This sounds familiar:

We are required by USPTO [US Patent and Trademark Office] to monitor and police our trade marks. If we don’t, we lose them.

But, no, Tim Langdell’s not risen from the grave (he’s not dead—it’s just where EA left him after giving him a serious kicking); this time, it’s Doodle Jump creators Lima Sky who are reportedly being total dicks.

According to Pocket Gamer, the Doodle Jump devs have now decided to rampage round the App Store, yelling at devs who have the audacity to use the word ‘doodle’ in the titles of their games. (At the current count, there are over 700 such games, so the Lima Sky guys are going to get really sore throats.)

Gosh, I guess, then, that Lima Sky must own the trademark for ‘doodle’, right? Well, no, they only own ‘Doodle Jump’, and they weren’t the first doodle game on the App Store anyway. So not only are they acting like total dicks, using the same bullshit language as Tim Langdell to ‘police’ their mark, they also don’t have a fucking clue about marks, the policing of marks, or, seemingly, common sense.

The danger here is that Apple might take down loads of ‘doodle’ games, until the relevant parties come to some arrangement or other. Personally, I suggest coming to a different arrangement: stop buying and playing Lima Sky games until they stop being dicks. Their only big earner is Doodle Jump anyway, and there are plenty of alternatives, such as the free Froggy Jump and the similarly free Mega Jump.

As revealed on Ars Technica’s live blog and a billion other places, Steve Jobs’s friend and servant Tim Cook and Verizon Wireless CEO Dan Vee’s moustache have revealed that the iPhone 4 will soon be available on Verizon for money!

This is good, because it will—like in the UK for bloody ages now—enable American consumers to bitch about how rubbish iPhone carriers are, rather than just how rubbish the exclusive iPhone carrier is. This is an important distinction for reasons.

Well done, America! *sings national anthem*

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.

People rattle on about the Steve Jobs/Apple ‘reality distortion field’, but it’s becoming increasingly clear that companies battling Apple in the handheld gaming space are also living inside their own little bubbles and firing out distortion of their own. Sony last year cunningly decided to take on iOS by saying all iPhone/iPod touch games were rubbish, using an irritating little shit as their advertising campaign’s figurehead (nice one, Sony—I’m sure you can tell from marketshare figures how that idea worked out for you). Nintendo has fared better, but is losing serious ground to iOS across all age groups, especially in the USA.

But now, Nintendo’s going to fight back, and Gamespot has revealed the launch of the Nintendo 3DS will take place in Japan on February 26. The line-up for games is the usual mix of remakes, remakes and remakes, and as someone fully immersed in iOS gaming’s diversity, the 3DS offerings don’t look terribly exciting to me, especially since I own the previous versions of many of the launch games on the DS. (“Oooh, prettier graphics” is no longer a selling point, as Nintendo itself largely proved with the Wii.)

The biggest problem though is the crazy price-points. The console’s expected to come in at over $300, which in Brit-land will no doubt mean at least £200 being stamped on the box—in other words, more than an iPod touch. Even better, the games are expected to sell between 4800 yen ($57/£38) and 6090 yen ($73/£50). Even with some serious discounting (and Japanese games often being more expensive than in the US and Europe), these prices are obliterated by the App Store, which usually ranges from $1 (59p) to $9.99 (£5.99) per item.

I’m sure Nintendo fans will lap up the new console, but I fear it’ll—like its predecessor—eventually (and all too rapidly) find itself largely bereft of decent games, relying on shovelware to keep it going. More importantly, the core market of kids is rapidly vanishing. Time was that market at least was Nintendo’s, but kids increasingly want iThings rather than expensive Nintendo kit (and Nintendo itself has warned that the main USP of its new handheld may not be safe for kids). Perhaps Nintendo’s aiming to seriously ramp up its download offerings, or tempt buyers with pack-ins. If not, it’s going to have even more of a fight on its hands than over the past couple of years, and Apple has a real chance to take the lead in the handheld gaming space.

Update: As Lukas points out in the comments, some of the launch line-up comprises new titles in existing series, with “exactly zero to do with” earlier titles. However, having been a Nintendo fan since the NES, and having owned quite a few Nintendo consoles, it’s clear that many titles will involve more than a little recycling, unless the company really has changed its ways.

I’ve long thought it an odd criticism about Apple products that people’s preference for them is in part driven by emotional response. Andy Ihnatko for Chicago Sun-Times makes an astute observation in this area regarding the iPad:

Of course people have an emotional response to this iPad. Why is that considered a negative thing? An emotional response that lasts more than five seconds is a sign that something actually works.