Free Apps Roundup for February 1, 2013

This week on the Free Apps Roundup: Wow, it’s a great weak to fill up your iOS devices with free new games and apps. Want to tune up your home theater setup? THX has your back with a new tune-up app that can help you get the best experience possible. If you’re looking for games, SlotZ Racer 2 is a super simple slot car racing game. Mutant Mudds is a pixelated 2.5D platformer. Heck, Apple even let a MAME emulator on to the App Store this week and didn’t bother to take it back down. Then there’s a new Ghostbusters game, an app for sharing looping videos and much much more.

The Top Three:

• THX tune-up – Having a nice TV and sound system is good, but you aren’t getting the best experience possible unless you tune it. THX is a name you should know and trust for a quality experience. This app has custom video test patterns and carefully selected photos and tutorials to help you adjust and confirm the best picture settings on your display based on your room lighting. To get any real use out of this app, you’ll need a TV and either an Apple TV or a digital AV adapter.
• SlotZ Racer 2 HD – The original and best slot car racing game for iOS is back. The controls are the same, just one button to worry about, but now you can unlock and race 25 different cars and bikes to race them around the world on 31 different tracks. You can even create your own tracks and share them with your friends online. Or maybe just download tracks that others have made (including hundreds from the original SlotZ Racer).
• Mutant Mudds – If you love pixels, platformers and 8-bit graphics, you’re in for a treat. This game follows Max, the hero, who’s merely a 2D sprite, but has found a way to leap into the third dimension with his trusty jetpack. He’s armed with a heavy-duty water cannon and is determined to defeat the Mutant Mudds. There are 60 hard-as-steel levels over 5 pixelated worlds. But it’s only free for a limited time, so go download it now!

Free:

• Baseball Superstars 2013 – The Baseball Superstars series is back and better than ever. This time the graphics are in crisp, clear HD, the batting and pitching moves have been enhanced, and so have the My Pitcher and My batter modes. It’s an epic baseball RPG experience with new challenging and rewarding quest systems.
• Pixel People – Welcome to Utopia where you create the city and the residents. Yes, that’s right, you get clones and you’ll need to splice genes of other residents in to combine skills and create new pixel people to help your city thrive.
• Gridlee – While this game appears to be just a game that was never released as an arcade machine, it’s much more. It’s actually a MAME emulator, but it’ll take some work to get it to function as such. I’m honestly surprised this app is still up on the App Store, so you might just want to download it in a hurry.
• Ghostbusters – It’s Slime Time. New York City has called you to get the ghosts out of the Big Apple. Build your own team of Ghostbusters from the ground up. Research and upgrade your equipment to keep busting ghosts.
• Vine – Make a scene – Share your life in motion. Create short, beautiful looping videos and share them for all to see.

Free for a limited time:

• Wikihood People Plus – It’s like Wikipedia for your neighborhood, or more specifically, the people in it. Basically, this app takes info from Wikipedia and restructures it to focus on people, places, and relationships between them.
• Penultimate – The original and most popular handwriting app for iPad. It’s like writing on paper, with none of the paper, plus all of the features you’d expect from a digital format. The app is now fully integrated with Evernote, so you can take notes, sketches, or anything else you can scribble and have it anywhere you have an internet connection.
• ArtRage for iPhone – If notes aren’t your thing, maybe art is. Express your artistic side with day to use painting and drawing tools that work just like the real thing with this app.
• MP3 Recorder – This is a voice memo app that directly records in MP3 format. It supports iCloud and will even allow you to attach things to voice memos, like notes, tags, photos, etc.
• runtastic PRO – Here’s another running app to keep you motivated. This one gives you voice feedback during your workouts, can track you live for your friends to follow along, can allow your friends to cheer you on during a run and much more.
• City Maps 2 Go – Do you worry about knowing where you are in another city and don’t want to depend on an internet connection to have maps? This app is totally for you.
• Backbreaker 2: Vengence – They’re back with better graphics, physical animations and more fun. Yes, this football game has tackling, trucking, jumping and more. In Vengeance Mode you get to take down the ball carrier. In Tackle Alley mode you have to fight your way to the end zone.
• ScrapPad – Do you like scrapbooks but hate the ridiculous cost of all that paper and other supplies? Maybe you just hate how much physical space it takes up. Either way, this app can give you experience of making a scrapbook without all the printing of images, buying of supplies or filling of closets.
• National Geographic World Atlas – Learning is fun, and don’t let anyone tell you differently. This app has state-of-the-art National Geographic maps in HD, infographics, up-to-the-minute weather, currency conversions, high resolution images and much more.
• Unknown Orbit – Float, jump and fly around a surreal, 3D planetary system as a comet. You read that right. In this game, you’re a comet and you are apparently sentient. Never mind the plausibility, because this game is great leisurely fun. You use the hills and valleys of the planet below you to build momentum and launch yourself into deep space. But remember that you’re a comet, which means the stars are melting away your icy core. So be sure to absorb some snow balls to prolong your lifetime.