Regular readers of Revert to Saved may remember that I’m Contributing Editor to Future Publishing’s rather fab Tap! magazine. The title is dedicated to iPhone, iPad and the iPod touch, and I’m responsible for its games section. For issue 5, editor Christopher Phin tasked me with writing a cover feature about iOS gaming, covering the best available games, what games designers think about the platform, exploring kit, and offering the odd nod to retro-gaming. Designer Chris Hedley then created one of the best covers I’ve seen on a consumer tech mag, featuring a ton of iOS gaming characters.

The magazine of course also includes all the usual iOS news, reviews, tutorials, features and columns. If you’re a UK subscriber, you should get your copy within the next couple of days (if it’s not already arrived). Alternatively, the magazine should be on newsstands (WHSmith, Tesco and other stores) some time during the next week.

As regular readers of Revert to Saved probably know, I’m Contributing Editor to Tap! magazine, Future’s spiffy bi-monhtly iOS publication. (I plan the games section and write quite a bit of it, too.) But today there’s some big news from the Future mothership:

Tap! is now going monthly.

Issue 4 will arrive in stores on May 12, and then subsequent issues will follow every four weeks. Personally, I’m thrilled at the development, because I know how much passion and effort goes into every page of the magazine. I’d like to publicly thank editor Christopher Phin for his faith in giving me an entire section to play with; also, thanks to each and every person who’s bought a copy of the mag so far, enabling us to now get you twice as much Tap! goodness every year.

As you might have noticed, this blog’s gone into one of its quieter patches, mostly because I’m currently drowning in iOS games for my Tap! magazine duties. The good is that I get to play and write about cracking* iOS games. The bad is that I don’t really have time to do anything else for a few days. However, this also gives me a nice excuse to mention the spiffy new website for the publication, www.tapmag.co.uk, which will carry reviews, posts from editor Christopher Phin (and maybe some of us other contributors if he gives us the magic key), and handy links so you can subscribe.

Anyway, back to Dungeon Raid and Liqua Pop.

* As in “Cracking cheese, Gromit!”, not dodgy app piracy.

Issue three of the rather spiffy Tap! magazine hits UK newsstands today. It’s another chunky 132-page tome, packed full of reviews, tips and features about the iPad, iPhone and iPod touch. Yours for a fiver, guv.

This issue, in my role as Contributing Editor, Games, I lead the games section with the excellent World of Goo HD, and we also cover another 30 titles, including Helsing’s Fire HD, Dead Space and Real Racing 2.

Elsewhere in the mag, there are the usual helpings of Matt Gemmell, Ian Betteridge and Caitlin Moran, an in-depth feature on using your iOS devices to watch tele, an interview with an indie company using iOS devices and social media to compete with global brands, and more app and kit reviews than you can shake a stick at.

Issue 2 of the super soaraway Tap! (the iPhone & iPad magazine) is arriving with subscribers and available in shops nowish.

Again, you get 132 pages of personality-infused awesomeness for a fiver, including my chunky games section (slightly chunkier this month, clocking in at 19 pages, written by yours truly and Mr Andy Dyer). Elsewhere: loads of app reviews, a feature where the magazine forced some poor bugger out into the winter cold to test fitness apps (although he deserved it, since he didn’t include RunKeeper Pro in his essentials list, the bounder), how to tune a ukulele, an iPhone battery cases group test, and a fab new columnist in the shape of the wonderful Caitlin Moran.

BUY IT NOW! (Or, you know, when it’s out.)

EXCITING UPDATE: Apparently, the ‘three issues for a fiver’ deal’s up again, although that’ll likely kick in for Tap! issue 3 if you grabbed it now.