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Mobile gaming is an ephemeral thing.

The unending stream of iOS games runs too fast and too fat for any individual to figure out which ones are worthy of your time and/or money. Freemium games? Check. Casual games? Sure. Hardcore games ported to your iOS device of choice? Plenty.

But which ones should you sit down and play right now? Our crack team of reviewers took a moment to call up the games they return to, day after day, when they feel like experiencing the finest the mobile gaming world has to offer. Above are the eight best iOS games you should download at this very moment.

Hundreds of new games come out every week in the App Store. A select few are the next must-play title that everyone will be talking about (and ripping off) for the foreseeable future. Most of them are perfectly decent but may not receive the attention they deserve. And then you have the third group: games so odd, bizarre, and head-scratching that you’re not sure what to make of or do with them.

They aren’t necessarily bad; they’re just confusing and weird. And worst of all, people may never know that they exist. But that’s why we’re here.

Here are some of the strangest games to drop into the App Store this week. What you do with this information is between you and your iPhone.

As with all classic games, the question about EA’s Tetris for iOS doesn’t have anything to do with whether the core concept is a good one or not (we know that it is), but rather how well the developers have translated it to the world of multi-touch.

If you’re a long-time Tetris fan and former Game Boy owner, chances are you’ll have fond memories of Alexey Pajitnov’s classic puzzle game on mobile. The good news, then, is that at its best EA’s Tetris is every bit as revolutionary and addictive as that game was when you first played it.

And here you thought Terminal was just for Unix geeks.

Ok, well, maybe it really is, but there’s a fun easter egg or two hidden in the old UNIX code that underlies Apple’s OS X software.

Turns out that you can play Tetris and Snake, two classic games from the dawn of digital gaming, in a Terminal window. Intrigued? It’s super easy.

The best puzzle games either have a single rule (Tetris: “Make lines.”) or a few basic rules based on things we know innately or intuitively (Where’s My Water?: “Dig holes, water goes down, steam goes up, poison is bad.”).

Flux Free is a new iOS title which falls into the latter category. It’s a shape-matching game built on a few basic concepts like color theory that keep it from becoming obtuse even when all of its mechanics are in play.

That’s not to say that it’s incredibly easy, but you’ll never spend any time trying to remember how anything works. And it’s smart and fun, so that’s good, too.

Steve Wozniak is no stranger to gaming, having met Steve Jobs while working at Atari and even programmed his own version of the classic video game, Pong.

Did you know, though, that the Woz is a huge aficionado of the classic Gameboy game, Tetris. Well, he is… so much so that Nintendo Power magazine back in the 1980s refused to publish his scores anymore because he’d dominated the #1 spot for too long!

With Nintendo adamant it’ll never bring its games to iOS, the only way to enjoy your favorite titles on your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad is to jailbreak your device and download an emulator. But that’s no longer the case. You can now enjoy more than 100 NES and Game Boy games in your iPhone’s web browser.

As we all know, iOS developers just love an excuse to slash their prices, and EA is the first to show its celebrations for Independence Day. The company has discounted a stack of popular titles — including FIFA 12, Dead Space, and Mass Effect Infiltrator — to just $0.99 to ensure you stay busy before the fireworks start.

Here’s the full list.