Conversion of a cult favourite that came out on the PS2 and, I believe, the Xbox. (I had the PS2 version, but didn’t play it very much – I don’t even seem to have blogged about it.)

It’s a fairly impressive conversion, too. There’s quite a lot of slowdown on my 3GS – no iPhone 4 for me… ever, I doubt – but it’s by no means unplayable. The controls also work really well – there’s been a lot of thought put into these. Shame the instructions still talk about the PS2 buttons at times, but it’s not a big deal. The Lite version also has a lot of game in it. I’ve not managed to finish it yet.

The Red Star Lite

Mostly it's a scrolling beat/shoot-em-up, but sometimes it's a straight bullet hell shooter.

The main problem is that the game lacks checkpoints. Every time I’ve died I’ve had to start back the beginning of the first level, had to read the same text, had to fight the same enemies, had to face off against the same mid-boss, etc. I remember it being slightly shocking on the PS2, on the iPhone it just doesn’t work.

So why do I keep going back?