They're not up to par in today's console or PC graphics, but they do look about the same as what I remember in the first few C&C games in the '90s—which isn't all that shabby. No exact release date yet, but it will launch in October and it will have 12 levels to play through, and two maps for skirmish mode. [Kotaku]

Some of us managed to survive boring high school math lessons by playing Tetris on TI-89 calculators, yet we can't get more than 30 seconds on a Pre for another month? I understand that it's a demo, and that by now everyone and their dog knows how to play Tetris, but this doesn't even qualify as a teaser.

30 seconds is pointless for a demo of any kind, on any platform. What are you supposed to do? Get acquainted with the splash screen? Such a short period of app usage or game play isn't going to going to get anyone who wasn't already interested in the full version any more excited about it.

Dear EA, please give us a demo that actually demonstrates something other than the fact that brevity isn't always wit. Actually, screw the demo. Just give us the game already. [iSmashPhone]

Last year, Mark said the thrill of 1:1 motion it delivered was "greater than maybe any experience I've had on the Wii aside from Super Mario Galaxy."

This year, I tried the three games NIntendo was showcasing with Wii MotionPlus at its booth to see how far it's come and, this close to the final product, whether it's really worth it: Wii Sports Resort, EA's Tiger Woods PGA 10 and Grand Slam Tennis. The former two come with a MotionPlus dongle bundled in.

Grand Slam Tennis
"What the hell do I need MotionPlus for?" was my immediate reaction. It felt no more precise than Wii Sports Tennis—it simply let the game distinguish whether I was holding the racket on the left or side of my body, so I could swing backhand and forehand style (and it didn't do that so well). The abstraction level—the conceptual distance between my actions and what happened on the screen—also didn't feel great. It certainly wasn't 1:1. Not so hopeful!

EA's Tiger Woods PGA 10
Aha, here we go. Tiger Woods PGA 10 delivers more on the 1:1 front—as you twist the Wiimote left or right, so does the club on screen, which translates predictably in your shots. I kept cutting the ball way to the right, since I couldn't keep my swing entirely straight. But I felt completely in control—I knew it was my fault and it was mimicking my motions perfectly. Score.

Wii Sports Resort
No surprise, Nintendo's own software is where it shines, where the value of MotionPlus comes through the most.

What was surprising was where it mattered the most: In the dueling sword game, while my sword onscreen mapped perfectly to my motions with the remote (with ever so slightly perceptible lag) I destroyed my opponent with high speed wrist waggles, so in actually gameplay, MotionPlus seemingly offered nothing.

Then I got to archery. Holding the Wiimote vertically, it becomes the bow. The nunchuck is where you grip the string. So, you start with your arm out and bring the nunchuck up to the Wiimote. You press Z to virtually pinch the string, and pull the nunchuck back toward you, away from the remote, like you'd prime a real bow. Release Z, and the arrow fires. It's a really satisfying experience, one of the Wii games where the motions don't feel totally arbitrary. It depends on the MotionPlus to relay precisely where in space you're holding the remote, so you can aim. So you need MotionPlus—a definite win.

Finally, I played table tennis. It destroyed any doubts I had about MotionPlus. Everything was mapped precisely 1:1. If you twisted the remote left or right as you swung the paddle, the ball would respond when you smacked it with topspin or backspin. The physics, while simple, felt completely natural, along with everything else. It was fast, it was accurate, it was a blast. I felt like I was actually playing table tennis, more than I've felt like I was playing any other sport on the Wii.

This in part due to the scale of the game—replicating ping pong 1:1 is much easier than tennis, which takes place on a different scale. But the mastery of the simulation, the fluidness means you'll never go back to Wii Sport Tennis, which feels positively last-gen by comparison. Wii Sports Resort delivers on so much of the original promise of the Wii.

What it made clear, however, is that MotionPlus by itself doesn't necessarily guarantee the experience is going to be better, just because the remote tracking is that much more accurate. It's still totally up to the developer to make use of it in a way that's actually good—so while Red Steel 2, and maybe even the new Zelda will require MotionPlus, it doesn't mean they're necessarily going to have better motion controls or be better games. It just means they can be better. Way better, even, if the developer knows what they're doing.

But then again, if a bunch of games require the MotionPlus, it's not like you're going to have much of a choice anyway. [Giz@E3]

I've personally found most racing games on the iPhone to be seriously difficult to control, with the steering controls sending me veering back and forth across the track with no chance of winning. NFSU feels tighter, with a quick twist of the iPhone putting you into drift mode rather than sending you careening across the track. I actually got the hang of it pretty quickly. You accelerate automatically, with one finger anywhere on the screen acting as a brake. A quick swipe up is a nitro boost, while a quick swipe down puts you in Speedbreaker mode.

The graphics are really solid, with no noticeable framerate hiccups and reasonable load times. They're easily as good as the graphics you'd expect to find on the PSP. The music is a bit too aggro for my taste, but your mileage may vary. Overall, it's definitely one of the best looking games I've seen on the iPhone.

The game has a storyline that involves standard-issue undercover cop stuff that has you infiltrating a street racing scene that has vague ties to smuggling or some such activity. Full-motion video comes up between races to move the story forward via mediocre acting, but they never quite explain why cops actually arrest you when you yourself are an undercover cop. In any case, the trials where you need to take out cop cars are much more difficult than regular races, as they make you both ram cops and beat time limits, which was hard for my lousy-driving ass to do. There are 8 different modes overall that you'll encounter throughout the game, keeping things nicely varied.

There's a good amount of content here, with many races and game modes and a system in place to buy newer and better cars as you advance. It doesn't feel like a half-game made for the iPhone, and you could put many hours into this thing if you're a completist. For fans of racers who are looking for a solid game with good graphics and solid controls, this one is definitely worth the scratch.

[Need for Speed Undercover]

Early UK pricing puts these games at £29.99 without the dongle and £49.99 with the dongle. Obviously, international pricing doesn't always translate properly, but that's about a $30 difference in "real money" (the state of our economy balances my inherent xenophobia to the point of using finger quotes when promoting the US dollar).

Meanwhile, the Wii MotionPlus standalone dongle will only cost $20 when it arrives June 8th.

We doubt that EA will be charging a premium over Nintendo's pricing for Wii MotionPlus (they're probably just going to charge $20 extra for their games bundled with the peripheral). But some savings would certainly be appreciated. Otherwise, why bundle at all? (Actually, that question isn't rhetorical. Shortages on Wii MotionPlus peripherals could easily drive EA's game sales. So it's good for them, not so good for you.) [Kotaku]

UPDATE: GameStop is showing Tiger Woods 2010 to run $50 without the dongle and $60 with the dongle. That would be a savings of $10, which would be notable.

Watch how MotionPlus matches movement 1:1 between the real golf swing and Tiger's golf swing. The swing itself is still on a track (it doesn't appear, for instance, that you could make Tiger swing the club like a baseball bat). But our guess is that's a choice EA has made to keep the game's learning curve low.

Plus, the game does acknowledge a slight twist of the wrist to draw or fade with "100%" responsiveness, making this EA video the first time we remember any function related to the Wiimote promising "100%" of anything. Now with the control situation sorted, I can finally return to wishing the Wii had the graphical power of the Xbox 360. [Joystiq via CrunchGear]

EA has announced the first wave of third party games that will support Wii MotionPlus controls: Tiger Woods 10 and a new tennis game.

What else might we decipher from EA's announcement? Well, Tiger Woods 09 came out in late August of '08. Extrapolating EA's yearly release schedule, we see Wii MotionPlus being available by August '09 (when we'd expect Tiger 10 to come out). But do we actually know? No, no we don't. [Kotaku]

On the rumor front, Tech Radar is claiming that Sega's next Virtua Tennis title will also support Wii MotionPlus.

Straight up, you run into DRM pretty much every day. Bought music from three of the four major labels or any TV show from iTunes? Played a game on Steam? Watched a Blu-ray movie? Hello, DRM. If you wanna get technical about it, digital rights management and copy protection are two different, if similar things. Digital rights management is copy protection's sniveling, more invasive cousin—it isn't designed simply to make it harder to steal content like straightforward copy protection—you thieving bastard you—but to control exactly how and when you use media. We're going to cover both here, since they both refer to technologies that restrict what you do with music, movies and more.

There are, approximately, 10,742,489 kinds of DRM and copy protection. Almost every company or format has its own flavor that works in a slightly different way from everyone else—Apple's iTunes-smothering FairPlay, Blu-ray's BD+, the restrictions built into every gaming console. They've gotten more complex and nuanced over time, too, as content delivery has evolved. For instance, elementary-school DRM would simply keep you from copying or converting or doing other unseemly things to a file, like playing it on a non-sanctioned device. Or you might remember old-school CD keys, before the days of online activation. Today's DRM, like for movie rentals, music subscriptions or software, constructs more elaborate obstacle courses, nuking videos 24 hours after you press play, or allowing a certain number of copies.

Many of these work in similar ways—files are encrypted with the DRM flavor of the day, and they're unlocked or decrypted for your use by authorized programs and devices. Think of it like a secret handshake that only certain programs or pieces of hardware know. Often, they're tied to an account like on Steam or iTunes. This makes it easy for the Man to keep track of and manage what you're doing with stuff—how many copies you've made, how many machines you've authorized to play your content, whether your monthly all-you-can-eat music subscription is still active, that kind of thing. DRM-busting cracks look for ways to strip that encryption out to allow free usage, copying or modification of the file.

So, aside from the fact that DRM keeps you copying or modifying content, and playing it on whatever damn player you wanna play it on, and maybe limits your time with a movie to a fleeting window, it doesn't sound so bad. Okay, it does. But it can get worse—like when DRM breaks. For instance, Valve's Steam network had a hiccup in 2004 that meant people were locked out of the game they paid to play. Or when Windows cocks up and tells users their OS isn't genuine. Or Sony's infamous rootkit CDs. Or when DRM servers are shut down, rendering music useless. The list goes on.

But wait, haven't you heard that DRM's dead? Or has a cold? Weeellll, yes and no. Sure, some music stores sell DRM-free MP3s—Amazon is unrivaled in that has 'em from every major label, and iTunes sells DRM-free music from EMI. And CDs have never had 'em, except for that aforementioned BS copy protection from Sony and a few other short-lived misguided attempts. So, it's sort of going away for pay-to-own music, but it's still fairly ubiquitous, in all-you-can-eat subscription music, in movies and in software, and it's not going away anytime soon. The emergence of streaming serious video content, like with Hulu in particular, sort of challenges this on the video front—there's no DRM, but then again, it's not as easy to rip a stream for Joe Blow as it is to share a file over Limewire. Harder questions, though, like whether DRM means you ever really own anything anymore, we'll leave to the lawyers.

Here's a list an quick blurb on every major kind of DRM you're likely to run into, and why it sucks (beyond the whole keeping-you-from-sharing-it-with-all-your-friends business):

Audio
• FairPlay is Apple's flavor of DRM that's baked right into iTunes, iPods, QuickTime and iEverything else—most music from the iTunes store is lojacked with it, with exceptions from EMI and some indie labels. It allows for unlimited copies of music files, but only five computers at a time can be authorized. FairPlay files only play on Apple's own iThings. Like every other DRM scheme, it's been cracked.

• PlaysForSure (now simply "Certified for Vista," which is confusing since not all "Certified for Vista" stuff will play PlaysForSure, like Microsoft's own Zune) was Microsoft's attempt to get everyone in the portable player industry on the same Windows Media DRM. Even though Microsoft has basically ditched it, it's successful in that a bunch of services, like Rhapsody and Napster, and players—essentially everyone Apple, from Sony to Toshiba to SanDisk—have used or supported it. It's fairly generic copy protection that keeps you from sending it to all of your friends, though it works with and enforces subscriptions, with the biggest bitch being that it restricts you to Windows and to PlaysForSure devices. (Read: Not iPods.)

• Zune uses a totally different DRM tech than PlaysForSure and is incompatible with it. It allows you to share DRM'd subscription content with up to three other Zunes, though it won't let you burn songs unless you buy 'em. And if subscriptions die, it nukes your songs. It also manages the Zune's "squirt" feature, making sure you don't play beamed songs more than a few times and other annoying restrictions.

• PlayReady: Hey lookie, another Microsoft DRM scheme. This one's different from the similar-sounding PlaysForSure in that while it's backward compatible with Windows Media DRM, it works with more than just Windows Media audio or video files, like AAC and MPEG, and is meant to cover a broader range of devices, like mobile phones.

Video
• FairPlay for video is a lot like the audio version, but adds a couple tricks like nuking rental videos 24 hours after pressing play and presenting a slightly more complicated obstacle course to sync them to portable iThings.

• High-Bandwidth Digital Copy Protection prevents video from being copied as it moves across certain digital video interfaces like HDMI, DisplayPort and DVI, which sounds innocent enough, until you try to watch something on a non-HDCP compliant display—and you can't.

• Content Scrambling System (CSS) was DVD's piddly encryption scheme, long ago busted open like a rotten watermelon.

• AACS (Advanced Access Content System) is one layer of copy protection that's part of the spec of both HD DVD and Blu-ray. It's way stronger than DVD's CSS setup with several components involved in the encryption/decryption process, and allows for blocking specific players that have their keys compromised. Plus it can allow specific numbers of DRM'd copies of content, like for portable players. Also cracked, rather explosively.

• BD+ is Blu-ray's secret sauce DRM that's actually a virtual machine, allowing it to do stuff like make sure the hardware and keys are kosher, and execute code. It's been cracked, twice actually, but part of the appeal is that it can be updated—the last version is at least three months away from being cracked again, though it totally will be. BD+ was the main reason some studios supported Blu-ray over the AACS-only HD DVD, and you can see why.

• Macrovision VHS, yep, that old chestnut: copy protection on VHS tapes that made everything squiggly when you tried to run two VCRs together. Why include it in a digital roundup? Well, besides nostalgia, if you want to convert your original 1986 Star Wars VHS tape to digital, this will make your life difficult—fortunately, a quick Google search turns up ways around it.

• TV and cable—there's a lot going on there to keep you from stealing cable's goods, so you need a box or a CableCard to take the encrypted feed and make it watchable. The industry didn't even really get behind the plug-n-play CableCard, either—it was more or less forced on them. There's also this thing called a broadcast flag that stations like ABC or NBC or HBO can embed in shows at will so you can't record them.

• Tivo uses DRM from Macrovision that can slap you with all kinds of restrictions, ranging from no copying at all to automatic expiration, limiting copies or managed transfers to PCs, or even not allowing you to view certain football games outside of a designated region. Its TivoToGo, for porting stuff to portable devices, actually uses Windows Media DRM though.

• Windows Media DRM, speaking of it, is one of the more popular off-the-shelf DRM kits, used by everyone from Netflix for its streaming service to Amazon's defunct Unbox downloads (now Video on Demand downloads) to Walmart's old video store, that's somewhat flexible it what it allows or doesn't, depending on the service's wants—from no copying to nothing but Windows Media compatible devices (i.e., no iPods). It only runs on Windows, naturally.

• Even Adobe Flash has DRM now. If you've used the streaming part of Amazon's Video on Demand service, you've run into Flash DRM (which had a lovely Antarctica-sized hole allowing you to rip movie streams until a couple months ago). Two bad things about this DRM, notes the EFF: First, with an unencrypted stream it's "unlikely that tools to download, edit, or remix them are illegal." That changes if it's locked up with DRM. Also, it means you'll have to use Adobe's own Flash player to video Flash videos. Lame.

• PlayReady is another Microsoft DRM flavor, aimed mostly at portable devices, but it also powers the DRM in Microsoft's Silverlight, which is what just brought Netflix streaming to Macs.

Software
• Windows Genuine Advantage is what makes sure you're not using a pirated copy of Windows. It phones home occasionally, which can cause bad things if the servers go down. If your copy is legit and it says you're a pirate, you're not the first person it's falsely accused.

• Valve's Steam is one of the most elegant, integrated DRM solutions we've seen in a physical-media-be-damned world (except for its two infamous outages). Unlimited copies of games on unlimited computers, but only one can play on an account at a time. It's fairly seamless, like good DRM should be.

• EA's copy protection system got real famous, real fast thanks to Spore, and nefariously restricts game installations to three computers—in its lifetime, not just at one time like some media DRMs.

• Pretty much every console has varying levels of DRM and copy protection (duh, it's a closed system), but DRM issues are coming more brightly into focus as we download games from stores, like on the Xbox 360 and Wii, where games are tied to your original system, so you're screwed if you get a replacement—it'll take some decent footwork to get your games back, at the very least.

• Not software DRM per se, but Windows Vista has a ton of DRM technologies baked right into it.

Any DRM schemes we missed, feel free to complain about how they make your life more miserable in the comments.

Something you still wanna know? Send any questions about DRM, rights, McDonald's managers or Taiko Drum Master to tips@gizmodo.com, with "Giz Explains" in the subject line.

Schedule of Events:

12/6 (NYC)- Apple Store SoHo at 3:00 (image below of the preview event)
12/13 (LA) - Apple Store Third Street at 2:00
12/14 (SF) - Apple Store San Francisco at 2:00
12/20 (Chicago) - Apple Store North Michigan Avenue at 2:00

As a whole, I feel that EA Sports Active would give users a more well-rounded workout than Wii Fit, but the fact that it is designed to work in tandem with the balance board makes it that much more effective. The EA package will set you back another $60 when it is released next Spring—but even combined with Wii-Fit you are still spending less than most gym memberships—plus it is more convenient and, most likely, more fun. [Gamespot via Kotaku]

No biggie. The logical solution is that EA supplies customers with new codes, which they're happy to do if you're willing to photograph your serial and email it in. Otherwise, they've offered the public what must be one of the saddest "workarounds" in DRM history:

There is currently a work around that may allow you to bypass this issue. Since you have the first 19 characters of the code already, you can basically try "guessing" the last character. To do this, simply enter your existing code, and then for the last character, try the letters A-Z, and then the numbers 0-9. You should eventually get the right combination, and be able to play the game.

In other words, try all 36 possible combinations and you'll get there soon enough. If you've been shorted the complete serial number, we'd recommend guessing all 1.33674945 × 10^31 combinations.[EA]

Even though fires alone are disconcerting, what's even more disconcerting was that Rock Band publisher EA glossed over the event and offered a canned response:

Hello Jim,

Thank you for taking the time to contact us regarding your Rock Band purchase. It is always a pleasure to assist our customers in any way that we can.

The USB Hub comes with 4 USB ports that the peripherals can be plugged into [sic]. Check to see if the customer has plugged the AC Power Adaptor [sic] into the USB Hub and a wall outlet in order to provide power to the USB Hub. Power Down Xbox 360, and unplug everything, but the USB Hub, AC Adapter. Plug in One Peripheral [sic] to a port on the USB Hub. Turn on the Xbox 360 to see if it is working.

The conversation continues over at BBPS.com, but needless to say, it gets both funnier and scarier before it's over. [TheBBPS via Joystiq]

Right now, the anything-goes Android Market only supports free apps, but that should change right around the G1's launch, at least if Google is serious about having premiere apps populate the store from the start, like high end games. There's a lot of fantastic freeness to be had—like out of the Android Developer Challenge or as Apple's App Store shows—but some developers want some hard coin for their code, and not just evil corporations like EA.

On the other hand, EA has experience with digital distribution and you can sideload apps without going through the Android Market, so why don't they sell them straight through EA's site? [Pocket Gamer via Crave]

Anyway, the Guardian recently completed a multi-part interview with the man himself that's a very entertaining and worthwhile read, especially if you're interested in the behind the scenes of companies like Microsoft and hardware like the Sega Dreamcast. But it was one passage in particular that caught our eye as particularly noteworthy in which Moore explains that Microsoft considered buying Nintendo.

Was Ballmer interested in what you'd achieved at Sega or in your attitude as a businessman?
He wanted my attitude, he didn't care what I'd achieved at Sega, he wanted to know how I was going to win for Microsoft, how we were going to take on Sony, how would we compete with – or acquire – Nintendo. Those were the conversations in those days. It was a classic build or buy conversation. Xbox had launched but it was an aggressive black box for shooters, and how do we evolve that, how do we build the next Xbox, how do we get after Sony? Interestingly, we were just completely fixated on Sony – Nintendo didn't even come into the conversation.

Hit the link to read the rest of the excellent interview. [guardian via Kotaku and image]

As we saw at E3 and WWDC, the iPhone version of Spore is Spore Origins, which is limited to the "primordial ooze" stage you see here, with a limited version of the Creature Creator thrown in for tweaking your bug cosmetically. On the plus side, it's simple and a quick diversion, and it's fun combo-ing your way through 35 increasingly difficult levels of munching little floaties. You can also import photos from your iPhone camera to texture-map on your creatures (Benny's Michigan Fab 5 tee).

But on the downside, the game suffers from the same control awkwardness that all of the accelerometer-only games do—as you can see in our video, the camera had a tough time keeping focus because you're always dramatically moving the phone to try to reign in your creature. A training stage featured a level-like bubble for each axis that showed you when you were at the zero-point, which was incredibly helpful—too bad it disappeared after training.

And most disappointingly, Spore for iPhone does not connect with the greater Spore hive in any way, meaning you won't see any procedurally generated creatures made by real other players of the game via Spore's central server. Kind of a weird choice for such a connected phone, and most confusingly, EA says the simpler Java based game for most other cellphones does in fact have connectivity to the greater spore world.

There's still some vagueness with release date (EA's site still only says "sometime in September") but all other Spore platforms launch in the US this Sunday. Look for it then or soon thereafter in the App Store for a price that'll probably be in the $10 and below range.

This week's app coverage on Giz:

• Remember what it was like to buy a CD? Apple's plans to include lyrics and additional album art via an app download for certain albums will help you remember.
• Continunig to carry the torch for political apps is Election '08 - a $1 app that collects poll data, electoral vote projections, and tons of other election data.
• And at CEDIA, all of the home automation systems are racing each other to release remote control applications, turning your iPhone into a capable touchscreen control surface for opening the blinds from across the street or jacking up the AC if your cat gets hot.

For even more apps: see what you missed last week and check our original iPhone App Review Marathon. Have a good weekend everybody.

LOS ANGELES, Calif., – September 5, 2008 – EA Mobile™, a division of Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ:ERTS), today announced that Spore™ Origins, an original game for the iPhone™ and iPod® touch, will be available this month. The game takes full advantage of the devices’ built-in accelerometer as players tilt, turn and twist their way through a world made of primordial ooze. In conjunction with the launch of Spore Origins, EA Mobile also announces a list of nine games in development for both the iPhone and iPod Touch platforms.

Eat-or-be-eaten in Spore Origins! Designed specifically for the iPhone and iPod touch, Spore Origins uses the platforms’ motion-sensing technology to let gamers navigate a primordial tidepool on a quest to evolve. Feast on the weak and flee from the strong through two exciting modes and 35 challenging levels. Pinch, pull, and poke your creation in the Creature Editor, customizing the texture, shape and body parts to improve your offense, defense, perception and movement as you evolve over millions of years.

““We’re really excited to bring Spore Origins to the iPhone and iPod touch,” said Travis Boatman, Vice President Worldwide Studios at EA Mobile. “By leveraging the unique capabilities of these devices, players can customize their own creatures and shape their destiny in an exciting evolutionary journey. ”

EA Mobile today also announced nine titles in development for the iPhone and iPod touch, pending regional availability. This list includes YAHTZEE Adventures, EA Mini Golf, Lemonade Tycoon™, Mahjong, MONOPOLY: Here & Now The World Edition, SimCity, Tiger Woods PGA TOUR 09, Need for Speed™ Undercover, and The Sims™ 3.

Spore Origins will be available globally from the Apple App Store on iPhone and iPod touch, or by simply visiting www.eamobile.com from an iPhone. Additional versions of Spore Origins are also available for the iPod, as well as other mobile devices. All iPod games are available for the third-generation iPod nano, iPod classic and fifth-generation iPod and can be sent as a gift using the iTunes gifting feature (www.itunes.com).

The Price: $9.99

The Verdict: Tetris isn't exactly the most ambitious project for a company like EA Games. That's probably why the company's iPhone port is just, well, overdone. A good Tetris implementation - one that would have been wildly successful on its own - wasn't enough for EA, who've loaded this port up with so much crap that it sometimes doesn't even run. EA obviously wanted to use a bit of the iPhone's rendering capabilities, but the graphics are gaudy to the point of distraction. Starting or resuming a basic game takes quite a while because of the layers of menus and loading screens, and the secondary gameplay modes and Magic Mode tools will be ignored by most. On our 3G iPhone, the app would often freeze at startup, a problem that has been reported elsewhere among iPhone and iPod owners. An update is forthcoming that should address stability issues as well as introduce a feature that allows you to draw your upcoming shape directly.

These inspired features, though, are sullied by the showy, buggy execution. Anyone looking for a simple, clean port like Tris (from the jailbreak days. See you soon, Tris...) should probably pass on this $9.99 monster as you can expect a decent competitor to pop up at a lower price point, if not for free. Also, there are already web apps that offer a traditional (though gestureless) Tetris experience in your browser that don't have a 40 second startup time. One more sticky point: if you exit out of the game to check email or take a call and return, it will save your game state. But to start playing again you have to sit through 10 seconds of the intro movie. Freaking annoying and a waste of battery.

[iPhone App Marathon Review]