Voltron

Back in the 80s, AKA the glory years of toys, you had to own (or at least know someone who owned) the following: the G.I. Joe aircraft carrier, Castle Grayskull, the Millennium Falcon (we'll let it slide if you had an AT-AT) and finally, Voltron, Defender of the Universe. Like most toys released during this time, Voltron was big, dangerous (if the metal lions didn't kill someone, the robot's pointy sword probably would) and one of the coolest things we'd seen. Those five lions (they came in a set that only parents knew the price of) joined to form one of the most kick ass robots in existence. We religiously watched the episodes and woke our parents up at 5:30 AM, Christmas morning, to open one of the greatest gifts we have ever received.

For whatever reason, no one made a game about this robot's exploits, until now. Sony Pictures Television, God bless them, just dropped Voltron onto the iPhone, and it's actually good. True, part of our enthusiasm comes from hearing the authentic theme music, soundtracks from the cartoons and seeing the official intro, but there's a quality video game in there to boot, one that's worth every penny of its $3.99 MSRP.

Voltron's a 2-D action adventure romp where you play as all five members of Voltron and battle the nefarious King Zarkon and his cronies, as well as humongous Robeasts. Missions (30 total) include rescuing hostages, destroying androids and locating team members, not exactly the most thrilling objectives, but Sony makes up for that with a phenomenal presentation, excellent on-screen controls and of course, the ability to form up and create Voltron, where the game goes from isometric perspective to 2-D fighter. From there, you mash buttons to annihilate whatever Robeast gets in your way, using Voltron's Argon Force Field and Blazing Sword; you cannot, however, move Voltron left and right across the screen.

In between, you'll enjoy an all new story and integrated clips from the series, as well as chatter between characters. You can even earn achievements (beating the game, killing a set number of enemies, for example) and post them to your Facebook profile.

On top of that, the game comes with Zarkon's Robeast Arena, where you essentially control unlocked Robeasts and make use of their special abilities. These include Elephant, Cyclops, Giant Tree and other monsters.

As we said, missions can get a little dry, but that's easy to overlook while humming along to the music, unleashing missiles on a bunch of evildoers and even pausing/un-pausing the game, where doing that causes the show's host to say, as only he can, "We now return to Voltron: Defender of the Universe". We nearly flipped upon hearing that.

Simply put, Voltron is the game we always wanted. The lions, the music, the humongous robot, the characters; Sony did a great job bringing it all together. That said, we strongly encourage you to download and enjoy.