It’s out! HandCircus’ Rolando 2: Quest for the Golden Orchid ($9.99) has been released, and is now available for purchase at the iTunes App Store.

Rolando 2 is the greatly anticipated sequel to ngmoco’s hit action-puzzler Rolando, released late last year for the iPhone and the iPod Touch. Rolando quickly became one of the App Store’s star titles, winning a number of awards and serving as a benchmark for games that followed in its wake.

Players can expect several new gameplay elements in Rolando 2, as the Rolando characters can now fly, float, and command a number of vehicles. Rolando 2 features 45 levels of platforming action, and sports a new 2.5D look that adds greater depth to its tropical environments.

Every Thursday, FingerGaming rounds up the most popular free iPhone and iPod Touch applications, as current that day on the iTunes App Store. This week’s top titles are:

1. Wild West Pinball
2. Fast & Furious The Game: Test Drive
3. Target Practice
4. Paper Toss
5. Crazy Penguin Catapult 2 Free
6. Cops & Robbers Lite
7. Chase the Dot
8. Bloons Lite
9. 3D Rollercoaster Rush Free
10. StoneLoops! of Jurassica Lite

I-Play’s recently released free version of Fast & Furious The Game nearly tops the App Store’s free charts this week, but comes up short against last week’s winner Wild West Pinball. The firing range simulator Target Practice moves up to third place this week, as Paper Toss drops to fourth.

Crazy Penguin Catapult 2 Free finds a surge of popularity this week, climbing up to fifth place after finishing ninth in last week’s results. Glu’s Cops & Robbers Lite enters the charts at sixth place this week, leaving Chase the Dot, Bloons Lite, 3D Rollercoaster Rush Free, and StoneLoops! to round out the top ten.

The Muteki Corporation’s The Battle of Pirate Bay ($0.99) is now available for download from the iTunes App Store. In this creative real-time strategy title, players take control of a team of grizzled lawyers as they attempt to defend the creators of a popular Swedish torrent tracker.

Man, I wish. The Battle of Pirate Bay is actually a high-seas strategy title in which players control a team of ships as they attempt to defend their homeland from an encroaching horde of grungy pirates.

Each of the three player-controlled ships possesses its own strengths and weaknesses, and it’s up to the player to position each ship effectively and keep them stocked with ammunition throughout the raid.

It’s also got Wind Waker smoke effects. What more could you want? The Muteki Corporation’s official trailer is below.

It’s Faceball! Xytanics’ debut iPhone offering is MazeHunt ($3.99), a multiplayer arena shooter in the vein of MIDI Maze, which was released on the Game Boy and the Super NES in the ’90s as Faceball 2000.

Xytanics is positioning MazeHunt as a bloodless, gore-free take on the first-person shooter genre — like Faceball, player avatars take the form of floating spheroids with facial features. MazeHunt’s gameplay also recalls Faceball’s simplicity, offering a basic multiplayer experience that contains “no power-ups, no health packs, or fancy weapons.”

Up to 16 players may compete simultaneously over WLAN in any of the game’s 15 included maps. Three modes of play are included — First at Limit, Last Team Standing, and Majority. A free demo version is also available.

• Price: $0.99 (Get it)
• Version: 1.0
• Official Site: Mediatonic

[2009-07-04 Update: Mediatonic has released a patch which solves the crashing issue players have been reporting. I have adjusted the score to account for the fix.]

When it’s not busy crashing, Must.Eat.Birds. is frantic, silly, and just plain fun. Players are tasked with defending their spread of delicious picnic sweets against hungry birds parachuting down from the sky.

The controls are simple: pull back on the rubber band of the sling shot and let go to propel large Nomsters towards the sky, hoping to strike some parachuting birds on the way. As long as the parachuting birds don’t reach the picnic spread, things are great.

Levels get harder with more falling birds and birds with egg-shell armor. Players can fire additional Nomsters while previous ones are still ricocheting across the screen, and if one Nomster hits another, they combine to become a larger Nomster.

The gameplay is simple, brainless fun — when it works. The game wouldn’t stop crashing on me half the time. This was especially apparent when going from MISSION to CHALLENGE in the main menu. It’s frustrating when a game that’s as simple as Must.Eat.Birds. just doesn’t work.

The menu in a game isn’t something I usually point out, but in Must.Eat.Birds., it’s quite notable. The menu makes the game look like it was hastily translated from a Japanese game. The English translations of menu choices are slapped haphazardly on, not even in the same font. It makes the menu look like just a place-holder.

Must.Eat.Birds., while enjoyable when it actually runs, illustrates a big problem with the App Store. Developers are too busy putting apps out quickly and not putting enough time into quality assurance. A game, no matter what price, should never crash as much as this game has.

Nickelodeon announced today that its AddictingGames brand will debut in the iTunes App Store later this month. The move will bring several popular Flash games from the AddictingGames free online games portal to the iPhone and the iPod Touch.

The initial batch of iPhone releases includes iParkingIt, a port of the AddictingGames car parking simulator Parking Lot. Parking Lot remains one of the most-played titles at AddictingGames.com, and has spawned several sequels since its release.

Other titles planned for release through the month of July include the United States geography quiz 50 States and the military-themed strategy title World Wars.

In addition to releasing ports of existing Flash titles, Nickelodeon is opening its AddictingGames cross-platform publishing network to iPhone developers. Nickelodeon notes that games supported by the AddictingGames network will have expanded promotional reach and will be granted access to the platform’s social gaming features.

“The iPhone is perfectly suited for our easy-to-play, fresh, fun games which together present a pretty powerful combination,” said Nickelodeon Kids and Family Games Group General Manager Dave Williams. “With the AddictingGames iNetwork, we are extending our relationships with developers to the iPhone platform, and are giving them a new promotional vehicle for their games.”

Nickelodeon plans to promote its iPhone titles with advertisements at MTV Networks-affiliated websites and through “iPhone Game of the Week” spotlights at AddictingGames.com and Shockwave.com. AddictingGames.com will also feature “Download now on iPhone” promotional offers for related iPhone titles.

Developed by iPhone newcomer Blitz Games, Droplitz is a pipe-based puzzler that combines gameplay elements from Pipe Dream and Gunpey. Players must guide a stream of water droplets through a series of rotatable tubes, ensuring an uninterrupted flow between the leaking pipes at the top of the screen and the reservoirs below.

Having played a bit of the Xbox Live Arcade version of Droplitz (or “Dr. Splitz,” as the title screen reads at first glance), I can see the game being an excellent match for the iPhone’s touch screen. While the gameplay takes a bit of time to fully grasp — those three-way pipes are jerks — it’s not nearly as frustrating as Pipe Dream was, and the soothing music and understated background effects only enhance the experience.

Droplitz includes three modes of gameplay — the level-based Normal mode, a Hardcore mode that features a ramping difficulty level, and an endless and goalless Infinite mode.

Cuttlefish Industries announced the upcoming release of the Cuttlefish Engine, a cross-platform game engine and development platform for Apple’s iPhone, T-Mobile’s G1, and BlackBerry mobile devices.

Using Cuttlefish’s visual designer and editor functionality, developers will be able to build a complete mobile game and instantly view its simulated performance on any of the three supported devices.

Once a game’s cross-platform performance and compatibility has been verified, the Cuttlefish Engine may then generate a game package ready to upload to Apple’s App Store and the Android Marketplace.

The Cuttlefish Engine will be available for PC and Mac platforms. No release date for the engine or its visual designer component has yet been announced.

Every Tuesday, FingerGaming rounds up the most popular paid iPhone and iPod Touch applications, as current that day on the iTunes App Store. This week’s top titles are:

1. Hero of Sparta ($0.99)
2. Sally’s Spa ($0.99)
3. StoneLoops! of Jurassica ($0.99)
4. Flight Control ($0.99)
5. Real Soccer 2009 ($0.99)
6. Knights Onrush ($2.99)
7. F.A.S.T. — Fleet Air Superiority Training! ($4.99)
8. Asphalt 4: Elite Racing ($0.99)
9. Bejeweled 2 ($2.99)
10. StickWars ($0.99)

Gameloft’s Hero of Sparta surges to the top of this week’s App Store sales chart, boosted by a drop in price to 99 cents. Sally’s Spa remains a popular pick at second place, as StoneLoops! of Jurassica moves up a spot to take third.

A number of other titles also reap the benefits of recent price drops. Gameloft captures two more chart spots this week with Real Soccer 2009 and Asphalt 4, and a weekend-long sale puts Chillingo’s Knights Onrush in the top ten for the first time. Former chart leader StickWars falls to tenth place, while The Sims 3 drops out of chart range.

Zio Interactive’s Hello Kitty Parachute Paradise ($5.99) is the first Hello Kitty-licensed game to appear on the iPhone. The game finds Kitty parachuting through several levels full of floating sky fruit (the tastiest kind of fruit). Players must tilt the iPhone to make Hello Kitty collect as much fruit as possible.

Also included is a “Sky High” minigame, in which players launch Kitty skyward in an attempt to break worldwide leaderboard records.

Items earned in either game can be transferred to the “My Room” mode, a miniature social networking feature that allows players to customize scenes using Sanrio characters and share them with friends.