Beat Hazard Ultra, the procedurally generated twin-stick shooter by 1-man indie powerhouse Cold Beam Games, is now available as a Universal App for iOS devices. As with the PSN, XBLA and Steam versions, Beat Hazard Ultra uses music stored on your device to generate its levels. The game can also use streaming radio apps as its musical muse, a feature which is unique to this version.

Beat Hazard Ultra supports Game Center leader boards and achievements, although the PSN version's online multiplayer fails to make the jump to iOS. Between Survival, Boss Rush and Chill Out modes, though, it certainly sounds like you'll get your dollar's worth out of the title, which happens to be the app's limited introductory price.

For some, Valentine's Day is a sweet occasion. Happy couples the world over will be lounging back, nibbling on an array of chocolate delights before partaking in the annual somersault contest that ensues. You know, like how our parents used to do before they got all old and stuff.

For us loners, the holiday is a day of self-indulgent sobbing and darkness, but it doesn't have to be. If you're in the market for some iOS or Android games, you can snuggle up to Sonic and company through Sega's Valentine's Day sale starting today and running through the 14th.

Sonic the Hedgehog 4 Episode 1 and Sonic CD lead the charge of discounted downloads for iOS and Android users, both half off, while iDevices also see considerable price cuts down to $.99 on Streets of Rage, Golden Axe and Super Monkey Ball. Gunstar Hero, Altered Beast and Virtua Fighter 2 are also on sale for a buck each.

For the full list of what's on sale, hit the source link below.

Square Enix has released another Taito shmup on the App Store, and as with pretty much all Square releases, we can't help but be aghast at the price. Given the source material, however, maybe $11 isn't that bad.

Dariusburst Second Prologue is based on both the PSP Dariusburst and its arcade followup, Another Chronicle -- the two latest iterations of Taito's long-lived shmup series about shooting enormous robot fish. The PSP game content is all here, along with a remixed mode with new enemy patterns and stuff from Another Chronicle. There are also four new tracks by Taito's Zuntata band.

In other words, if it were on PSP, there'd be no question of its value. We admit we're still kind of balking at the App Store price anyway. That's just how the market is on that platform!

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Yesterday Edmund McMillen and Tommy Refenes of Team Meat dropped a gigantic, raw bomb on Twitter (gross), announcing their intent to strip down Super Meat Boy and rebuild it completely for mobile touch devices. They were vague on details apart from an intent to create a brand new game in the Super Meat Boy universe, and that they definitely wouldn't use "shitty touch controls."

We thought they were being coy, but it turns out they don't know much more about the touchscreen version than we do. It's still in the engine phase of development, McMillen told Joystiq, and they're pretty much winging it, playing with things that work and throwing out ideas that don't -- even if that includes the entire game.

"I mean, honestly, this is simply a challenge for us," McMillen said. "It's easy to poo-poo a new system because of its horrible use of touchscreen on ported titles; it's harder to attempt to try and figure out a design that works and make something worth checking out.

"So that's basically what we are doing -- no idea how it will turn out -- but Tommy and I wanted to jump back into dev again with something that isn't going to take a year-plus to make, so prototyping this idea seemed most appropriate and inspired."

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Super Meat Boy has seen success on Xbox Live, PC and Mac, but as is often the case while playing SMB, Team Meat have decided that's not good enough. Edmund McMillen and Tommy Refenes of Team Meat announced via Twitter today that they're rebuilding Super Meat Boy from scratch for a potential launch on mobile touch devices.

In a six-part tweetfest, Team Meat disclosed the following details: The touch title will be remade from scratch and won't play like Super Meat Boy; it will be a larger, more traditional game, unlike titles such as Doodle Jump; and they promised it won't use "shitty touch controls."

"if you liked SMB im sure you will enjoy this (if its good enough to continue on :) ) we just had a few cool ideas and wanted a challange," one of Team Meat's tweets reads.

Team Meat said that if the project fails and turns out to not be any fun, they'll scrap it and move on to the next idea, which we can only assume is a Super Meat Boy live-action point-and-click adventure title in 3D. Those adventure things are all the rage these days, we're told.

The European Union provides us a small-scale glimpse into the potential functions of a truly global society -- and more recently, a global society in crisis. The unified currency of the EU, the Euro, was on the brink of collapse recently and all of its member countries are still running damage control.

Now, France in particular is facing another monetary hurdle, as its tax incentive for game development has expired and casued "genuine concern" the EU may not renew the exception that would reinstate it. State aid is normally forbidden under EU law, but in some cases it is allowed -- without an exception, game-development tax incentives would be banned in all EU countries, including France and the UK, Develop reports.

French developer Quantic Dream (Heavy Rain) said that if the tax break is not reinstated it would relocate its operations to Canada, which does offer incentives for development companies, Develop adds. And according to TIGA, The UK's game-development workforce -- which sees no tax breaks -- fell 10 percent between 2008 and 2011, with 41 percent of its workers relocating overseas to countries such as Canada.

Sony has announced its PlayMemories video editing software for the Japanese PS3, following an announcement in Europe. Along with this news comes details of the services provided with the app, including five gigabytes of free, cloud-based storage.

PlayMemories Studio (that's the PS3 app) users will be able to upload their videos and photos to the online service, called PlayMemories Online. From there, they'll be able to view and manage that media through the PC-based PlayMemories Home and iOS/Android PlayMemories Mobile apps. So if you only want images to enter your eyes through a Sony portal, you can quite nearly accomplish that.

Having recently optioned rights to the Fighting Fantasy series of books from Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson, Epic Games is putting an interesting spin on its Make Something Unreal Live contest.

Here's how it works: four different start-up studios will each select one book from the fantasy series and make a game for Epic, to be released on the App Store sometime this spring. The winning team walks away with a free commercial Unreal Engine 3 license for iOS.

The books chosen are The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, The Citadel of Chaos, Deathtrap Dungeon and Armies of Death. Each title will premiere at Gadget Show Live 2012, which takes place from April 10 through April 15 in Birmingham, UK.

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Yesterday we got a chance to get our eyes on the upcoming Mass Effect iOS game, Infiltrator, during an EA press event. But while there's not much to say about the game (it's a third-person shooter set in the Mass Effect universe), it sure was pretty! Take a look for yourself in the gallery just below.

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Australian developer Halfbrick is flying high on the success of its Fruit Ninja and Jetpack Joyride franchises. Chief Marketing Officer Phil Larsen told us at the DICE conference in Las Vegas today that Fruit Ninja Kinect has reached a half-million sales and has been a very successful console experiment for the company. The company also plans to continue supporting Fruit Ninja on iOS with more updates rather than cannibalize its momentum with a sequel.

As for Jetpack Joyride, which went free to play in mid-December, Larsen notes the game has seen significant growth since the change.

"There's an update coming in the next month," Larsen said about Jetpack Joyride. "It's the biggest one we've done so far."

He told us the previously $1 app reached about 1 million paid sales before going free and has since seen 13 million downloads as a free product. He estimates about 5-10 percent of customers will spend at least a dollar on the app through its in-game store, so revenue has been higher since the game went "free."