- Hey, y'all Scott here. Poverty. No, thanks. I have my favorite way to
spend a grand right here and it has all my favorite
console games available on it. There are so many great
console games to play here. I can play Sonic. Ready? I'll show you something terrifying, I already pissed myself. The idea of having one singular product that can do really anything
you want, play movies, music, go online, make calls, send text messages and play video games with something dreams where made of. I don't need a DVD
player, iPad or physician because the smartphone does it all. Yes, iPhone, Android, windows phone. Smart phones were cool back in the day especially when they were more of a luxury rather than a necessity. Yeah, seeing as a 12 megapixel
camera, who gives a shit. Pretty obvious, we take
all this for granted now but back then the idea of
having something this tiny just to watch movies on was mind blowing. I remember seeing the
first iPhone commercials and I was like, this
looks absolutely amazing. It starts at $500. That's hilarious. Like, no thanks. I don't need to touch Fandango. However, these things started
to get way more affordable as time went on. I was personally weaned on an iPod touch, the classic iPhone without the phone. IE. the iPhone for an eighth grader. This thing was awesome, I could play all these
movies and TV shows and songs and download all these apps and games. But with smartphones lowering in cost, I was finally able to get
an iPhone four in 2012. Then the magic of this all-in-one
super thin and tiny device kind of wore off by then. However, as new models
kept coming out every year, the iPhone and other
smartphones increasingly had more and more potential when it came to
graphically intensive apps. You could run things on these devices that were originally unheard of to be played on such a small guy. Because of that, developers
were able to port over some of their games from home
consoles on the smartphones. And that's how some of the
magic of the all-in-one nature of the iPhone initially
came back into play for me. I can play Grand Theft
Auto Three on my phone on the school bus, that's amazing. Console games on mobile devices is a topic I have a
lot of experience with. Back in my high school days, I was super keen on
having everything possible on my iPhone at all times. Just so then, oh, when I'm bored then, oh I have all my favorite
console games available in this thing and the third
season of Wings, I'm set. The idea of having all
these games originally from home consoles on my
smartphone at all times with no extra accessories
or anything needed and just being able to whip out my phone and play GTA San Andres
whenever I wanted to, that was amazing. But it also didn't work out
as well as I wanted it to. My high school years where
from the Wii U Launch in 2012 to StarFox Zero released in
2016, the rest was a blur, but I do know from the start, a fair amount of kids have smartphones. By the end, I mean, everybody on one way you didn't want to be
called a (beep) loser. Because of that, during my
high school years, personally, the teachers just kind of gave up on regulating cell phone usage. I mean, like of course you can't use them during a test or during a lecture but when the teacher was
just sitting at their desk or during study hall, hell yeah,
man, break out puzzle bits. I was never a huge mobile gamer, but because of high school being worthless and having so much downtime during classes in study hall specifically, those were the years I
played mobile games the most. And I noticed the most popular ones were always stupid simple. Stuff like Flappy Bird, Trivia
Crack, these dumb games, Geometry Dash, Jetpack
Joyride, Subway Surfers, Flappy Golf, The Best One. I mean, everybody played
games on their smartphone. So obviously the mobile market was something all the big game developers looked at back in 2011 saying "Well, we know what we're doing tonight". All of these companies acted
like the future of gaming was going to be on mobile. Consoles are dying, this
was where the money was. I mean, to be honest back then, I wouldn't blame them for thinking this. An iPhone 4S could run Infinity Blade 2. That's still a pretty
decent looking game today and was made by Epic Games. Basically, just to show off how powerful the iPhone
could be for gaming. These things could run
fairly intensive games and were owned by basically
everybody on the planet. So yeah, back then, it
made sense for some of them to think about shifting focus to mobile, Why make a new Mega Man for consoles when you can make whatever
the hell this was? As time went on, however, the more of these console
developers made games for mobile devices. It wasn't apparent they didn't really know why people play mobile games. They just kinda made
either dumbed down versions of their franchises. They're just mobile
versions of console games. They just thought, "Well,
we have this well known IP, we put this on a platform with an installed base of
hundreds of millions of users and there we go, we win". It's pretty obvious, the app stores isn't nearly as simple
as they thought it was. It's a ridiculously complicated ecosystem just because everybody owns a smartphone doesn't mean your game will do nearly as well as it would do
on console sometimes. Newcomer developers who only
really made smartphone games ended up overshadowing the
big guys like EA and Capcom. These guys developed
simple intuitive games made for touchscreen controls. Well EA just kind of barfed
out Dead Space for iPhone. Of course, now a lot
of big name developers have figured out the mobile space, which is why we don't see a mobile version of Rayman 2 anymore, we
see Rayman Jungle Run. These console game conversions really didn't suit the mobile market and they've died out
considerably over the years. Like I said, I used to be stupid into the idea of playing
these games on my wonder slab. So I would generally
download any big home console to iPhone game I could find and normally if they were on sale. However, after scaring through
my previously purchased apps, most of these games are lost time. They've been delisted from the app store or are no longer supported by
the current version of iOS. That's a good sign, just a few of the ones that are no longer
available that I remembered, Dead Rising mobile, this stunk, clunky in the draw distance of
the zombies was just garbage. This was a situation where they could barely
do Dead Rising in mobile, but they probably should have waited until they could kind of
do Dead Rising on mobile. Burnout Crash, yeah,
this was the burnout game that came out where people
said that's not Burnout. Crash Mode was one of the
most fun parts of these games. Just trying to create the
biggest crash you can. Burnout Crash is
basically this entire mode but from an overhead perspective
and at a much lower pace which takes a lot of,
if not, most of the fun out of Crash Mode. The mobile version was pretty similar to the console releases on
Xbox Live Arcade and PSN, and I'd argue, this worked
fairly well as a mobile game. It didn't make it a great game but it felt well suited for mobile. The Simpsons Arcade,
not The Simpsons Arcade, The Simpsons Arcade. This was a re-imagining of
original Konami game from 1991. It's obviously based off
of the idea of that game but it's not the same and it kind of feels
more like a scam going at the Simpsons Arcade. They knew what they were doing and I'm sure tons of
people downloaded this expecting to play the original arcade game and went, "Oh". Resident Evil 4 Platinum, I know I just totally
dogged on Dead Rising Mobile but for Resident Evil 4 on
the iPhone back in 2009. I mean, it works as well
as you'd expect it to. I think Dead Rising was far more subpar. This wasn't a good way
to play Resident Evil 4 and felt more like Capcom
saying, "Look what we can do, we can put Resident Evil 4 on your phone, we're (beep) crazy". They obviously did it
to milk Resident Evil 4 for all it's worth to
release a big name game like this on the iPhone to get attention. They didn't release it because they thought the game
would work well on the iPhone but it was fairly novel to have a somewhat faithful
mobile version of this game and it worked to some extent. There's also a Resident
Evil Mercenaries Versus, a game more suited for quick
mobile game play in my opinion. Battlefield Bad Company
2, that wasn't the worst. That's just scratching the
surface of all the junk that's been taken down. There are stuff like Mirror's Edge which was a 2D platform. Yeah,
that's not Mirror's Edge. Driver, that blew. Guitar Hero, that was
actually pretty good. Lego Harry Potter, Doom, Wolfenstein, Sonic and Sega all-stars racing. You'd think that by now the console games that were left up on the app store would be fairly high quality. I mean, they must've left
them up for a reason. Oh, jokes on you, I just
bought Devil May Cry 4 Refrain. This was released back in
2011 and I have no clue why Resi4 and Dead Rising were taken down but this lives on. DMC4 Refrain is fundamentally
a super toned down version of DMC4. And first, let me say Devil May Cry wasn't the first series
I wanted on the iPhone. We have a fake analog stick and a vast array of fake buttons. Comparing a side-by-side
with the console version, It covers some of the same ground but overall it's a much
slower dumbed down, clunky alternative. Story is told through text
only, models are heard, by far lower resolution. This feels like a Relic of the past, a mobile game from back in the day that somehow is still
available to purchase. The whole touchscreen, analog
sticker, D-pad sort of thing just doesn't work the greatest but it varies from game to game. There are some games which are
just an absolute train wreck to play with a touchscreen. But then there are others which worked surprisingly okay, though they're still not great. You get no tactile feedback and your fingers almost
always cover the screen, making it hard to see everything. You're controlling your
character with glass. You can get used to it. I mean, it's obvious these games were made with a control scheme like this in mind. Now to be fair, the
Sonic the Hedgehog games with this control layout
worked pretty all right. Most of the time in 2D Sonic games, you're just holding
forward and hitting jump. It's not nearly as precise or
involved as other platforms. Plus you only use one button. So touch screen controls while
not ideal work fine enough. Sonic 1, 2 in CD were
all released on mobile, courtesy of Christian Whitehead
who worked on these versions and then upgraded to
developing Sonic mania. He really hit it out of the park with these re-releases,
making them widescreen, giving them higher frame
rates, new playable characters. Sonic 2 featured hidden palace zone, a stage that was cut
from the original game. These are the best ways to
play these classic games. And one and two are only
available on mobile. The Sonic CD remaster came out on console. I don't know what the
deal with one and two are. Yes, the best versions
of Sonic one and two deserve the best place to
play them, a (beep) phone. Now, Sonic 1 and 2 were
actually originally released on mobile years before they were updated to be the Christian Whitehead versions. Yeah, these weren't great, Sonic Spinball was
originally on the app store, but was later delisted, Damn it! But thankfully the mobile
ports of Sonic 4 remain. Sonic 4 episodes one and
two aren't great games. These were released alongside
the console releases of the respective episodes and really enough, they've
fully updated Sonic's model at some point in episode one. And honestly, I think because of this, Sonic 4 episode one on mobile now looks better than
the console versions. The original release looked perfectly fine in terms of being a
mobile version of Sonic 4. But Sonic's model was a bit blocky, but now it looks pretty decent. It doesn't help the fact that it's still, you know Sonic 4, but if
you want to play this game, the mobile release is
better than I remember. I do think that touch
controls are way worse here than the Christian Whitehead re-releases but hey, it's Sonic four, I'm not going to be playing
this again, who cares? Thank God you can play with tilt controls. That was everybody's problem
with Sonic One consoles, they listened guys. Now Sega has this new mobile
initiative called Sega Forever where they make their mobile
games free but with ads which you can remove
by paying for the game. They made a lot of their classic titles apart of Sega forever. Tons of these were actually
released a while back much like Sonic one, two, and Spin Ball. And they were all obviously
cut from the same cloth featuring the same virtual
genesis, D-pad and buttons. Now you can play them
all for free with ads which is honestly pretty cool but they also made some more modern games and games exclusively made for mobile apart of Sega Forever. Super Monkey Ball, this
was one of the first games shown off for the iPhone. If you remember the app
store didn't make its debut until 2008 and this was one
of the headlining debut games for $10, Jesus. I remember this one never
controlled very well. You had to tilt your phone and
it felt calibrated properly. And the monkey was just
a 2D spray inside a ball. Now that's resourceful. This version has since been delisted but we have another Monkey
Ball game still available which is free apart of Sega Forever. Super Monkey Ball Sakura
Edition is pretty much just a new and improved version of the original Super
Monkey Ball mobile game. Better graphics and better controls but they still require
you to tilt your phone. Why do they feel the need with every Monkey Ball mobile game to require me to tilt my phone. I get tilting a weird
multiplayer Monkey Ball but tilting the entire screen just ends up making it harder to see what's actually going on most of the time and just gives me a headache. I wish they had an option to
use a digital analog stick. But hey, this Monkey Ball
game does show me ads after every level. So that counts for something,
dude Communism, yeah. Now, sometimes these mobile conversions of console games can be
quite a bit different from the original. Sonic Forces on the app store is a variation of the
mobile games Sonic Dash, just now with a Sonic Forces theme. the need for speed games are
definitely a bit different from their console versions but hey racing games
definitely work on mobile far better than a lot of other genres. Injustice basically feels like a meat from the ground up mobile
version of the console release. They basically focused on
swiping and tapping the screen for moves and it works way better than if they just smacked
Injustice on the iPhone. You know, if they just downgraded
the graphics considerably, put a digital stick and buttons on it and then call it a day. Street Fighter 4, you know Capcom has tried to put a lot of their fighting games on mobile and a lot of them have
been delisted over time. Street Fighter 2 Collections,
Street Fighter 4, four volt, Marvel vs Capcom 2. There was this app
called the Capcom arcade which included a ton
of Capcom arcade games. Most of which were just Street Fighter 2. But here we have Street
Fighter 4 Champion Edition. The only one still
available in the app store GZS everything is so low quality. I'm no stream aficionado but a fighting game like
this does not work very well with no actual buttons or sticks. Some games work all right with
the digital control layout and some games are Street Fighter 4. If they just had to put
Street Fighter 4 on mobile and they should have
gone the Injustice route and design something from the ground up, not do a straight conversion
of the console release. Although this thing was improperly
formatted for iPhone 10s, what are they trying to tell me? I can't see. Capcom has a messy history
with console games on mobile. And my first experience with that was with the original Mega Man 2. This got slammed in reviews and yes, Mega Man doesn't work very
well with the digital D-pad. The game had a portrait
mode with this arcade frame. This was cute and garbage. There's no room for your thumbs to use the stick and
buttons, it gets cramped. In landscape mode, it
was tolerable for me. I remember not being
able to do the bird trick where you hold A and B after
selecting a robot master and the stars turned to birds. If I held a and B in the mobile game, it just frozen till I let them go. I can see where the lower
view scores came from. But I got fairly far in
this version on a car trip. It wasn't great but it was fine enough. Capcom delisted this one and didn't update it to
work with newer iPhone. I will be dead in the ground before I delete this off of my phone. However, in 2017, they released
Mega Man one through six for mobile. I can play all of them. I downloaded Mega Man one and holy (beep) this is even worse than the
original Mega Man 2 for mobile. You can adjust the speed of the game but all three of the speeds are terrible. The normal speed is very in line with how fast the original was, but the frame rate is awful. With the two faster speeds,
they just feel unnatural. This isn't how I want to play Mega Man. Instead of figuring out how to make a good mobile
version of Mega Man 2 or just deciding that mobile
doesn't suit the game well. They make worse versions
of all the NES games. I also just don't get all
the small little edits they made to the game. Like why is the health bar
down in the corner now? Well, Mega Man X is on the app store too. And holy (beep), I don't
know which is worse. Why did they redo all the sprites? This looks like an online flash game. This feels like a poor man's Mega Man X. I really don't know why they felt the need to make everything feel
so much cheaper and Lamer. The original Mega Man 2 release for iPhone came out well before this
version of Mega Man X, at least they retained
the original graphics. Why they made this game the way it is will always perplexed me. Call of Duty World of War
Zombies was a big game on mobile. Instead of being a full
blown call of duty game. It was just the zombies mode where you had to survive
as long as possible. I played this a few times in study hall but like any 3D iPhone game,
this tore through battery life. It's been delisted and now
we have Black Ops zombies. It's pretty similar. Controls are decent enough. FBS has worked far better mobile than I would ever expect
them to, to be honest. And I probably held that
this was specifically made for mobile and not just a
straight port of a console game. Speaking of which, Rockstar
has brought over tons of their PS2 era games to mobile. Grand Theft Auto 3, Vice City, San Andreas even the more obscure ones
like Liberty City Stories. The PSP game that later came to PS2. Plus Bullying and Max Payne. Sure we played downgraded
to help PS3 and 360 games and old 2D games as well but full blown PS2 era games
on your phone, wherever you go. That was an amazing thought to me. Grand Theft Auto 3
released on the app store back in 2011 and I immediately bought it. I picked up all the GTAs
when they released on mobile and I would start playing
them for about 10 minutes and kind of stopped. These are fine versions of these games. Everything's here and they all work well. They just don't feel right or nearly as fun on the iPhone. Maybe it's the lack of actual buttons and no tactile feedback
takes a lot of the fun and fluidness out of the controls. You don't get the same impact crashing your car by moving
your thumbs on a glass screen as you would holding an actual button and moving actual analog stick. And the entire layout
changes when you enter a car. There's a lot of things you
can do in Grand Theft Auto. And to have to focus so much
on where certain buttons are when they change a fair amount, to have all this crowd up the screen, to have your fingers
covering up 40% of it all. It's a bit much. I would get super excited to see these games playable on my phone, but they're just not
nearly as fun to play here as they are on a console, In my opinion. Chinatown Wars proceeded all these games and was the first GTA on iPhone. This was a part of the DSM PSP game and honestly it worked a bit
better than the 3D games. Being overhead and already being designed for portable devices with some touchscreen
functionality in mind made for a better mobile
game, in my opinion. But you know what I said
when the iPhone came out, "Where's Bioshock?". This was one of the most bizarre
phone conversions out there to me. In 2014, 2K announced they
put Bioshock on mobile, the full game. Like kudos to them for getting
Bioshock to work on mobile but who asked for this? I need names. This is the last game I would
have expected on the iPhone. A first person shooter
with an emphasis on story. I love those things on my iPod touch. They stopped supporting it in
2017, which is unfortunate. This is a really cool oddity of a release but I can see why it's no more. Of course there's stuff
like all the telltale games, Minecraft, Fortnite and various others. I actually played a lot
of Ace attorney on mobile and stuff like Pokemon
Shuffle works better on mobile than it did on the 3DS. You also have a ton of Final
Fantasy games going for prices I didn't even know were
possible on the app store but the concept of playing
console games on mobile has died down a bit
over the past few years, especially considering the
PSP Vita and 3DS has started to bring more and more console
experiences to handhelds. And then the Nintendo switch
completely flattened any desire for console games on the iPhone. Mobile games do specific things very well. They're simple, addictive
and easy to quickly whip out, which is why, now, if we
see a big game franchise come to mobile, it's usually
more smartly designed for mobile. I've had nightmares about
some digital D-pads. So it's nice to see they're not as common as they used to be. Now you may say for a lot of these games if you don't want a digital D-pad, why not use a Bluetooth controller? Most of these apps support them. That is true. However, in my opinion,
a lot of the appeal of something like Grand Theft
Auto, Vice City on your phone is the fact that you can
play this wherever you go with no catches. A lot of that appeal disappears when you have to bring a
controller with your places. Most of the time, console games are best
left on actual consoles. And while it's cool to see
some of them go portable, it's not always worth the downgrade, and the control issues which is why the Nintendo
switch is so fun. Portable home console games
with no control issues, maybe lesser graphics, but hey, whatever. These were cool, little
oddities for awhile but they're time has passed. And now it's nicer to see mobile
games specifically designed for mobile But thank God carnival
games came to iPhone. Like I said, you could buy a controller and set your phone up
as if it was a console. But at that point, just buy a (beep) Switch. But mobile phones do have a pro to them compared to the switch. They have Atari fit.
If anyone is looking for good original mobile games:
The Quest HD. What you probably wanted elder scrolls blades to be. Open world rpg with skill leveling and one time fees for content.
Through the Ages: if Civilization Revolution 2 didn't appease you, this is a deep turn based (albeit more abstract) game. The game jokes how you can't "buy gems" in the tutorial, as the only way to win online is making good moves.
Pocket City. What you probably wish Simcity on mobile was like. Another pay one fee game.
If anyone can recommend any mobile games that are not ports, one fee, and preferably non twitch reflex related I would love to know them :)
Yeah, I also got really into mobile gaming around that same time. I've always been a little sad that the console-style experiences mostly died out in favor of nothing but "bathroom break" games. For a few years there, my iPad was also my primary gaming device, but those days are long gone.
Also, the Dead Space iOS game was way better than it had any right to be. Some genius realized that the "chop limbs off of enemies" mechanic was a perfect fit for swipe-based controls and, yeah, it worked great.
Scott the Woz is pretty on the nose about the discerning difference between console games and "Newgrounds/Miniclips flash games" that are now dominating the current mobile market.
Now with that said, I hope he covers companion apps that some devs have tried to do, like Battlefield 4's commander mode, Watch Dogs 1's cTOS, and The Division 1's app that never came to fruition.
It sucks those died out.
Edit: Nowadays, companion apps seem to be limited to just looking at a map, stats, and/or a journal. It's not as "interactive" unlike what I listed above.
After playing KOTOR on mobile I can't stop wanting a Dragon Age Origins port, but that'll never happen.
I burst out laughing at the spinball cutaway gag. I loved that game a lot, and as soon as I heard the name I was ready to go purchase it immediately before he finished his sentence.
"Poverty? No thanks!" - Scott 2019
Poverty rates drop to 0. He did it!
If you're into JRPGs, the first 3 Dragon Quest games have been rebalanced and updated for cell phones. They play great. Starting at part 4 there are 3D elements that make me prefer playing it on 3DS, but those original 3 ports are worth checking out. I think part one is like 99 cents?
I disagree with his "Just buy a switch" argument about the controller thing. A 8bitdo SF30 Pro (or if I'm hating my hands, the 8Bitdo Zero) Bluetooth controller + phone is easier on my pockets than a Switch + phone. Because I've always got my phones anyways right? And most mobile designed controllers are similar in size to that.
And yes I've done it before. SF30 Pro controller in the same pocket as my phone. And the clip that holds the controller to my phone (so it's easier to hold) in my other pocket with my keys and what not.
I remember how I'd fill my first smartphone with the best Gameloft GTA clones I could find, play them for a few minutes, and never touch them again. To be honest, younger me only had them because I wanted to show off to my friends. By the time 3D GTA games came out for mobile, I wasn't into mobile games anymore. In my opinion, gaming on smartphones isn't as fun as playing on consoles or actual handhelds. Just looking at those virtual analog sticks makes my skin crawl. I havr to admit, Kotor worked really well though. It's much more simple controls-wise compared to other AAA ports, probably why it works well on mobile.