Hopefully, you fought in the Legendary Wars last year on Apple’s iDevices. The undead forces of the Netherworld were attacking, after all, and it was up to you to save Legendaria from their onslaught. Tremendous fun. But wouldn’t it also be fun to see things from the monsters’ point of view? Of course it would, and that’s why we now have Monster Wars from developer Liv Games.

If you have a gruesomely inquisitive nature, and if those around you won’t mind you muttering as you sound out the pictures, then Say What You See: Music Fest (SWYS) is the game for you. Chock full of quirky art that will make you smile and enough free-form play to keep you entertained for hours, SWYS is a game that is going places, and one you will want to keep close by.

Frotz allows you to play text adventures on the iPod touch (or iPhone). It comes pre-loaded with several new and fun games written by fans of interactive fiction, and there are other games as well. Getting other games is relatively easy, since Frotz contains a gateway to the Interactive Fiction Database (IFDB), where many other people have uploaded (for free), the stories they’ve created. Once you find a game you like, you can download and install it to Frotz from inside the program itself.

Here are the show notes for episode 2 of the Appletellcast. This week we’ve got rumors, debate on iPod game pricing, an iTunes tip, and Twitter info! Check it out and be sure to subscribe to us in iTunes so you can have us automatically downloaded every week.

One of the unfortunate side effects of the iTunes App Store is that it’s spoiling the chirrens. If a game costs anything more than…free…the product comments area will be full of people whining and sniveling about how the app is overpriced. It got so bad that Apple had to limit the number of people who review an app to those who have actually, you know, used it. But if you’re not afraid or embarrassed to click on that “iPod Games” link in the iTunes store, do so now to read some customer reviews. I’ll wager that the majority of the comments are complaints that $4.99 is too much to pay for a game. I know times are bad right now, but come on! $4.99? You’re hard pressed to get a meal at McDonald’s for $4.99 these days.

Did you all know they’re still making games for the click wheel iPods. It’s true! Some new ones have even been released this year! It’s okay if you forgot about this darkened corner of the iTunes Store. Once we find someone to hold our hand, we’ll venture back there to review these new games. In the meantime, there are some we’ve been playing for a while that haven’t been reviewed at Appletell. Case in point? Mini Golf from EA Mobile.

As the iPhone begins to shine as a portable gaming device, Apple plans to have a “premium games” area within the App Store for $19.99 titles. This move would separate the big titles from the silly $0.99 apps, but would only be open to the main publishers such as Electronic Arts. While this seems a good move, it would mean that independent publishers such as Ethan Nicholas, creator of iShoot, would be held back with the thousands of other applications.

I don’t pretend to know much about the inner workings of Freeverse, but I can say this; they like their labs puzzling, and their monkeys burning. Burning Monkey Puzzle Lab came out for the Macintosh back in 2000, and it was pretty good. Although it featured various single player games (most notable of which was “Zen” mode, in which the tone settled down and the blocks never sped up), it really shined in multiplayer versus mode. Here, it was no longer enough to just align the descending balls; you needed to line then up in a certain way so you could send “bad” balls to your opponent. The games were more intense, more fun, and (thank heavens) shorter.

It’s not at all surprising, then, that Freeverse selected Burning Monkey Puzzle Lab (BMPL) as one of their first Mac to iPhone ports. The iPhone screen orientation is perfect for falling blocks and balls and what have you, and the graphics are well suited to the iPhone’s capabilities. It’s just a great match. And yet, BMPL for the iPhone/iPod touch left me wanting.

Fact: In movies, whenever there’s a battle against the devil, the heroes will be Catholic, and a good portion of the confrontation will take place in a beautiful church or some sort of holy ground with all manner of decorative crosses and windows and a life-size corpus with bleeding eyes.

Another Fact: In video games, it’s okay if that same battle takes place in a mansion over a game of pinball, and your religion is irrelevant. Although, considering this game is constantly telling you, “I am the devil,” I wonder if Catholics aren’t maybe better equipped to hit multiple jackpots?

Regardless, pinball fans may get a kick out of Mystery Mansion Pinball, as may iPod owners looking for a quick way to kill some time with a game that fits quite well within the iPod’s capabilities and control scheme.

I recently wrote an article for Appletell in which I wondered if the App Store / iPhone combination would kill iPod gaming. In the article, I opined that it will, and probably should, but that it saddened me to say so. For one reason or another, developers just never figured out how to program games for the click wheelbinterface, or what games to port over to the iPod. A few games stood out, a few were terrible, and the majority were simply mediocre.

Then, suddenly, along comes Square Enix. Square Enix of Final Fantasy fame. Square Enix of Valkyrie Profile fame. Square Enix of Dragon Quest fame. Square Enix has released some of the best and most beloved RPG franchises—be they action, tactical or what have you—on pretty much every platform worth mentioning since the NES. And now, with the release of Song Summoner: The Unsung Heroes, they’re on the iPod. Just having this company acknowledging the iPod is big enough, that they’ve also released arguably the best iPod game yet makes it all the more satisfying.

Full review after the break.