The Golden Age of Apps

smartphones in the digital age are a staple item that we take with us everywhere and with apps for communication games and other necessities everything we could ever want is at the touch of a finger but while conveniences like scrolling through social media on the toilet taking 80 pictures of our pets from slightly different angles and feeding your Webkins on the go are so ingrained in our daily lives now I along with a lot of other people am still nostalgic for an older more distant era when the digital age wasn't quite so Advanced H not that distant that's boring I'm talking about a time when smartphones did exist but they still had to compete for their place in society right alongside blackberries and Sidekicks and whatever this thing is while all of those phones did have similar features like the standard texting and calling and even internet connection that made you smashed the end button so that it didn't charge you $5 to load a web page within 3 minutes the smartphone had something that the others didn't apps the Apple App Store was officially launched in 2008 and since then millions of apps have been made for convenience entertainment and other miscellaneous uses between 2008 and 2013 is what I personally Define as both the early years and the Golden Age of smartphone apps some of the most recognizable games and apps came from this period And while I can't cover every app ever made I think some of the true old school apps and Classics are worth revisiting as much as the phrase you got games on your phone really defines the age of smartphones and the state of our youth not every app from this golden age was even a game at all sometimes I'd spend hours at a time being entertained by apps that barely even did anything but they lit up and were on a screen so I used them the old Zippo lighter app is a great example of what I mean before LED smartphone flashlights lit up stadiums concert goers would hold up lighters during songs but in 2008 as smartphones and cell phones in general were starting to become popular someone thought why not put lighter in phone and thus one of the most oddly satisfying and mesmerizing phone apps of the 2000s was born while I'm sure people did use this for its pretty specific intended purpose I would still categorize the Zippo app as essentially useless you can flick open the lighter swipe to turn it on use tilt controls to move the flame around and even flick it back closed aside from all of those epic features though and some customization that's pretty much everything it does even though it was so simple it was really popular for its time because it was so new and cool and touchcreen and had the right amount of skew morphism to draw people in I mean just look at the sheer number of old YouTube videos where people filmed themselves turning a virtual lighter on and off I I know it's cliche to call earlier decades a simpler time but I can't help but feel nostalgic when looking at these early iPhone users not taking the talks or crushing the candies but just captivated by a completely functionless app just as nature intended while the iPhone lighter didn't exactly serve a greater purpose there were still definitely other apps that did even less I beer was one that let you drink a virtual beer with tilt controls which was probably popular among edgy Middle School boys and middle-aged men basically the masculine equivalent of those toy baby bottles with the disappearing milk and orange juice in them super Hightech futuristic apps like the fingerprint security scanner could protect your virtual beer and total science-based apps like x-ray scanners and lie detectors were guaranteed to be a 100% accurate every time love calculators and kissing tests were pretty popular among the kids in my middle school which I hope was the only demographic that actually bothered kissing a dirty touch screen in the hopes of finding true love speaking of lips on phones uh another popular app was a bit of a strange one but nothing less than a cultural phenomenon Juicy Fruit sweet talk this thing was really just one big advertisement with no real point to it Beyond promoting no one's favorite brand of gum but it was so entertaining that I don't think anyone really cared the app would open on a list of characters to choose from and each character had a list of a few phrases so that after you picked one the character or just their mouth would appear on screen and say some line that revolved around a sweet talk you're so sweet I'm going take you out for ice cream sunday you the happens while some of the characters and especially their phrases that they said were already kind of weird you're so sweet I want to Bubble Wrap you and send you to my grandma it went a step further by having the intended use be to hold the phone up to your face and pretend you were in a juicy fruit commercial I guess I say that like I didn't also use this thing so much that I memorized most of the dialogue options and after re-watching these clips I'm concerned to report that I still remember almost every word this app is so very 2010 with characters like DJ spray tan as a jab at Jersey Shore you're so sweet when you showed up at the club tonight it was like what are we in a beehive right now and Bertram the teen vampire included as a Twilight reference you're so sweet I'd compare you to Something Sweet if I eat food nowadays it'd totally be filled with skins and microtransactions to buy the Juicy Fruit mouth cameos of beist celebrities but in 2010 it was free to download free to explore and free of ads except for you know the main one about the gum it's a great example of how fun these old apps used to be even when they didn't really have a point I'm sure I looked pretty goofy while using this thing and pretending to be Billy Bob my favorite because he was the most random XD of all the [Music] characters but even with this thing held up to my face it couldn't have been much more embarrassing than another experience I had with a different app that after 14 years I've finally decided to publicly share I had an iPod Touch in 2010 which could do pretty much all the things that the iPhone could do except send texts and make calls for whatever reason though I still wanted to make it seem like I could call someone if I wanted to so naturally I downloaded yet another silly novelty app called fake a call it was essentially a modern version of a fool your friends gag like shock gum and hand buzzers only now it was prank calls but reverse prank calls where instead of calling the local McDonald's to put in a clearly fake order you pretended that Obama had your phone number and was calling to personally catch up with his favorite 11-year-old now that I think about it I'm pretty sure everyone I tried to trick must have known that it wasn't real but it was still fun to mess around with making up different colors and changing the pictures and ringtones but I still really wanted this thing to work for some reason to convince someone that I was cool enough not just to know people that wanted to call me but so cool that I could somehow access a cellular network without a cell phone and one day I saw the perfect opportunity in a Hollister store at my local mall already one of the coolest places an 11-year-old could be at the time I knew the moment was right my mom was probably one store over at bath and& body works or something but as far as the Hollister staff knew I was mature independent a able to afford an overpriced zipup hoodie all on my own and definitely able to take a phone call I navigated through the dark dank cologne scented cave system and made my way towards a nearby teenage employee folding shirts that would definitely be able to see me I whipped out the old iPod Touch set up a phone call from a cool sounding person and started the countdown except I'd made a fatal error no one could really be able to tell that it wasn't a real phone call because they couldn't see past the cloud of musk and racks of polo shirts to tell that it was really just an iPod but they could hear the ringtone I'd said something I had forgotten to change since messing around on the app with my friends and I didn't notice my mistake until in the almost completely empty store aside from me and this 16-year-old girl with my iPod turned all the way up at max volume the countdown on my fake call reached zero and to my dismay the teenage Hollister employee definitely heard and looked over and laughed I tried to recover by quickly spamming to unlock my ipod and answer my very real and mature call but it was definitely too late and I'm sure that the way I was so startled that I could only say uh hello mhm okay bye did not help it seem any more convincing I truly cannot convey just how in embarassing it was and in the sacred lands of a Hollister store no less but I still think about it way more than I should fortunately most of the other apps I downloaded during the Golden Age didn't really lead to anything else like freely macking on the screen of my iPod in public or forever associating Everybody Dance Now with the sound of my embarrassment because Beyond novelty apps and toys the rest of the era was filled with games while social media apps were among the most download loed in 2008 some of the first mobile games released for Apple's App Store were mobile versions of games that already existed a port of Super Monkey Ball was actually the most downloaded game when the App Store launched which I had no idea even existed and other franchises like Sonic Pac-Man and Mega Man also released mobile ports of some of their games too but smartphones weren't made to be just another gaming platform this was a completely new market that was itching to be filled with not just existing games but brand new ones ones that really lent on the touchscreen tilt controls and ease of access of this new age of cell phones a game that I feel really defined this new genre and kind of became the face of mobile games is none other than a 2009 classic Angry Birds if you've somehow never heard of or played Angry Birds which I would find very surprising it's a casual strategy puzzle game about some birds that look like this that want their stolen eggs back from some pigs that look like this the goal is to fire off the different birds to break through the pig's defenses and get revenge there's not a whole lot to it beyond that but as is true for most early mobile games it didn't need to be anything more as simple attention grabbing games were often the way to success another app that was released in 2009 also involved some silly mobile game Antics though it was admittedly a lot more involved and a lot more unconventional you could say Pocket God is both Goofy and entertaining yet also a little messed up Pocket God has you controlling the lives of a group of little guys called oo on different islands where you can name them make them dance draw some culturally relevant double rainbows double rainbow oh my God and sacrifice them to a giant ape it doesn't take long after tapping around the game for a little while to figure out that while you can help the little Islanders fish solve puzzles and live nice fulfilling virtual lives you can also feed them to sharks throw them off cliffs fling them into volcanoes strike them with lightning and a whole lot more this game really rewards exploring all of the mechanics and game areas and I do think it's really cool that such an early game had so many uses for the different touch controls pinching tapping swiping zooming swirling and tilting the phone all did tons of different things depending on the island which might not seem like a big deal nowadays but it was pretty Innovative for the time unfortunately though those same modern and Innovative controls all LED the oogs to varying forms of torture in different and pretty outof pocket ways each of the different Islands you can visit have plenty of ways to mess with them including zombies a giant ice Golem an endless pit of spikes sharks equipped with underwater lasers an ancient Idol that sets everyone on fire an Islander that's secretly a bloodthirsty tiger hybrid and literal hell itself despite the moral ambiguity I think that this game is really creative and still pretty fun even after all these years the though Pocket God was definitely more of an outlier as far as popular games went most apps tended to be much more simple repetitive puzzle style mini games that were easy to pick up and put down on the go Paper Toss digitized The Board office worker experience by making a mobile game about a game board office workers might play that likely plenty of board office workers then played the virtual version of kind of meta Doodle Jump used the iPhone's tilt function to turn the concept of an endless Runner into an endless vertical jumper with a cute little alien Temple Run was also an endless Runner but this time in a spooky jungle setting that despite the chunky low poly Graphics felt oddly high stakes and dare I say immersive at least in terms of mobile gam standards especially the creepy monkey things that chased you really made it feel like the danger was real the original Temple Run is still among the top 10 most downloaded IOS games of all time which really speaks volumes to its popularity Cut the Rope definitely nailed the cutesy aesthetic as it was centered around a little creature named omnom such a 2010's name that just wants to eat some candy and I don't blame him the developers made that thing look so delectable that I too have yearned to know what that beautifully crafted glossy piece of candy tastes like since 2010 maybe that's just me though and speaking of virtual Foods looking needlessly yet so convincingly tasty Fruit Ninja is even simpler yet just as fun to play swipe finger slice fruit make Splat be happy the cartoon of all these fruits and the juice that they splatter on the wall just made the gameplay extra satisfying the developers behind Fruit Ninja also made Jetpack Joy Ride which is yet another endless Runner but that's still pretty unique compared to the others you play as a guy named Barry who steals a jetpack and flies around the scientists lasers and Rockets that try to stop him from from escaping the facility something that these few games have in common is how much the touchscreen mechanic really puts you in control of the game Beyond how a mouse and keyboard or game controller would if a rope needs cutting you don't click it you swipe at it to get the alien towards the next platform you tilt to aim him Paper Toss is about tossing and actually flicking the paper with your finger and Fruit Ninja has you slicing the fruit with your own hand while I did have Fruit Ninja and cut the rope on my totally not an iPod watch me get a phone call iPod touch a few others that I always played were a little more Niche compared to the classics some of my ultimate favorites were Platformers like the chop chop series and the Epic neonat Lost in Space Mega Jump a way cooler Doodle Jump clone with cute little characters to unlock the taptap revolution games fall down where the ball fall down fast ball where the ball go fast and the Test essentially the mobile version of The Flash game The Impossible Quiz that you played for the Epic LOLs I probably was just installing every game I encountered on the App Store but in doing that I came across a mobile game musthave the food making apps in my girly flash games video I talked about how popular cooking games are in a feminine demographic and in the case of cooking game apps it was no different every girl I knew had pretty much identical home screens with the same cupcake makeup ice cream maker candy maker and probably taptap Glee the gameplay on these was pretty lackluster in retrospect even for iOS game standards and after making just one cupcake or ice cream cone things got pretty repetitive but I think this was just another one of those cases of playing the games because it was there it was free and it was on a touchcreen that you could carry around with you which made almost any game worthwhile just for the convenience and Novelty of it some other games geared towards a more girly audience were also centered around decorating and caregiving the light version of the Virtual Families app was something I personally spent probably a little too much time on considering I had the full version of The Sims 3 running almost perfectly on my laptop at home but the virtual fames game was an app and that's what made it cool The Sims 3 actually did have IOS app versions but they kind of left a lot to be desired I'll probably end up talking about those in a more in-depth dedicated Sims video down the road though because I have a lot of feelings about it if you liked the care aspect of Virtual Families but hated that they all looked like this there was po the iconic little blob creature izy has a great video covering all of the PO lore but the basis was that it functioned like a modern tomagotchi with feeding bathing dressup and mini games for the ultimate portable virtual pet experience another game that wasn't NE necessarily just for girls but definitely tuned into the feminine urge to care for little creatures and decorate stuff was Smurf's village while the trend of endless mini games or advancing through puzzle levels was pretty common in most of the popular apps Smurfs Village was less arcadey and more of a progressive Town Builder a lot of the legendary Facebook games like Farmville fishville and Cafe world came out in 2009 and this game followed the same formula in 2010 with real-time goals and transactions but now with a lot more Smurfs what's interesting now is that the current state of mobile games is both completely different and also pretty much the same among the millions of apps that exist now there are still a ton of games that are just simple puzzles with Progressive levels which were most of what made up the early golden age but at the same time Mobile gaming has evolved past just a fun little pastime on your phone and into an official and fleshed out genre of its own with RPG Shooters and MMOs microtransactions augmented reality online play and peripherals Mobile gaming has evolved far past just flinging some birds at a bunch of pigs but that's not to say that Angry Birds is any less successful it's wild that a lot of the Classic Apps that started as simple mini games have developed into entire franchises with sequels merch miniseries brand Partnerships arcade games and even movies for every successful game leading its own Enterprise though over the years more and more of the older apps that started at all are no longer being supported or are even being removed from the App Store altogether which is even more indicative of how far mobile games and apps have come since 2008 I never thought I'd be quite so nostalgic for something as unimportant as old apps but there really was something special in playing a little ball fall down or Temple Run a lot of modern apps feel a lot more overly complex monetized uncreative and corpor like the countless branded Match 3 games or the plethora of games with the super strange ads that don't even show you real gameplay and probably just steal your data if you do try to play them I recently saw though that cut the rope is available as a YouTube playable which is a newer feature where you can play mobile and mini games directly on YouTube in your browser and with other mobile game hubs like apple arcade and even Netflix which hosts exclusive mobile games that are included with a regular subscription it almost seems like a kind of mobile game Renaissance while nothing will ever beat the feeling of perusing through different Juicy Fruit mouths or wasting time waving a virtual lighter around for the first time it's still cool to see that silly little mini games and meaningless apps are still part of digital culture because gaming doesn't always have to be that serious let me know what your favorite Golden Age apps were if I missed them there are way too many to ever cover them all but I do always love hearing about everyone's nostalgic face Wes and super Niche memories that they were reminded of hi welcome to jelly TV where I shout out a video that I think deserves some love I recommend watching I played every Littlest Pet Shop game by shunks shunks digs through the entire Trove of existing LPS games to Showcase The Good The Bad and The questionable and it's a lot of fun to see how deep the rabbit hole goes as someone who has also taken a number of deep dives into some unhinged and unplayable DS and flash games I find other people doing the same thing endlessly entertaining their edits make the whole thing Goofy and a fun time all around so even if you don't really know anything about LPS this is a great way to learn a huge thank you to Daniel E from ABQ Kevin Evans Brett Morgan bunzo Eliza ficano and Iris Grayson atil go Luca Hayden Campbell y a knuckle oo Loa animal Blu Lucy likes tan and Sarah Louisa Luna Stephenson Mark Kent mu we paper Sam Pharma mags pixel puppy shapel starbit illustrations Theodore nicus Vivien Valencia and the rest of my patrons for supporting me I hope you guys liked the video it was a lot of fun to oh sorry hold on I'm expecting a very important phone call in about 3 seconds yes hello Obama nice to talk to you too how are the kids are you still in that secret relationship with Harry Styles

Channel: Dream Jelly

Views: 154,343

Keywords: apps, app, smart phone, smartphone, smart phone app, smart phone apps, iphone apps, ios, early ios, old ios, classic apps, mobile games, mobile gaming, angry birds, fruit ninja, temple run, pocket god, candy crush, paper toss, zippo lighter app, zippo app, ipod touch, crossy road, phone games, ipod games, virtual families, doodle jump, smartphone apps, iphone app, ios app, ios games, iphone games, fruit ninja 2, temple run 2, angry birds movie, best mobile games

Id: PKS4h8q7ojI

Length: 22min 43sec (1363 seconds)

Published: Tue May 28 2024