Mobile Games We All Grew Up Playing
Ali Hasan May 21, 2022
With the advent of cell phones with screens in the late 90s and early 2000s gaming on mobile devices started to gain traction. Although portable gaming wasn’t anything new, gaming on mobile phones was. Mobile gaming in its infancy consisted mainly of ports of older console games as well as some new mobile games that are still fondly remembered like Snake, Bounce, and Tetris.
Snake
Perhaps one of the best-known games of all time, Snake is a game that almost every kid born in the 80s and 90s experienced. All Nokia phones came with snake built-in and every kid would hog their parents’ phone to play it for hours on end.
Snake was very simplistic in its style and gameplay. The game did receive many sequels over the years but the classic snake games that were available on Nokia devices still remain vivid in the hearts of many adults today
Tetris
Tetris was first released in 1984 and has been ported to numerous devices including mobile phones. Like Snake, Tetris was available on all mobile mainstream mobile devices and would require the player to match blocks in order to clear a row for an infinite amount of time.
Tetris is still strong today with major console releases, the game has even added multiplayer functions over the years.
Space Impact
Space Invaders was a port of an extremely popular arcade game of the same name. Like snake, it came preinstalled on many Nokia devices. Space Invaders was a shoot-em-up arcade game where players would have to destroy fleets of oncoming aliens and survive as long as possible.
Smartphone Era
As Smartphones started to gain popularity in the early 2010s so did Mobile Gaming. Developers started to shift their focus on what was quickly becoming a very lucrative market and soon there were tones of games available on the mobile platform across Android, iOS, and Windows devices.
Mobile games are easy, accessible, widely available, and more often than not completely free. Many of us started our gaming journey with mobile gaming, games like Angry Bird, Temple Run, and Doodle Jump all come to mind when we think of mobile gaming. In this blog, we will go over the mobile games we all grew up playing
Angry Birds
Angry Birds took the gaming world by storm when it was first released in 2009. It was one of the first mobile games to gain massive popularity due to its fun and addictive nature. The player makes use of a number of birds, each having their own unique abilities to take down pigs, oftentimes encased in elaborate structures. The game was simple in principle but got more complex as the levels progressed.
Angry Birds saw several spin-offs over the years including Angry Birds: Star Wars, Angry Birds: Space, Angry Birds: Rio, and much more. There were several console releases as well. The game is not as popular as it was before but its impact on mobile gaming and our childhoods cannot be understated.
Temple Run
Like Angry Birds, Temple Run was also a first-of-its-kind game. Released in 2011 the game made popular the endless running game genre and inspired games like Subway Surfers. The game was often lauded for its fun and addictive nature with a simple control scheme and gameplay loop
The game went on to release two sequels, Temple Run 2 which had several tie-ins with movies, and Temple Run VR. The studio also collaborated with Disney on two games; Temple Run: Brave and Temple Run: Oz.
Asphalt
The Asphalt series didn’t get its start on Smartphones but as a game, it lent itself very naturally to the platform. The Gyroscope that started appearing on most smartphones led many developers to leverage the technology and racing games worked the best. Being able to control your car by moving your phone was incredible back in the day and led to the increase in the popularity of racing games on smartphones.
The Asphalt series is now a mobile game mainstay. Often times is used as a benchmark for graphics. The next game in the series; Asphalt: Nitro 2 is currently in beta and slated for release soon.
Subway Surfers
Subway Surfers is one of the dozen games inspired by Temple Run. The game was released in 2012 but changed up the oftentimes monotonous formula of Temple Run by adding in several items that would give the player temporary buffs which included higher jumps and jetpacks.
Although the game never got a sequel its popularity never faltered. The game crossed 2 billion downloads in 2018 and even spawned an animated TV show.
Fruit Ninja
Fruit Ninja was another game that leveraged smartphone technology; particularly, the touch screen. In Fruit Ninja, the player would make use of the touchscreen and swipe across it to cut fruit that was thrown on the screen. The game was fun, addictive, and simple but still had a slight challenge. It was released in 2010 and was also one of the first games to popularize mobile gaming.
Like Subway Surfers a sequel was never released but Halfbrick (the studio behind the game) constantly kept it updated, adding new content every now and then to keep the community engaged.
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