We don’t cover cell phone games that often. OK, other than the iPhone titles, we haven’t written about them that much this year. But I had to post this cover art for Gameloft’s latest title Chuck Norris: Bring on the Pain.

It is fantastic. Not only does the beard look dangerous with his Texas belt buckle, the cover also implies that he will single-handedly free the Cuban people from Fidel Castro. (We’re assuming the Castro-looking guy on top is El Caballo himself.

With box art like this, you kind of have to wonder what the game plays like. We’re hoping it’s decent but then again it’s a cell phone game.

Time magazine asks the question: “Can the iPhone rule gaming?” And we have an answer. No, it can’t. Well, more specifically, it can’t right now, not with the games that are out there.

The Time articles goes into how the iPhone is affecting the mobile games business. It wonders whether the Jesus Phone can beat out the Nintendo DS, the No. 1 hand-held on the market.

The system does have a few things going for it. All the games are downloadable content. It’s cheap to distribute. It has a touch-screen (part of what made the Nintendo DS so phenomenal) and an accelerometer, one of the parts that make up the Wii remote. There’s a camera. It has GPS. But unfortunately, no game really incorporates all those strengths.

Right now, there’s nothing on the iTunes App store worth buying other than Super Monkey Ball. Tap Tap Revolution is free program and has gotten notice from the music industry.

That’s all fine and good but there really isn’t a killer app out there. The iPhone doesn’t really have a Halo. I suppose that’s one thing that Microsoft has going over Apple.

Spore is not just a PC game. In addition to the ambitious, expansive flagship title there are segments of it for a variety of other platforms.

The iPhone version recreates the Cell phase of the full game. You’re a customizable single-celled organism in the primordial soup, swimming around eating bits of plant life or other organisms. Since it is the iPhone you control the creature by tilting the phone in the direction you want it to go, something that feels very natural. It has none of the frustration of, for instance, Super Monkey Ball.

It’s a simple game, but it does have some nice touches. The graphics for example are amazing. It’s hard to believe a cell phone, even a multi-function phone, are capable of such smooth 3D graphics. It also keeps Spore’s hallmark customization. In addition to adding parts you can add and size textures, not just from the included texture library but from the camera. If you want a concrete cell just take a picture of the sidewalk.

It seems like a quick, simple diversion. It’s by no means deep but for what’s basically a high-end cell phone game it seems very solid. It will be released alongside the other versions of Spore in September.

After much waiting, I finally have my first generation iPhone updated with the new 2.0 software. There was a problem connecting with iTunes to verify that my iPhone is legit. It took a couple of tries quitting and opening up iTunes, but eventually, my iPhone turned back into an iPhone. Yay, no bricking.

As soon as my iPhone was online, I downloaded a ton of free apps (and a paid one) and testing them out. So here’s my impressions so far:

Super Monkey Ball: It’s a beautiful game and it really shows off what the iPhone can do. The colors are bright and system pushes out a lush world of polygons. It looks better than the Nintendo DS but not as good as the PlayStation Portable.

As for the characters, they are stuck in pixel land. They’re flat 2D sprites in a 3D world, a technique that Final Fantasy Tactics used a lot in the old PlayStation days. I played as AIAI and got through a couple of levels.

The interface was clean and simple. You start and pause the game by touching different parts of the screen. You move the monkey ball around by tilting the iPhone this way and that. It’s almost like playing those cheap old maze games that come in Cracker Jack or Lucky Charms boxes.

You hold the iPhone flat and tilt to move the characters. It works well, but you really do need a steady hand. Super Monkey Ball puts the iPhone’s best features to good use. You can even suspend play via the Sleep/Wake button. The only bad part is that once you hit that Home button the game resets.

By far the best free game on the iPhone deals with beer on the jump

It’s a day before the big iPhone 3G release and iPhone Apps update. And yes, we’ll be covering those things with an impression next week and a review of a couple iPhone Apps this weekend. But so far, we’ve been getting information left and right about some of the upcoming games for the platform.

The most obvious one is PopCap Game’s Bejeweled 2. It’s the quintessential casual game. Popcap had a simple Web-based version when the iPhone came out, but I’m wondering what will make this version better.

On the Electronic Arts side, the company is announcing three apps that include Scrabble, Sodoku and Tetris. Out of all three, Scrabble seems the most appealing. Sadly, there isn’t any online play. Players can go against the computer or go head to head against buddy by passing the iPhone along.

As for Sudoku, it’s what it sounds like. There are 10,000 puzzles and five difficulty levels. If you’re obsessed with Sudoku, this is probably right up your alley. As for me, I’ve never been a huge fan of the Japanese numbers game.

From what I’ve heard about Tetris, it sounds interesting with the touch-screen controls. Like nearly all the EA games, Tetris uses some form of the motion-sensing controls. According to the news release, “Tetris for the iPhone and iPod touch features two different play modes - Marathon Mode and the all new Magic Mode, a unique touch screen implementation designed for Tetris on the iPhone.”

But the title that players should be getting is SEGA’s Super Monkey Ball. It was demoed at Apple’s WWDC and it was impressive. The game looks great and it uses the motion-sensing controls. When the Apps are available tomorrow, this is probably the first title I’ll pick up.