On July 23, 1981, Galaga, one of the most well-loved scrolling shooters of all time, made its arcade debut. In celebration of its coming 30-year anniversary, Namco has released the Galaga 30th Collection [App Store], which brings Galaxian, Galaga, Gaplus, and Galaga '88 to iOS.

The collection is a free Universal download (for iPhone and iPad) that includes Galaxian (which is actually the first game in the Galaga series) and offers the other aforementioned titles as in-app purchases individually ($9.97 combined) or as a discounted single game-pack download at a price of $7.99. Each of the titles features reworked graphics that lend a more modern feel to the retro and an optional scan-line filter and score-tracking HUD.

There's not a whole lot to say about the gameplay that hasn't been said for the past 30 years. These are all highly enjoyable and well-loved shooters that feature excellent balance and white-knuckle action. The iOS adaptations of these games, of course, feature iOS-style controls, and of several sorts. There is a mode with two left / right sliders at the bottom of the screen, one for movement and one for movement plus autofire; a left / right slider mode with a tap to the game screen to fire, and a control mode featuring a left / right virtual stick and a fire button along the bottom. The virtual stick mode moves your ship at a speed similar to the arcade originals, while the slider modes move your ship as fast as your finger can zip back and forth across the screen.

An accumulating / depleting fast-fire battery has been added to the games in the collection, which heighten the pace of the game. It's an addition that actually feels pretty nice. I warmed up to it quickly.

Galaga, Gaplus and Galaga '88 all feature a Score Attack mode that is a race against the clock to see how high a score you can achieve, in addition to the Normal Game mode. Another enhancement found in the iOS ports is the ability to supercharge your ship by buying upgrades with Galaga Points earned as you play. All of the titles in the collection feature Game Center achievements and rankings.

Galaga 30th Collection includes a pretty epic intro movie sequence that will have longtime fans smiling, but sadly it adds some real bulk to the download, which weighs in at a hefty 135MB.

My only real gripe with the title is the total absence of the original arcade graphics as a settings option. As a huge retro fan, I would definitely be playing with the original graphics, were they available.

The star of this collection is definitely the highly acclaimed�Galaga '88, but none of the games in the Galaga series disappoint in the least � in the arcade or under iOS. The touch control options presented here are some of the best I've seen for an iOS arcade conversion, and Galaga 30th Collection really is worth a spot on any arcade shooter fan's iOS device.

One of my favorite iOS games of all time is the dungeon crawler Rogue Touch from ChronoSoft.�Here at WWDC 2011, I had a chance to sit down with the man behind the games, Kevin Hill, to discuss the latest on that great classic adaptation as well as some of his upcoming titles, including roguelike / RPG Dungeon Tactics: Spirit Hunter Mineko, which we first mentioned back in March of last year.

First off, Rogue Touch will be getting a major update sometime in July as it moves from v1.6, which arrived last summer, to version 2.0. Kevin worked am impressive series of updates to the game in its early days, but none of them have brought nearly as drastic a set of enhancements as the coming update.

Rogue Touch v2.0 will bring an entirely new set of tiles and monsters with much greater detail than those of the current release. What's more, the game will move to an OpenGL-based rendering engine (don't worry � it's still a 2D game), improving the visuals in several respects as compared to its current CoreGraphics-based engine. Game Center integration is also in the mix, as well as various, smaller tweaks and enhancements. I took a look at the tile and character sheets for Rogue Touch v2.0, and I can't wait to make the upgrade.

The coming Rogue Touch update isn't all that fans of the game have to look forward to. Rogue Touch EX is still on track to inject the dungeon crawler formula with a dose of arcade action. The game will feature pseudo real-time exploration, something akin to what we've seen in Solomon's Keep. Rogue Touch EX is expected to arrive as a Universal application for both iPad and iPhone, with Retina display support on the latter.

The biggest news of all out of our meeting with ChronoSoft is the preview I was given of Hill's upcoming Dungeon Tactics: Spirit Hunter Mineko. The game marries elements of the roguelike dungeon crawler with those of the traditional Japanese RPG.

We detailed the backstory in our first look but, in short, the game is the adventure of Mineko, a teenage girl and Spirit Hunter who lives with her family in a remote, mountaintop village. One night during a magical and terrible storm, she and her fellow villagers see a menacing castle materialize out of nowhere. The village council decides that her brother should be sent to investigate this new evil and Mineko, never one to mope about the house, follows after him to help save her village.

Hill has made a number of design decisions aimed at keeping the game experience as accessible and uncluttered as possible. For example, movement is a simple swipe with two swipes for an action. Stairs are automatically ascended / descended when encountered. Tidy inventory and potion selection panes can be swiped in from above and below. The entire system feels rather streamlined.

The game features multiple environments including houses, sewers, cellars, caves, forests and castles as well as an active weather system and day and night modes. In addition to weapons and potions, there is a magic system handled via glyphs on a scroll that can slide in from the side of the screen. Additional side areas become available upon completion of the main mission, allowing some bonus post-victory dungeon crawling fun.

I had a chance to play an in-progress version of the game here at WWDC and it seems extremely well put together. Have a look at a brief video of the game in its current state.

We can expect Dungeon Tactics: Spirit Hunter Mineko to arrive sometime this fall. After that, it's on to work on the next title for Hill, an as-yet unnamed, futuristic strategy game in the vein of Advanced Wars and Super Robot Wars. I took a look at the character sheets and they look quite promising.

At WWDC this year we got a chance to one again catch up with Josh Presseisen of Crescent Moon Games who had an iPad 2 loaded with tons of games (some not even his) that he was eager to demonstrate for us. The first of which was Paper Monsters which we have extensively posted about already. It turns out our excitement was totally justified, as this game both looks (and plays) great.

Next up is a game called Topia which is a collaboration between Crescent Moon and Glenn Corpes, the creator of Ground Effect [$1.99]. It turns out that Glenn also had his hands all over the creation of the original Populous, which really shows in the following video:

Last, but certainly not least is Pocket RPG, an entirely randomized hack and slash game that we first caught wind of last year. It seems like the game is nearing release, and Josh goes through tons of details in this nearly 7 minute long hands-on video:

Coming off the successful launch of Touchgrind BMX [$4.99], which we reviewed last month, I met with the folks from Illusion Labs here at WWDC 2011 to discuss their plans for the series moving forward. Speaking of that successful launch, Illusion Labs has revealed that Touchgrind BMX sold over 100,000 copies in just its first 10 days in the App Store, making it their fastest selling title to date. Combined with the original Touchgrind [$4.99/HD], the total sales for the series exceeds 1.5 million units. That's no small potatoes!

As for the future of Touchgrind BMX, there are a few nice things in the works. Just last week, an update was released which added some much-needed Retina Display support for the game, but unfortunately it was at the expense of a smooth frame rate. Illusion Labs is furiously working the kinks out of this, and the new build I was able to play showed a vastly improved frame rate with Retina Display visuals enabled. They'll continue to refine this and then plan to drop the optimization update in the next couple of weeks. Following the improved Retina Display update, the hinted at new level Polar Ridge will be released along with full Game Center support.

But it doesn't stop there. Once all of these new features are finally launched, the next step will be adding a TV-Out feature to Touchgrind BMX that will allow the game to be played on a big screen while being controlled on your iOS device. They demonstrated this functionality to me by using a portable projector and projecting the game right onto the wall in front of me. It looks absolutely awesome, and plays just as good. The iOS screen takes the form of a bike silhouette and controls exactly as the game normally would. Here's a developer video showcasing the functionality projected onto a big screen:

Pretty cool stuff, but that's still not the end of the Touchgrind-related news. Way back in January of 2010, Illusion Labs demonstrated a proof-of-concept video that showed the original Touchgrind being played on a MacBook using the multitouch-enabled trackpad. They never actually released the game for Mac due to not really having a solid distribution channel, but when the Mac App Store was announced last October the Touchgrind MacBook demo was one of the first things that came to our minds.

Now, at long last, Illusion Labs is releasing the original Touchgrind on the Mac App Store. The best part? It will be launching for free. You heard that right, for free. Illusion Labs isn't known for dropping prices or giving away things for free, but this is something they wanted to do for their fans as a thank you for making Touchgrind such a success. You'll be able to grab Touchgrind for your Mac sometime in July. The announced features for Touchgrind BMX will slowly release over the course of the next several weeks or so, and I can't wait to see what else Illusion Labs has up their sleeve for the future.

I heard you guys like gameplay videos. Well here are a ton. Gameloft had a ridiculous amount of games to show off at E3, and all of these games are scheduled for release in the third quarter of 2011. Of course no pricing was discussed (except for Let's Golf 3 which will be free) but we can likely assume these games will all be priced in line with Gameloft's fairly predictable pricing schemes.

March of Heroes � Gameloft's first Unreal Engine 3 game is a first person shooter that basically plays like all of their other first person shooters with a bit more eye candy thanks to the new and improved engine. Oddly enough, the engine switch alone doesn't make the game look that much better. Polygon counts seem low, and almost out of place compared to the nice shadows generated by the game engine.

Some levels are environmental-focused, check out this underwater portion:

BackStab � I'm not exactly sure what to think of this. It seems like Pirates of the Caribbean meets Assassin's Creed, which could be a very good thing if you like both franchises and would love to see them mushed together in to one game.

9mm � This linear adventure game is highly inspired by Max Payne, complete with an over-the-top bullet time mechanic. Unfortunately, the color palette of the game is rather dark so the quality of the hands-on video isn't the greatest.

Let's Golf 3 � I've had a great time with all the Let's Golf games, and I expect the third installment to be no different. This time around, Gameloft will be dabbling in the free to play world. Hopefully we don't hit a pay wall too early.

Block Breaker 3 Unlimited � A crazy block breaking game with power-ups, multiple areas for blocks to be broken on each level, and channels you can shoot your ball into to transfer between them. This was a lot of fun.

Silent Ops � Gameloft seems to be re-using a lot of its Splinter Cell gameplay with this pseudo-sequel. The game has a very similar look and feel to it, including the fairly dark color palette that my camera didn't capture so well under the E3 lighting.

At GDC in 2009, OnLive was originally unveiled with an incredible amount of entirely reasonable skepticism. The prospect of a service that removed the high-end gaming console and/or PC from the equation and instead did all the heavy lifting in a remote datacenter before streaming your game in HD via the internet was difficult to imagine at the time. Hell, when you stop and think about it, it's still hard to imagine today.

It's here though, and after a quick signup you can be on your way to effortlessly streaming a (as of this writing) collection of 100 different PC and console games. In fact, if you're still at all skeptical about OnLive, I highly encourage you to give it a spin. You'll be inside of a game in less than five minutes, and you can see for yourself just how well it works. The only real requirement is an internet connection that allows you to ping under 80ms to the OnLive servers and enough bandwidth to receive a HD stream. If you've got that, you're good to go.

Currently, only the OnLive Viewer is available for the iPad, but in the not too distant future we'll be able to play the entire OnLive catalog on the iPad. Players will be able to choose between a less-than-ideal set of virtual controls, or purchasing a bluetooth controller to pair with the iPad. I got a chance to fiddle with both today, and while the on-screen controls are functional, the controller is definitely the way to go.

Check out how it all works in the following video:

The folks are OnLive aren't ready to commit to release dates, controller cost, and other details, but it's said to be coming "soon" and the controller is going to be "reasonably priced." Since the whole OnLive Micro Console currently sells for $99, and has been given away for free with a few pre-order promotions, I'd find it hard to believe that the iPad-friendly controller would cost any more than $50� But that's pure speculation on my part.

As I mentioned on Twitter earlier today, it feels like this changes everything. I couldn't believe how well the whole setup worked, and with Apple's new HDMI adapter, plugging your iOS device into your TV via HDMI to play a game in HD resolutions streamed from the internet just feels like the future. The iOS OnLive client even has support for touch and gesture-based controls, it's just up for developers to build games around them.

What an incredible time to be alive.