Capcom's amazingly popular fighting game, Street Fighter IV, has made its long-awaited iPhone debut. To every button masher's joy, the game didn't disappoint, turning out an exciting beat-em-up that's bound to subject your poor handset's touchscreen to relentless abuse.

Graphically, the game has more in common with older versions of the franchise, rather than the 3D Street Fighter IV you will find on current-gen home consoles. They're not bad, far from it. In fact, this is one of the most attractive-looking fighting games I've seen on a mobile platform to date, even on an iPhone 3G (where I played it).

How about the buttons? Surprisingly enough, they work well. There will likely be some getting used to, especially if you're a hardcore player, but it's not as bad as I originally imagined. In fact, I was pulling off mildly difficult combos in well under 30 minutes - a feat considering everyone I know kicks my ass on SF4. You get an onscreen joystick for movements, plus four buttons - punch, kick, special move and charge. Yes, Capcom decided to leave out the low and medium strikes, which sucks a little. Regardless, there's still plenty here to waste entire days on (not hours, but days).

The special move button, by the way, is kind of a cheat, but you can turn it off in the preferences, as well as rearrange the button placements if you so wish. You also get "revenge" and "super" meters that charge as you get beat up or pile on the hurt, respectively. Once either is full, you can simply touch them to perform a special attack. The ease by which you can do that is a bit of a turn-off, but it's a minor annoyance on what's an otherwise excellent implementation.

You can play as one of eight familiar characters in seven different environments. Game modes include Tournament (where you fight multiple matches), Dojo (a training mode for your character), Free-Sparring (for testing out an opponent), Training Room (where you can practice your combos) and Versus (against a human opponent over Bluetooth).

If I had any real complaints, it would be the common iPhone problem of my fingers getting in the way of the action. It can get irritating, especially for a fast-paced horizontal game such as Street Fighter 4. While I do think the price is a bit steep at $9.99, it is one of the greatest action games of all time on your iPhone, so that should count for something.

Here's a game I never saw coming: a driving title where you're supposed to drive like a vigilant hypermiler. Yep, that's exactly what the unholy union of Volkswagen and Fish Labs turned out with the Volkswagen Think Blue Challenge, a game where the goal is make every last drop of your fuel count. Here's something even crazier - it's quite entertaining.

While the premise sounds silly, the challenge is not. It's one thing to delude yourself about your eco-friendly driving abilities when you're on the road. When you've got just a small amount of fuel to make it through checkpoints, though, it becomes a...gasp...game.

In Think Blue, you start the game with a small amount of gas and drive from one checkpoint to the next, getting a small amount of extra fuel for every one you clear. You complete checkpoints by correctly answering a question about efficient driving. Don't worry, if you drive even a little bit, you probably know the answers.

Once you've finished all checkpoints, you then begin driving your car on the open road. Make sure you apply every fuel efficiency trick up your sleeve, from coasting down slopes to managing your throttle to taking turns intelligently, allowing the vehicle to cover as much ground as possible before your tank goes empty. The game does help you out, suggesting how to maximize whatever's in your tank, going so far as to explain why each technique works. You will eventually run out of gas and when you do, the game submits how far you've driven to the online leaderboards, where you can see how you fare among the mass of iPhone-toting hypermilers around the world.

Volkswagen Think Blue Challenge is built upon the same engine as Fish Labs' Rally Master Pro 3D, so the graphics and the mechanics are all awesome. While it's not going to be the most exciting game in your library, it is quite addicting, especially once you see how far the top performers have gotten. Plus, you might even learn a new thing or two about technical driving. You can download the game for free from the App Store.



Palm just announced the release of a new software development kit that they're calling a PDK. It's not an SDK since the folks behind the Palm Pre and Palm Pixi have already released one of those. Instead, the new system stands for a "Plug-in Development Kit," and is designed to extend the functionality that webOS-powered devices can handle.

One of Palm's earlier selling points for webOS was the ease with which developers can put together apps on the platform, being based upon web technologies such as HTML and Javascript. Problem is, that didn't exactly make developing 3D games for their handsets easy. With the depth and variety of games turning out to be a major selling point for Apple's iPhone, that's not a good thing.

So what exactly is a PDK? In Palm's terms, the new mobile development platform allows programmers to run C and C++ code on their phones, practically extending the range of software that can be run on their handsets. That means having the power to produce more compelling games than what simple web technologies would have allowed.

For developers, that means getting an existing game or application onto either the Pre or the Pixi won't require a complete redesign, allowing you to reuse existing code. Sure, it's not as simple as recompiling the exact same library for new hardware, but it will entail both less cost and effort.

[Palm via Mobile Crunch]