Wings Over Scotland

Wordplay! Because not only is this article a token attempt at having a post on WoSland for the first time since nineteen-banana, it's about putting something on the empty shelves of the infinitely annoying Newsstand app in iOS.

I've been delving around the App Store newsagents, and after a world of pain found a bunch of totally free publications (no time-limited trials or any of that guff) that aren't completely awful, and will stop you having to look at that ugly, undeleteable, unhideable icon. You can see them in the pic above. Links/descriptions below.

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Alert WoSland viewers won't need telling that there's nothing this blog enjoys more than a hearty slice of metagaming, and there can be little rational disputing that the modern-day maestro of the form is cranky old code-grump Jeff Minter. The ruminant-loving curmudgeon has just released another retro-flavoured reference-rammed remake onto the App Store, and it's his best work yet.

iOS Gridrunner is the latest in a long line of remakes of Minter's veteran Centipede derivative, and it's a brilliant interpretation. A tiny (12MB) universal app offering both iPhone/iTouch and iPad versions for a single 69p payment, it's got the VIC-20 and C64 games thrown in as bonus freebies and it also supports the iCade. Frankly you'd have to be some manner of total spoon-faced klutz to pass it by.

It's an all-action blast, and while we wouldn't say the MOST fun you can have with it is spotting all the bits he's nicked from classic 80s coin-ops, it's certainly an entertaining diversion. We're bound to have missed loads, but below are all the ones we've spotted so far. See if you can find any that slipped our notice and we'll make a definitive list.

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Is this extremely zippy line-drawing, trampoline-jumping game with beautiful graphics and almost limitless replay value.

Rather charmingly, it's called A Moon For The Sky. (There's a separate but equally free iPad version, A Moon For The Sky HD, too.)

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Viewers, a confluence like this comes around about once a decade. If it’s as sunny, warm and beautiful where you are as it is in Bath today, get out there and witness the phenomenon for yourself.

If it isn’t, don’t worry – you can do it indoors too.

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The world moves alarmingly fast nowadays, doesn't it? But right now, at this particular moment in time and until something else shiny and exciting comes along (probably around lunchtime), this is the best game ever.

With a certain amount of irony, then, (and for no very good reason that I can immediately discern), it's called Forget-Me-Not.

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Just a few days after release, Speedball 2 Evolution has had its price slashed from £2.39 to 59p, for an unknown length of time.

At that price, everybody pile in.

While it's still free, so that you can enjoy its awesome ghost-racing capers.

Having played Mad Skills Motocross (available for PC, Mac and Linux as well as iOS), I am now OUTRAGED that all other racing-type games don't let you go to the online leaderboards and go head-to-head against the recording of anyone's best run. I'd write to my MP about it, but he's a treacherous cunt.

or Why The iPhone Is The New Amiga, Part 17.

Minotron 2112 was released today (at the time of writing an iTunes or App Store search for "minotron" doesn't bring it up, but if instead you search for "llamasoft" it's there), the second outing for Jeff Minter's game-in-a-month Minotaur Project after the flawed but fun Minotaur Rescue.

(Which incidentally is apparently about to have many of the issues raised in the WoSland review – or "moaning", as Mr Minter refers to user feedback – fixed in a just-submitted update.)

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Come on. It must have been one of you, or someone you know, and it’s time to own up. Because until we deal with this serious issue and reach some sort of closure, Jobs is going to keep taking it out on the rest of us.

There’s simply no other remotely plausible explanation for the staggering hostility – no, make that absolute naked loathing – with which Apple continues to treat the hundreds of millions of customers who’ve made it so rich.

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