The International Consumer Electronics Show doesn’t kick off until Tuesday, but Mac|Life is already braving the slot machines and budget stomach-busting buffets to bring you the best and brightest of what will be unleashed there. One of the things we’re most excited about is a handful of new offerings from ION’s iCade series.

Retro gamers have jumped all over ION’s $99 iCade, which started life as an April Fool’s Day joke on ThinkGeek and has now successfully made the leap to actual shipping product -- and one that’s even turned up in a few retail shops such as Best Buy, which is nothing to sneeze at. But that retro-style cabinet for the iPad was only the beginning, it seems.

Engadget is reporting that ION is hitting the CES 2012 show floor in style this year with not one, not two but a trio of new hardware offerings to bring hardware game controls to the iOS platform. First up is the iCade Core, which does away with most of the faux gaming cabinet from the original model but wisely keeps the authentic joystick and buttons. The advantage of the Core is the ability to play games in landscape mode, which was a limitation of the original. The iCade Core is planned for launch this year, but the company was mum on further details.

But the iPad won’t be having all the fun -- ION is also introducing two controllers aimed at the iPhone and iPod touch crowd. iCade Mobile brings all of the gaming fun into your hands with an $80 controller that houses your iOS device and offers up four shoulder buttons, four face buttons and a D-pad, and it even swivels to support both landscape and portrait gaming. Look for this one in the second quarter of this year.

Last but not least, a cute little “phone-sized arcade cabinet” turned up at ION’s booth as well which is being dubbed the iCade Jr. -- as you can imagine, it’s basically the original iPad-centric cabinet slimmed down for smartphones. No word on how much (or when) the little guy will go on sale -- ION doesn’t have a working model of the iCade Jr. at their booth, so it’s likely for later in the year.

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(Image courtesy of Engadget)