Also available on Windows Phones and the 360 Indie Games marketplace, HOoC is a sweet romp through ten rather short stages. Following the route many indie developers low on budget have already taken, the game boasts a retro design that permeates both its visuals and sound. While somewhat blurry on screenshots, the pixellated asteroids, stone walls, space bees and everything else you'll encounter on your wacky trip look really charming in motion, which can be attributed to variety (start off amidst huge boulders, only to later dodge multicolored toy blocks) and cute little details like parallax scrolling or eyes popping up. The music, meanwhile, will bring tears to any fan of the NES or GB episodes of Mega Man and Final Fantasy (Legends). Most tunes sound rather sad, as if taken from certain town tunes of the latter or from story sequences from the prior, and some are as upbeat as you'd expect them to be in most 8-bit MM games, but they all share the same high quality.

Despite being incredibly simple (even by shooter standards), the story is fairly creative and somewhat...honest. There is no evil empire to defeat and no planet to protect. Your only motivation is to survive as your brakes are damaged and you can't avoid speeding through all kinds of dangerous surroundings only intent on dodging every obstacle or destroying some of the smaller ones. Some hazards like balls that change direction upon being shot might appear to be enemies at first, but there actually is nothing here that will actively try and kill you. No enemy bullets, no AI, just moving objects minding their own business.

Throughout the game you will constantly gain speed up to your current maximum limit. In the beginning this max speed is still low enough for you to easily dodge anything coming your way, but the further you get, the higher your max speed and thus the lower your chance to see what's ahead in time. Losing a life luckily slows you down a lot, as does a certain item. While other items like a shield, temporary invincibility or more powerful shots will also prove beneficial, there's also an item that immediately increases your speed to the max.The pick-up you'll find the most, though, are coins of different values, which increase your score multiplier until the loss of a life sets it back to zero.

HOoC is a lovingly designed little game with great relative touch controls. It doesn't reinvent the wheel in any way and it could use some more quantity, but the things it does, it does really well, and the sometimes ludicrous speed makes for some great tension. Anyone bemoaning the short playtime of about 20 minutes will also be glad to hear that developer Fun Infused Games infused some incentives to return to HOoC: The game loops infinitely until you've lost all lives, still further increasing the speed cap with every stage beaten. If you're up for a serious test of your skills, you can also try your hands at hardcore mode, where a single life has to suffice. In Coin Drop mode your game ends, once you're down to zero coins, while you constantly keep losing coins. In Super Speed mode the max speed is simply a lot higher than it would be at the same point of progress in other modes. And finally, all modes can also be played in reverse, hence with each of the ten stages being played from end to beginning.

Following rRootage and EXEXE, Shooting Game KARI is yet another age-old doujin shooter first released as freeware on PCs and now having been ported over to the iPhone. Like rRootage (Online) it's also available for free, making it worth a download, no matter what, although it's arguably more down to earth and thus a bit less interesting than the other two.

Although the graphics have been tweaked, presentation-wise KARI fares as expected from a mid-1990s PC indie game. In terms of visuals, this means rather dull enemies and shots, appearing as if Toshimichi Saeki (the developer) wanted to cross a gap between prior 2D and upcoming 3D graphics, lacking the means to quite pull it off. Regardless, the framerate remains at a constant 60 FPS, the backgrounds look decent and – most importantly – every enemy and bullet always stays clearly visible and distinguishable, guaranteeing that the graphics never get in the way of the action.

Music-wise, the game's age actually works to its advantage, delivering jolly, upbeat tunes that only the 1990s had. While there are games nowadays, that try to recreate some of the nostalgic magic surrounding these chip tunes, they rarely match the games originally created in those times. KARI's tunes would fit right into classics such as Valis, Secret of Mana or Battle Mania.

Where rRootage and EXEXE Rebirth are willing to experiment, KARI is a straight-forward romp through six enemy-infested stages, each culminating in a big boss fight. Finishing the game on normal difficulty unlocks the high difficulty setting. Taking off the finger and placing it on the screen again switches between a wide shot and a more focused one, which lends itself well to a tiny layer of tactics in a shooter otherwise content with merely asking the player to stay alive. There are no items to collect and the scoring system is reduced to a multiplier increasing for as long as you don't receive any damage. Later stages offer some tricky bullet patterns, coming surprisingly close to more recent danmaku virtues, as homing energy balls, barrages of grey dirt blocks, intertwining arcs of blue bullets and large fire balls all join forces to take the player down. This must have been mighty impressive in 1997 and it still makes for an entertaining trip, that shows some more recent competitors a trick or two.

At first, iStriker appears to be little more than your average late 1990s, early 2000s (PC-) shoot-em-up. A lone helicopter is out to fight some evil force throughout five standard locations like a muddy jungle, an enemy base and an icy canyon, all presented in (admittedly not too shabby) 3D. Your means of attack are reduced to a standard shot that powers down with every hit you take, a limited amount of smart bombs and a self-recharging laser that can be used for short but sweet strikes. Music-wise, there also isn't anything all too remarkable, as the neat rock tunes fit the action without making you hum the melodies in your head anytime soon.

The controls also don't exactly help the game gain momentum. As per usual procotol, motion controls downright suck, leaving you with slightly overloaded touch controls. Besides merely steering your chopper you also need to detonate smart bombs (double tapping), activate the laser (swipe upwards) and occasionally land (swipe downwards) and while all of this can be assigned to optional virtual buttons, it is a lot quicker to do it all with just motion gestures. After a rough start the controls eventually become second nature once you find a comfortable position, preferably with one hand always on-screen steering the helicopter and the other hand doing the rest. Uhm, ok, this last sentence sounds awfully wrong, reading it again, now.

The one twist that sets iStriker apart from the pack is the aforementioned ability to land at any time. Sky Force had hostages/civilians for you to rescue simply by flying over them. In iStriker, though, you need to land close to them and wait for them to jump in, but instead of mere points, they grant you bonuses like life-ups, weapon upgrades and fuel. The necessity for fuel can be a real pain in the tail rotor, especially during intense boss fights, but overall it's a nice system that requires you to always consider whether it's safe enough to land and if it's even worth it. You need to find an even plane to land on, the camera zooms in, thus making it harder to anticipate what exactly is going on when getting back up, most enemy bullets first pass by as they are aimed too high, but eventually enemies start targeting the ground. There is a lot to consider.

The higher difficulty settings make it a bit too difficult to properly use this system and most of the 100 (!) achievements are just plain stupid e.g. forcing you to use motion controls, but if you can look past this (I know some achievement whores who certainly can't) and play on easy until you've become seasoned enough, then iStriker is worth a recommendation. Later stages also go out of their way shaking off the standard military-feel by introducing more sci-fi themed enemies like spinning metal spiders and inventive laser turrets that don't damage you, but deprive you of your eye-sight. The longer thaey hit you, the less you can see and the longer it takes for the screen to become visible again.

There's no denying that Backflip Studios' Boss Battles delivers on its name. With their usually vastly underpowered enemies and their short length, the opening sections of each of the eight stages serve as little more than an introduction to the following boss fights. The bosses tread a more traditional route by keeping the bullet count low, making up for it with arms swinging about or throwing their full mass directly at the player, two virtues often neglected by modern danmaku-style foes.

Despite the repetitive popcorn enemy design (only one kind per stage), overall diversity is nonetheless kept at a constant high as you are pitted against a spinning robot cube gone haywire, a bee guarding the precious space honey (no, seriously) with rows of Galaga-esque small bees doing the Space Invaders, ghastly aliens, a multi-segmented entity encircling you and challenging your multi-tasking abilities, and battleships flipping around to get their numerous weapon systems into place. Said weapon systems also constitute one of the game's high points. Anybody who's played the original R-Type's big-ass battleship stage or any action game in the old 16-bit days for that matter will remember the joy of dismembering a huge opponent piece by piece. There simply seems to be something appealing to man's most basic desires (or at least my desires) when taking out laser turrets, tentacles or segments of robotic grappling arms, slowly crippling a boss until he becomes near defenseless, where modern shooter bosses tend to get more difficult the later you get into the battle.

Apart from the final stage Boss Battles is a relatively easy game, perfectly suited for people inexperienced with the genre or those looking for a relaxing break from danmakus and frustrating classics like R-Type and Gradius. Every stage can be replayed individually, with their difficulty increasing each time up to a maximum of five stars. Every downed enemy and every destroyed bos part as well as finishing off a boss nets you gems which are used to buy weapons, weapon upgrades, options and such inbetween stages. Since taking the risk of tackling more difficult stages rewards you with more gems, you should be able to piece together a reasonable arsenal before hitting any truly dangerous spheres. The array of homing missiles, explosives and rapid fire might not bring anything new to the shooter table, but the shop system is still as motivating a mechanic as it has always been when done right, i.e. without excessively high prices. Here, most items are affordable and thanks to the increasing gem amounts left behind by enemies, you are always on track for the next desired upgrade. Boss Battles is available as freeware, being financed through an unoffensive ad bar displayed at the top of the screen and through the option of purchasing gems with real money, which luckily always remains just that: An option. There hardly is any need for sinking any money into the game, essentially making it a great free download.

Gameplay is solid through and through, the game is free, and all the other tidbits that constitute a good shooter don't disappoint either. Relative touch controls would have been nice, but given how accurately the direct touch controls work and also given the low bullet count and the generally big sprites, you'll never really miss them. The calm, ambiant soundtrack perfectly matches the laid back approach of the game. Backdrops are beautifully rendered and feature some great-looking objects such as asteroids floating around on different background layers. There even is a very much tongue-in-cheek-story to either read through or simply skip past. The player avatar is Rico the raccoon and he is assigned his missions by a grizzly whose nemesis is an evil Russian polar bear. The stereotypes are absolutely over the top with the polar bear wearing your typical Soviet fur cap and the honorable American bear even shares quite a resemblance to Star Fox 64's general, so the story never makes any attempts at hiding its shallowness that never goes beyond standard shooter fare, but it does provide some whimsical moments.