping up to the simulated periscope, grasping the joysticks and moving my green wireframe tank across the moonscape in search of other tanks, the random cubes they hid behind and UFOs.  There’s no telling how much money I sank into that machine.

But now, thanks to last week’s site refresh at Atari.com, I have the opportunity to play Battlezone for free. In their new arcade, you can again guide your tank towards the mountainous horizon or try your hand at one of three other coin-op games, Asteroids, Crystal Castles or Lunar Lander, or a couple of 2600 carts, Adventure and Yars’ Revenge. What’s more, Atari will be teaming up with OMGPOP to bring Missile Command (in glorious multiplayer) to the arcade in early 2010.

The site also features exclusive merchandise, game downloads and forums, but the big draw are the classic games in the arcade. So why not head over now, pick up an arrow-shaped sword and seek out the enchanted chalice? It doesn’t get much more classically retro than an avatar that’s a square.