Before this mini-rant, I should point out that I like Slide To Play. It’s one of the few iPod gaming websites that’s got things largely right, and it offers reviews that don’t make me want to claw out my own eyes with a spoon—something of a rarity online these days.

Sometimes, though, a whopper of a clanger slips through the net, and such that it is with the site’s review of Snood. “Who can resist a game filled with disembodied cartoon heads? Certainly not us,” it begins, which we rather liked and had a little chuckle about. And then it all goes horribly wrong at the start of the next paragraph: “Snood has been around for over ten years, and has been available on PC, Mac and Game Boy Advance. A game this good is always in danger of being copied, and Snood has definitely had its share of knockoffs made, including South Park Snood for Mac.” (My emphasis.)

Yes, you did read that right. In a review of Snood, a reviewer said: “A game this good is always in danger of being copied.” I’m sure the Pazuru Boburu (Puzzle Bobble/Bust-a-Move) guys think much the same, what with Snood being a blatant and massive rip-off of Taito’s game. I can only hope the writer was being ironic, but I somehow doubt it.

What this likely shows is how short people’s memories are when it comes to videogames, and also how a younger generation of writers is seemingly unaware of anything that happened before 1995. If I had 2p for every time I’ve read about some iPod shooter being a rip-off of Chillingo’s iDracula, despite iDracula being a straight update to Eugene Jarvis’s Robotron (from 1982), I’d… well, I wouldn’t be rich, but I’d be able to nip over to the garage and buy myself a couple of Double Deckers, and let the chocolately goodness take away the pain.

Stuart Dredge’s iPhone Games Bulletin just ran a story on Edge magazine once again placing itself firmly in bizarre-o-land. Despite its constant claims at being at the forefront of gaming, it’s made a bunch of stunning screw-ups over the years, the most obvious perhaps being an off-hand dismissal of WarioWare (which got 7/10, a rating Edge has tried ever since to remove from the history books, both by arguing that the review was written by a poor widdle overworked freelancer, and by running 46-page articles on why Made in Wario—the Japanese name for the game that Edge insists on using over the localised one—is so good).

Gosh, that was a long sentence, wasn’t it? Almost as long as one from Edge. Anyway, anyone who’s been keeping tabs on my work will know that I’ve become a total iPod gaming fan-boy of late. The reason isn’t some insane, misguided love for Apple, but the simple fact that iPod (as in touch, or the iPhone) is the only gaming platform that matters.

Ignoring for a second the problems surrounding the App Store (most of which don’t concern the general public), not least the rush to 59p/99 cents that every publisher seems to be taking part in, the simple fact is that since I got an iPhone, I’ve barely used any other games console. The App Store offers thousands of games, most of which are by independent developers, offering highly individual takes on gaming. Because of the nature of Apple handhelds—touchscreen; accelerometer; no tactile buttons—you can’t easily port stuff over from other platforms, and the best games therefore take direct advantage of the system.

To a great extent, iPod gaming is like a return to the 1980s, but with modern technology. Independent developers can make and sell a game, without pandering to the needs of focus groups. These games are then easily accessible (simply download from the App Store), affordable (even ‘expensive’ iPod games are about six quid) and often innovative. Games like Eliss are genuinely doing something new, and I can’t remember the last time I was so excited about a videogames system.

This is why it’s so galling—so hugely irritating—that Future’s supposedly forward-thinking industry bible has once again got it wrong. In its Edge Award For Interactive Innovation 2009 Shortlist, you’d think at least one iPod game would make the cut. You’d think that the magazine, despite its inexplicably tiny amount of iPod gaming coverage, would notice one of the genuine futures of gaming, and champion it, shouting from the rooftops.

But no. Instead, the publication specifically singles out iPod gaming, stating “the games made for these environments are still nascent” (And why is that a bad thing? I seem to recall arcade games development was once ‘nascent’, but we still hail Defender, Robotron and Missile Command as classics) and “It’s difficult to think of an iPhone game that truly exemplifies the singular abilities of its host”. Really? I can think of at least a dozen, but perhaps this merely shows how Edge is stuck in the past rather than the future, if it’d rather showcase the likes of Far Cry 2—an impressive but incremental update on the FPS genre—over products that genuinely innovate.

Many gaming platforms are suddenly finding themselves becoming increasingly irrelevant as new formats take hold. It seems Edge is going the same way.

I run an iPhone reviews website called iPhoneTiny, driven by a Twitter feed, and I also write for various iPhone and Mac publications. This means I see a lot of iPhone apps and games, and regularly cull dozens of the things from my iPhone, to set up the next ‘batch’ of reviews.

The upside is that I’m convinced iPhone is a fantastic platform for all manner of things that people would never have believed just a short while ago. Apps like Bento and Things are great from a productivity standpoint, and myriad excellent games have significantly changed my viewpoint since writing Why iPod touch will never be a major gaming platform for Cult of Mac.

The downside—aside from a continual stream of press releases that direct me to an app’s store page rather than promo codes—is that iPhone has created a consumer group that has absolutely no understanding regarding value for money.

One of the first apps I bought for iPhone was Dropship. The game is essentially an update of Thrust, a 1986 arcade game from Firebird that itself riffed off the wonderful Gravitar coin-op. Dropship improves on the classic 8-bit release with dual-thumb controls, beautiful graphics and downloadable levels. More surprising was the price—I bought the app for £1.19. To put that in perspective, that’s 80p less than Thrust cost on cassette tape for the C64, way back in 1986.

Unlike other people, my problem isn’t so much that App Store titles are so cheap, but the fact buyers don’t seem to understand the sheer value of the items on offer. Recently rummaging around the US store, I found reviews for Power Toppler, a remake of C64 cult classic Nebulus. Like the original, the game is absurdly difficult, but it’s fairly good and worth persevering with, and at £1.19 (or $1.99 on the US store), I’d say that’s pretty good value—especially when you consider that’s roughly a third of the cost of the original Nebulus on Wii Virtual Console. Sadly, a recent review on the App Store stated that the game wasn’t worth two bucks.

iPhone owners need to take a step back and understand what they’re getting. Sure, some games are cheap and simple, but even they can be fantastic value. Witness Flight Control, which cost me just 59p, and yet provided more game time than about half the DS games I’ve bought over the past few years—and for considerably more than 59p. However, when you look at the likes of Frenzic (effectively iPhone’s Tetris, but just £1.79) and Eliss (a beautiful and unique touchscreen puzzler that sells for £1.79, but that would fetch £15+ if a DS version was possible), it’s clear too many iPhone owners are looking a gift horse in the mouth and then gobbing in it.