Konami isn’t the only publisher to slash the prices of its App Store offerings this weekend. G5 Entertainment has unleashed its own round of discounts, with popular titles like Supermarket Mania, Stand O’ Food, and Mahjongg Artifacts 2 now available for 99 cents each.

Glenn Corpes’s excellent flarecraft racer Ground Effect is also 99 cents this weekend. Other titles getting the 99-cent treatment include the side-scrolling platformer Blade Angel, physics puzzler Enigmo 2, and the twin-stick zombie shooter Garters & Ghouls.

• Ground Effect ($2.99 -> $0.99)
• Enigmo 2 ($2.99 -> $0.99)

• Garters & Ghouls ($4.99 -> $2.99)
• Sky Defender ($1.99 -> Free)

• Supermarket Mania ($2.99 -> $0.99)
• Success Story ($2.99 -> $0.99)

• Mahjongg Artifacts 2 ($2.99 -> $0.99)
• Stand O’ Food ($2.99 -> $0.99)

• Dragon Portals ($4.99 -> $0.99)
• Moonz ($4.99 -> $0.99)

• Aves ($2.99 -> Free)
• Beneath a Steel Sky: Remastered ($4.99 -> $0.99)

• Blade Angel ($2.99 -> $0.99)
• Loopy Laboratory ($4.99 -> $0.99)

• Mecho Wars ($4.99 -> $2.99)
• Stickman Movie ($0.99 -> Free)

[Credit goes to Cheap Ass Gamer for reporting many of this weekend's featured titles. All sales are temporary, and will end at the publisher's discretion.]

In this round-up, Gamasutra highlights some of the notable jobs posted in its industry-leading game jobs section this week, including positions from Relic Entertainment, Zoe Mode and more.

Each position posted by employers will appear on the main Gamasutra job board, and appear in the site’s daily and weekly newsletters, reaching our readers directly.

It will also be cross-posted for free across its network of submarket sites, which includes content sites focused on online worlds, cellphone games, ’serious games’, independent games and more.

Some of the notable jobs posted this week include:

Relic Entertainment: Senior Director Of Development
“The Senior Director of Development executes the developmental strategy of the studio in accordance with the GM and THQ’s strategic and tactical objectives. Responsible for ensuring project development achieves operating objectives and financial goals; ensuring development efficiency and product timeliness, and otherwise ensuring consistency and process improvements across projects.”

2K Games: Channel Marketing Manager
“2K Games develops and publishes top-line PC, console, and handheld entertainment software, with a strong concentration in three distinct categories: sports, high profile licenses and specialty product. Some of the hit titles in 2K’s lineup include the critically-praised Bioshock, Sid Meier’s Civilization IV, and The Darkness<. 2K Games is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc.”

Raven Software/Activision: Senior Game Designer
“Raven Software is looking for a Senior Designer for our latest unannounced action title, primarily focusing on combat systems and encounter design. Designers will work with the rest of the team to create and implement combat systems, AI behaviors, and scripted events in the game world. Additionally, the Senior Designer will act as the arbiter of quality for all the combat sequences in the game, working closely with other designers to make sure we have consistent, high-quality combat encounters throughout the game.”

Sony Computer Entertainment America: Maya Technical Director
“Be a part of the most exciting and innovating computer entertainment in North America. Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA) markets the PlayStation® family of products and develops, publishes, markets, and distributes software for the PS one™ console, the PlayStation®2 and PlayStation®3 computer entertainment systems and the PlayStation Portable (PSP™).”

Zoe Mode: Senior Technical Artist
“As a Senior Technical Artist, you’ll define and drive the technical vision and art pipelines for multiple games throughout the studio. You will work closely with both the Lead Artist and engineering staff to create powerful, yet easy to use, systems for artists and designers to use in our ground breaking games.”

To browse hundreds of similar jobs, and for more information on searching, responding to, or posting game industry-relevant jobs to the top source for jobs in the business, please visit Gamasutra’s job board now.

Just had this one pointed out to me and it seems like a crazy-good deal. iPhone developer Triniti Interactive has released All-in-1 Gamebox, a 99-cent app that collects 14 of its past App Store releases.

Note that this isn’t some quick cash-in compilation, either. Every title featured in the Gamebox is a fully-featured game that has previously been released as an individual app. You may recognize some of the more popular games in the collection — Bowman Defense reached the top 100 best-selling apps chart soon after its release, and iSniper even spent some time in the top 10.

Here’s the full list of games included in 14-in-1 Gamebox:

• 1945 Ace Destroyer
• 2009 Road Master
• 3-2-1 Jump!
• Ancient War
• Bowman Defense
• Bubble Master
• Climber
• Get Rich
• iSign Fortunetelling 365
• iSniper
• iUFO Catcher
• Jailbreaker
• King Fish
• Operation iWolf

Triniti Interactive announced that the next update, which has already been submitted to Apple, will add iKong Fu to the lineup of playable games. The company also warns that the 99-cent sale may not last long, so you’d better jump on this one soon if any of the included games appeal to you.

MikaMobile’s side-scrolling shooter Zombieville USA was one of the iPhone’s biggest hits this year, and charted among the App Store’s biggest sellers for weeks on end. This week, the company revealed its follow-up title: the brawler OMG Pirates!

Visually, OMG Pirates! has a lot in common with Zombieville, judging from the screenshots released so far. MikaMobile is adding a variety of new gameplay elements, however — including a super gauge and upgradable character stats — and claims stylistic inspiration from titles like Castle Crashers and Double Dragon.

OMG Pirates! will be submitted to Apple this weekend. MikaMobile has not revealed any details regarding its rumored sequels WTF Monkeys! and BRB Robots!

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. Touch Pets Dogs
2. Family Guy: Uncensored Free
3. TowerMadness Zero: 3D Tower Defense
4. Hangman Classic Free
5. Link4 Online
6. Rat on the Run
7. Paper Toss
8. Unblock Me Free
9. Eliminate Pro
10. Fling Free

ngmoco’s Touch Pets Dogs soars to the top of the free app chart in its debut week, pushing last week’s chart winner Family Guy: Uncensored to second place. TowerMadness Zero moves up to third in today’s results, while Hangman Classic climbs to fourth place.

PlayMesh’s Connect 4 clone Link4 Online enters the chart at fifth place this week, as Paper Toss returns after a long absence to take seventh. A returning Unblock Me finishes eighth, leaving Fling Free at tenth place.

Eliminate Pro drops to ninth place today, despite leading chart results only two weeks ago. While Eliminate Pro is no longer attracting as many new players as it once did, it maintains a strong presence in the Top Grossing charts — a result of hardcore players sticking with the game and improving their stats with microtransaction purchases.

Konami announced that it has dropped the price of every title in its iPhone lineup. All games published by Konami in the App Store will be available for 99 cents each until November 30th.

The sale drops the price of a number of high-profile iPhone and iPod Touch games, including Metal Gear Solid Touch and Dance Dance Revolution S. Konami’s latest iPhone release, the crime-fighting car chase game Field Prowlers: Police Rush! is also available at a discounted rate for a limited time.

Here’s a full list of every game featured in the sale:

• Dance Dance Revolution S
• Dance Dance Revolution S+
• Field Prowlers: Police Rush
• Frogger
• Krazy Kart Racing
• Metal Gear Solid Touch
• Power Pros Touch
• Silent Hill: The Escape
• Silent Scope

(Personal recommendations: Metal Gear Solid Touch, DDR S, Power Pros Touch, and Krazy Kart Racers are the best of the bunch, and they’re bargains at only 99 cents each.)

Tasty Way stars the Yumsters characters in an all-new quest to devour screenfuls of fruit. Players must draw a path through fruits that match the Yumster character’s color, in order to keep a consistent combo chain. Eating a fruit of a different color will give a Yumster…stomach issues, let’s say, causing him to leave a permanent mark on the playfield. You don’t want this.

Gameplay gets faster over time, and continues until the screen fills with Yumster excrement. Gross! A gameplay trailer is below.

Equilibrio creator and Shift co-developer Fishing Cactus writes in with word that its latest title, Minim ($0.99), is now available in the App Store.

A free Lite version has also been released.

Minim is a port of an online Flash game featured at Kongregate. The object is to link a series of numbered atoms — each matched pair turns into a single atom of a higher number, which can then be linked to a connecting atom of the same number. Once all pairs are matched, the level is complete.

The game is quick to introduce new layers of complexity, however. Molecules grow larger and more difficult to solve, and special modifier atoms will change the way numbers add up after a match, making each level an exercise in careful planning.

Minim features 50 levels in all. The Lite version includes five stages. A preview video is below.

Pinch Media is a company that provides analytic software for iPhone games, tools that give developers a sense of how their application is performing, how many people are using it, and what players are doing within the game.

It also includes a few simple checks to determine whether the game has been pirated. Yardley estimates that about 8 percent of the iPhone app market uses his analytic software, and in today’s Gamasutra feature, which takes a broad look at the impact of piracy on the iPhone market, he shares some of his findings.

“What we’ve determined is that over 60 percent of iPhone applications have definitively been pirated based on our checks,” he reveals, “and the number is probably higher than that.”

While it’s impossible to estimate how much money developers are losing, it involves more than the price of the game, he says.

“What developers lose is not necessarily the sale,” he explains, “because I don’t believe pirates would have bought the game if they hadn’t stolen it. But when there is a back-end infrastructure associated with a game, that is an ongoing incremental cost that becomes a straight loss for the developer.”

“Many developers run servers to provide content dynamically, they run high-score servers, and that sort of thing costs money,” Yardley adds. “If your application is pirated, you quickly find that cutting steeply into your profit margin, especially given the low price point of iPhone games.”

What does the typical back-end infrastructure cost a developer?

According to Yardley, it is rare to see developers paying more than 10 percent of what they are taking in, but “you need to consider that a pirated game can be used many times over by multiple pirates, and so your losses are multiplied many times over as well.”

The full feature illuminates the extent of the piracy problem in the iPhone app market, featuring discussions with numerous developers and a close look at the factors at hand.

• Price: $4.99 (Get It)
• Version: 1.0.8
• Official Site: Gameloft

Earthworm Jim was the brilliant but troubled brainchild of several very talented, very weird people at Shiny Entertainment, during the days of the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis. It was a platformer at its core, but it was also a shooter, a racing game, and a competitive bungee jumping sim, depending on the level.

It seems as though everyone who worked on Earthworm Jim had an idea that they wanted to put into the game, and no matter how incongruous it was, the team at Shiny did its best to put it into the final product. That’s the way I picture it happening, anyway.

The result was a game that was much greater than the sum of its parts. For all of its weaknesses, Earthworm Jim offered solid platforming action bridged by bizarre non-sequiturs. A cow is launched with a refrigerator. Hell (or “heck”) is ruled by a demonic cat with nine lives. The boss at the end of one of the game’s most difficult levels is revealed to be a goldfish, who is anticlimactically killed when Jim rushes into the room and knocks over his bowl. At times, the game seemed like one big inside joke.

Gameloft’s remake botches the punchline.

The flawed virtual control pad setup is here in full force, and it does its best to ruin as much of the experience as possible. Fortunately, in an attempt to minimize the inevitible d-pad frustration, the game has been made much easier. Jim starts with ten lives. His gun auto-aims. If you pick the easiest difficulty level, you’ll take dozens of hits before losing a life, and you’ll get hints and tips throughout each level to ensure that you’ll never get lost or stuck.

I was even able to beat that damned bathosphere level on my first try. That says something.

The reworked gameplay introduces a new set of game-breaking issues, though. At many points in the game, you’ll need to jump and then trigger the whip at the top of your leap, to swing off of a hook. Performing this action with one thumb is impossible. You’ll never reach the full height of your jump before swinging the whip. The only solution is to move your left thumb over to the right side of the screen, so that you can trigger both buttons at once. In earlier levels, it’s a minor frustration. Later on, it makes the game almost unplayable.

Other segments, meanwhile, have been watered down so much that they no longer serve any purpose. Take the Andy Asteroids bonus levels, for instance. In the iPhone version of Earthworm Jim, you can no longer die after hitting too many asteroids, and there’s no need to collect 50 orbs to earn a continue, because the game supplies infinite continues. What was once an lightweight but involving break from the action is now completely pointless and no fun at all to play, thanks to a twitchy tilt-based control scheme.

I might be able to overlook Earthworm Jim’s many issues if its sense of humor had arrived intact. After all, the original game was certainly no masterpiece in terms of gameplay, but its humor and personality made it a personal favorite. Unfortunately, much of this humor didn’t survive the trip to the iPhone. The rerecorded sound effects and music lack the comedic punch they once had. Jim’s new voice is terrible. And there’s just something off-putting about the smoothed-over graphics.

Without its trademark humor or a sense of purpose to its gameplay, Earthworm Jim is nothing more than a disjointed, occasionally frustrating platformer. And now, it also has bad controls.