I recently figured out how to put any games on my jailbroken iPod Touch 3 so I’ve spent some time going through memory lane and replaying some early (2010) era iOS games.
I’m gonna share some impressions and screenshots on this over the next few weeks and invite others to join!
Oh, man. I recently went down this rabbit hole. I remember being blown away by games like Infinity Blade and spent an embarrassingly long time trying to remember the title of this game, Dream:Scape
There were some gems in that era. I still miss firing up Zenonia, as well
I remember I Love Katamari coming out and being soooooooooo excited as a new iPod Touch owner at the time. It’s not a great game but was one of those real “anything is possible” tech moments with the touch screen device and a familiar game series I love.
A big part of this era of early iOS games were both clones of and downports of high profile console games by Gameloft.
An example of an actual AAA port they did is their part of Splinter Cell Conviction.
But they also had clones of games like Halo:
Or Call of Duty:
These last two had really fun multiplayer mods that I was playing a lot with my friends between classes in middle school :')
The tech demos that ran on those iphones/ipod touches were crazy!!
I spent so many hours as a kid exploring the Epic Citadel!!
I think Zenonia actually has an NDSi port that I’ve been wanting to give a shot. Probably a lot more comfortable controls than on screen touch pads… It seems like Zenonia has unfortunately turned into a Gacha game in its latest iteration.
What about that unplayable touch screen controls only 3D remake of Ultimate MK3 that, by all means, should have been a big deal?
GuileWinQuote made a video about that UMK3 remake and a few other bizarre fighting game ports:
The thought of trying to do a shorthop in KOF on a touchscreen is so funny to me
On the subject of triple-A “ports”, I remember when I was eight or nine years old, far too young to play M-rated games, I stole my oldest sister’s iPod Touch and downloaded the “Lite” versions of Metal Gear Solid Touch and Resident Evil 4: Mobile Edition, believing them to be faithful reproductions of the console games. I thought I’d pulled one over on my parents until I fired up MGS Touch and discovered it to be a shooting gallery with pre-rendered 2D graphics.
And then I grappled for the first time with an on-screen gamepad in RE4: Mobile Edition, where I could barely walk in a straight line, let alone aim a gun.
N-Gage owners must’ve seen touch controls as such a downgrade for the first few years lol
Minotron 2112 (sequel to Jeff Minter’s ST/Amiga classic Llamatron)
I shared the IPAs to this and Gridrunner on my internet archive page: https://archive.org/search?query=creator%3A"Llamasoft"+ios
https://twitter.com/gingerbeardman/status/1437345831720562693
The two games I can remember playing when I got my first smart phone were Superbrothers: Sword & Sorcery EP and whatever this game was IT WAS MAGIC TREE!!!
And here is my full Play Store game library if anyone was curious lmao
Monument Valley and Monument Valley 2 are absolutely gorgeous. Some of the most aesthetically pleasing games I have ever played.
I remember a few of the earliest games I played on mobile were on my iPod Touch 4th gen. There was some kind of endless runner where you controlled a ship in a tunnel. It was a Unity game and I recall the lighting being impressive to me at the time. I can’t remember what it was called
Looking through my App Store download list back then (2011-2013) the games that really stand out in my mind that are still around are…
These are beside the classic ones like Fruit Ninja, Temple Run, and Angry Birds. I downloaded a bunch of schlock back then too. Like the demakes of bigger AAA titles like Bad Company 2. I remember playing the game Six Guns which was like Red Dead Redemption at home. It had a Windows UWP versions at one point too. I have no clue if it is still around but apparently it isn’t available on the App Store anymore.
loved Enviro-Bear so much. Felt luxurious to play that on a 10 inch Android tablet way way back.
Seeing these reminded me of this one Bennett Foddy game I got a kick out of, Evacuation:
Hook Champ was a favorite of mine.
I’ve been dying to revisit Middle Manager of Justice for some wild reason. Why this hasn’t been rebooted, I’ll never know https://youtu.be/Ecmkt0tfHo8
I played a lot of Hook Champ too, even though it drove me nuts that you would get a little upward boost when you let go of a rope rather than just continuing with the momentum you had.
I also played Zenonia and basically any console style RPG I could get back then. There was a port of Vay, and a really quite good port of Shining Force (not the one that’s currently available). I played Rogue for a while. I remember buying some RPG for a few dollars that then went free to play so I lost access to the full game that I’d purchased and got a version full of ads and micro transactions instead.
Back in 2012 I did a screenshot Let’s Play of MissingBro, a game which I think is otherwise pretty much lost to history.
They just recently released a Neko Atsume 2. From what I can tell, it is more like a 1.5 as they only added a few new toys and cats. You can also visit other player’s yards which is a new touch.
I’ve been playing Crystal Defenders a lot this week
Idk if it’s this game in particular but Tower Defense is such a perfect, addictive genre. Anyone got some other tower defense favs?
