Retro Rip-off -- Classic Games on the iPhone Part II

"Block Breaker Deluxe 2" (aka "Arkanoid," "Breakout")
Atari tried to chase all the "Breakout" clones off the iPhone App Store, but that's like trying to keep flies off a rotting piece of meat. As of today, more than enough ball-paddle-brick games remain to satisfy even the most perverse kinetic games fetishist. Gameloft's "legit" ripoff actually does both "Arkanoid" and "Breakout" one better with more impressive power-ups. Come to think of it, wasn't "Arkanoid" a "Breakout" ripoff, too? And then again, wasn't "Breakout" a rip-off of the old childhood pastime of throwing a ball against a brick wall trying to break stuff?

"Lemonade Stand" (aka "Lemonade Stand")
Is a faithful recreation of an Apple II game really a rip-off? No, but we're so excited about this, we're going to call it one. The concept -- finding the right ingredients and mix that will satisfy your daily lemonade-chugging neighborhood. Has some similarities to the market-driven cocaine-and-heroin-economy-simulator "Drug Wars." But sugar is so much sweeter, especially up the nose.

"Vector Blaster" (aka "Tempest")
No, of course it's not a total act of thievery against Atari's vector arcade classic. In Tempest, you move around the 3-D space tunnel. In Vector Blaster, the 3-D space tunnel moves around you. Get it? Totally different. The good news is, it's cheap and we don't care, now do we?

"Tris" (aka "Tetris," dearly departed)
No matter how many drop-the-blocks-and-make-stuff-happen puzzles that have been unleashed on us over the past decades, Russia's solitary gaming masterpiece, "Tetris," continues to make people drop money on it. EA has its official for-pay version on the iPhone, but the superior version never cost a dime. Of course, it was also a rip-off, and now it has been removed from the App Store by EA, or by those evil Russians.