First things first, this application is only available for the iPhone and iPod touch — no other handset types are covered so it you just bought a shiny Android (or any other mobile OS) device you are out of luck. Sorry!

First, the purchasing and downloading system is very slow, and it often takes multiple attempts to confirm your purchase of a new volume. The app then takes an irritatingly long time to download your purchased content and has a tendency to fail to complete a download. These frequent failures are infuriating; it is a blessing that the application can resume partial downloads otherwise I would have quickly given up on using it. Due to these frustrations I tend to only download new issues of the magazine when I am work, where I can abuse the powerful wireless connection to get issues in a quarter of the time with fewer errors. A minor note to add here is that, without fail, each time I have downloaded a new issue I have received “Download failed” error at 99% complete only to have it show up, completed, in the program.

The second major problem with the program, and one that is entirely out of the hands of the publishers, is that while the app is downloading you are unable to do anything else on your device. Remember, no multi-tasking on iPhone OS! (At the time of writing, using OS 3.2) This includes viewing already downloaded issues. Add this to the frequent failures experienced while downloading and the entire process begins to become more and more unappealing.

With all that technical rigmarole out of the way, how does it perform when you view the manga you have downloaded? Very well, actually. I must admit I was rather dubious about viewing manga on the iPhone screen as I presumed it would involve an awful lot of moving the page to view the art in detail. I was pleasantly surprised to find that you can read a full page in the portrait orientation quite easily, although the finer details are lost on the more lavish titles included in the magazine. Zooming in/out and moving around the page are smooth and responsive and feel no more obstructive than using a physical book. There is a small delay when displaying a new page as the program loads the image, although this only manifests should you have your device playing music at the time and does not impact the viewing experience. It is also easy to confuse the application at times — should you accidentally turn the page, any attempt to stop it will confuse the program and you have to wait for the transition to complete before making any additional movements on the touchscreen. This may be an issue of an idiotic user however, as I am rather clumsy and tend to use the app while on a bumpy commute.

So far it feels like I am griping, but all of my complaints are incidental points - slip-ups on the path to greatness. The simple fact that this app exists and that it works as intended is a small marvel. For the equivalent of $1 you get a sizeable chunk of manga from a range of Tezuka's works, some of which may be difficult to get a hold of where you live. I personally have never seen a physical copy of Adolf, and the opportunity to read it in any form is wonderful even with the niggling issues attached. Plus — and this is a definite positive for me — it will not clutter your already overloaded bookshelf.

[Passable]

NOTE: At the time of writing, the iPad is not available in the UK, and so I have been unable to review this app on this new platform. The iTunes store lists that Weekly Astro Boy Magazine is compatible with the iPad, however. If you are lucky enough to have an iPad, please try the free version of this app and let us know how it is in the comments below!

This review is based on the March 2010 version of the iPhone application, purchased by the reviewer.

Omega Factor puts you in the role of Astro Boy (bet you didn't see that coming), and follows a complete storyline from his initial activation onwards through a series of discrete stories that are initially independent but slowly coalesce into a single, larger plot. The storyline is well-paced and simply presented, told primarily through static cutscenes with text dialogue. The storyline sucks you right in, however is deeply marred by the fact that the entire story arc requires you to play the bulk of the game's levels twice in order to complete it. However, so engrossing is the gameplay that even on my recent playthough it took a good long while to actually notice that I was replaying the majority of the levels for a second time with very little change apart from the toughness of the enemies.

Towards the end there are one or two easy-to-miss links in the storyline, particularly if you are ham-handed and accidentally skip past some key dialogue like I did. These small slip-ups required me to go scurrying to GameFAQs in order to find out how to continue. I also experienced a rather irritating glitch where a plot event would not fire properly and so I had to reset the console and re-do some earlier events in order to make the game progress.

But these small issues do not detract from the games very satisfying resolution — it is (surprisingly) emotionally powerful, especially for an action game.

The moment-to-moment gameplay comes generally under one of two main types — some stages are laid out like a side scrolling beat ‘em up and others like a shoot ‘em up. Both modes share the same controls and attacks, allowing the gameplay to shift quickly and frequently between the two without needing to explain the change each time. Neither play style is outstanding on its own but the frequent switching helps to keep the game fresh, especially as levels will often drag on a lot longer than is enjoyable, with too many waves of enemies showing up to the party. The same can be said of the game's bosses — due to a quirk of the storyline you will end up fighting all of them at least twice, each time more difficult than the last. The endgame boss rush event is difficult to the point of wanting to throw your console at the wall; I have only ever completed it once on Normal mode, no matter how often I try. Still, it was an amazing feeling when I finally managed it.

Another complaint to level against the game is that it contains a particularly aggravating quick-time event — they were a lot more novel in 2005, but even then the idea of pressing the "A" button 12 times in succession without missing once to progress the plot must have seemed bonkers.

The game shoves a remarkable amount of action onto the Game Boy screen, causing rampant slowdown in some places due to the number of enemies that are visible on the screen at one time — the fact that each time you strike an enemy a collection of stars fly out to show the damage doesn't really help this.

The different difficulty modes Omega Factor offers are very well-made, with each mode feeling like an entirely different game and providing a nice chunk of re-playability. Just don't try playing on Hard mode the first time around; otherwise you are going to sound silly when you have to explain to the doctor that a fight against your asshole robot brother on the moon is the cause of your sudden high blood pressure.

The game includes a very light RPG-style element with the application of an upgrade system over the course of the game. This is nothing outstandingly original, but the source of the upgrades is rather inventive and in keeping with the general "feeling" of Astro Boy — as you meet and understand the motivations of other characters in the story you are awarded extra points to upgrade your abilities. By the end you will have everything maxed whether you go looking for additional characters or not, so there is no need to worry about having to trawl through an FAQ to avoid being horribly gimped for the later game stages.

Shortly after I agreed to write this review, I was hit by a sudden worry. "Oh crap," I said to myself, "It's going to be a kick in the pants to the reader if I review this and it turns out you can no longer get a hold of it." A quick bit of searching shows that you can quite easily nab a copy, even so many years after its release date. Hell, you may have walked past a used copy in your own local games store before. Despite my many gripes, the core of Astro Boy: Omega Factor is solid gold. I would honestly recommend picking up a copy if you see one.

[Recommended]

"The Greatest Robot on Earth" is, according to Tezuka's brief introduction at the beginning of the book, among his most popular Astro Boy story arcs, and its popularity has even spawned Naoki Urasawa's fantastic seinen retelling, Pluto. However, readers expecting the dark murder mystery tones of Pluto will be sorely disappointed to find a comic squarely aimed at children, as this was naturally the demographic for which Tezuka wrote Astro Boy. The pacing is also brutally fast, forcing much-needed exposition into a mere two speech bubbles in a single tiny panel.

The truth is that this story has simply not aged well. It is often hard to understand what's going on as Tezuka barrels through the story at a breakneck pace, and many of the robots that Pluto destroys are barely given more than a page for character introduction before they are wiped out. Even the fight scenes, which Tezuka builds up with commendable tension in so few pages, are tragically brief, a shame considering the exciting style with which the artist depicts them.

Despite all this, "The Greatest Robot on Earth" is worth it because, despite the shortcomings of the storytelling style, Tezuka has important things to say about love, friendship, family, and most of all duty (in Pluto's case) and self-acceptance (in Astro's case). Pluto faces a classic military conundrum: to obey a corrupt order or to do what you believe is right, while Astro must choose to raise his horsepower from 100,000 to one million, even though Dr. Ochanomizu insists that being the greatest robot in the world is all about his heart, not his horsepower. In the end, even though Pluto chooses to do the right thing, it is Astro's decision to embrace the philosophy of "might-makes-right" that leaves an appropriately unsatisfying conclusion to the tale.

With so much going on between the lines, it is no wonder that this one story has been adapted into arcs in all three Astro Boy anime series as well as Urasawa's Pluto. Each of these four adaptations provides an entirely different look at the same themes. For example, Urasawa's manga delves into the private lives of each of Pluto's robot victims, while the 1980 Astro Boy anime reverses Astro's decision regarding his horsepower, painting a much less grim picture than Tezuka does at the end of this manga arc. The 2003 anime takes the story a step further, casting Dr. Tenma (Astro's father) as the scientist behind Pluto's creation.

After such an adaptation-friendly chapter, it is only natural that the balance is taken up by "Mad Machine," a brief story about a machine craeted by Dr. Fooler (a regular character in Tezuka's "Star System") that causes every robot in Tokyo to go haywire. Dr. Ochanomizu manages to take Astro Boy apart before the Mad Machine is turned on, and sends the boy to destroy it as it takes a three-minute break to recharge. Keen readers will remember that a similar machine is used by Duke Red in Rintaro's Metropolis to fry the circuits of all of the robots in Metropolis. Unsurprisingly, the scientist at the helm of Rintaro's Mad Machine is the very same Dr. Fooler.

On its own, volume three of Astro Boy is hardly enjoyable for anyone but Tezuka addicts and children, but in the context of the adaptations that it has spawned, this particular volume just might be one of the most important in the whole series. If you haven't read any adaptations of "The Greatest Robot on Earth" yet, the original manga version is easily the best one to start with. It will provide a basis of comparison as well as a few interesting themes to toy around with before you move on to Pluto or any of the anime story arcs.

[Recommended]

A free version, containing the first issue of the magazine, is available for you to download and try with no obligation. In addition, you are under no obligation at any point to purchase new issues so you don't have to worry about the app siphoning money out of you.

A nice bonus is that all the previously released chapters are available for download in English in the new territories right now — I will freely admit abusing the wi-fi at my work office downloading additional issues of the magazine this afternoon.

From a brief play with the application this afternoon I am very happy with the viewing software — the user interface is well built for viewing the manga pages, if perhaps a little awkward when you want to change the issue you wish to read and I have a bad habit of exiting the reader application entirely when trying to do this. In addition there is no real way to know which chapters you are receiving each week short of subscribing to the Application's twitter feed (included at the foot of this post) The official website only lists the titles present in a volume, not the chapter names or any additional details. I would be interested to see how it performs on a iPad once they are released, due to the larger viewing area.

A special bonus for me is that the first Astro Boy Story serialised in the magazine is “The Greatest Robot on Earth”, the origin for the Naoki Urasawa adaption "Pluto" and a story I have wanted to read for a long time but never had the opportunity.

I heartily recommend that you give the App a try should you have an iPhone or iPod touch — it does have a free version after all.

[via astroboymagazine.com, AstroBoyMag official Twitter]