Smith & Tinker, a once high-flying Bellevue game startup, is resurfacing this week with a new Marvel superhero game for Apple's iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch.

"Marvel Kapow!" features characters such as Thor, Wolverine, Spider-Man and Captain America. Players uses touchscreen gestures such as flicks to slash enemies with Wolverine's claws or shoot them with Spidey's web.

Smith & Tinker was started in 2007 by Jordan Weisman, a former Microsoft creative director. The company raised more than $29 million from a-list backers including Paul Allen and a group of venture capitalists.

The money was mostly used to develop a line of handheld game players aimed at young boys and built around a sci-fi monster game called Nanovor that launched in 2009.

That project was dropped last year after a restructuring that eventually cut the number of employees from around 55 to under 10. A recent check found Nanovor gear for 99 cents at Amazon.com, although the game's no longer supported.

Weisman remains on the board and contributes to creative work but the company's now led by Disney veteran Joe Lawandus. The company also relocated from Bellevue to space near the downtown Seattle waterfront.

"We've had a pretty interesting ride over the past few years," Lawandus said.

Lawandus said the company still has enough cash to build at least one more game based on Marvel characters. The company last year reached a licensing deal with Disney, Marvel's owner, that enables it to build casual games based on all characters in the Marvel universe.

"We're super excited about what we think tablets can bring to the mobile gaming space," he said, adding that the company is trying to reach big audiences with the brands used in its games.

"Marvel Kapow!" is available through iTunes in free versions with seven levels and advertising, or ad-free versions with 26 levels and additional characters that cost $1.99 for iPhone and iPod or $3.99 for iPads. Later the company may develop versions for Android and perhaps Windows, he said.

Check out IGN's video on what's cool at this week's Game Developer Conference:

Then there's Conan O'Brien's live recreation of "Angry Birds" (time for a Kinect version?):

PopCap Games is big in Japan, and getting bigger.

The Seattle-based company today said it's launching a mobile, social game service for the Japanese market. Called "Pop Tower," a joint venture with Square Enix subsidiary Taito Corp.

Pop Tower is part of an Asian blitz by the 10-year-old company, which first established the viability of the Seattle-centered casual games business with its breakout hit "Bejeweled."

PopCap opened an Asia-Pacific office in Shanghai in 2008. That led to big projects in the region's largest markets. In August PopCap disclosed plans to partner with RenRen, one of China's largest social networking sites, and in September it announced plans for a Korean multiplayer game service -- PopCap World -- that will be offered with NCsoft.

Pop Tower will include custom, social versions of games such as "Bejeweled," "Chuzzle" and "Zuma" that will be tied together in an entirely new metagame with role-playing game elements, designed for Japanese players.

PopCap previously sold more than 1 million copies of its mobile games in Japan but hasn't previously offered a mobile, social game.

Social games on mobile devices looks set to dominate gaming worldwide and Japan is already ahead of the curve," James Gwertzman, PopCap's vice president for Asia/Pacific, said in the release.

He said the company may use what it learns in Japan to offer mobile, social games internationally.

The Big Fish Babes I profiled last summer are still together and were highlighted this morning on "The Today Show," which included video taken at Seattle's Big Fish Games, the company whose casual titles brought the group of women together.

Here's the original story about the Babes and the "Today" video:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Seattle casual games leader PopCap Games today announced that it took its first funding round, raising $22.5 million from Meritech Capital Partners, Larry Bowman and John McCaw.

Bowman previously bought shares of the company from PopCap founders and McCaw has a few connections in the wireless phone business.

The funding is for "operational purposes, including working capital and potential acquisitions," the company said in the release.

"We're excited to have additional working capital that lets us be more aggressive with our expansion into social media and reaching new geographies," Chief Executive David Roberts said in the release.

PopCap was started in 2000 and now employs 240 at headquarters in Seattle and offices in San Francisco, Dublin, Shanghai, Chicago and Vancouver, B.C. The company says its games have been downloaded more than 1 billion times and its breakout hit "Bejeweled" sold more than 25 million copies.