Are there there any actually good mobile games? - Boomer complaints incoming

[cybertoaster]

Emulators 100%, if your phone scores at least 400k on antutu you should be able to emulate up to Gamecube games, maybe even PS2. With a 512GB microSD you can get practically every console game worth playing from 1985 to 2005.

Get a good BT controller, got one of those with the clip and its basically like using a switch but with better ergonomics. Many games support controllers too.

Not related but I just wanted to say: fuck waifu games, that shit its all over the place, you click on one and theres no gameplay videos or anything, its just a slideshow of fucking generic anime artwork with the same copypasted face on a different combination of boobs and cat ears, holy fuck who keeps playing this shit? and there are so many of these fucking games, how is this sustainable? why arent they going broke?

Sad but true and is unlikely to change because the entire mobile gaming sphere is already in a certain place. It's impossible to sell your well-made non-free-to-play game for $15 when all other games on the platform are either "free to play" or cost 99 cents.

Even on iOS? on Android its suicidal because piracy its all over the place but with iOS being the walled up bullshit it is and apple fanboys love of burning money on stupid shit I would expect they would pay for a damn game.

I'm not looking for idle bullshit, I want something engaging.

Ok I guess tower defense is somewhat idle bullshit. I would kill for a Advanced Wars style turn based strategy or XCOM. Fuck, early 2010s even had competent real time strategy on iOS.

I've been playing ancient planet, it's an ok TD game. Fuck Bloons

Any good RTS for android?

Once upon a time, mobile gaming was like Flash 2.0. The App Store was full of small but engaging games with no microtransactions, small independent developers making whatever they felt like, with prices typically ranging between free and $3. If a game cost more than that, it better be damn good. You had tech demo-like games that showed off what touch screens and gyro could do like Touchgrind and Fruit Ninja, addicting Flash-style games like Cartoon Wars and Coin Dozer, and even major Flash publishers like Armor Games and Ninja Kiwi made enhanced ports of their classics. And as for the AAAs? Namco made plenty of smaller Pac-Man spin-offs along with ports of their arcade games. PopCap had a strong mobile presence before the EA buyout. Sega shoved a bunch of Genesis games on there for cheap because why not?

This is what mobile gaming used to be. And now it’s all but lost because most of what I just explained was made pre-Android and never updated for 64-bit, so the only devices that can still play these games are old iPhones running an extremely outdated iOS. The apps themselves are preserved just fine thanks to overwhelming amounts of piracy, but who knows how long it’ll be until people can comfortably play them again.

Thats what sucks about apple, all this vertical integration and yet theres worse legacy support than on Linux. So its all that just gone? there are no early iphone emulators that can run those games?

 

[Polarity]

If you like Chrono Trigger/Cross and want to see the unofficial "continuation" with Mitsuda music and Kato's writing, try Another Eden.

Yes, a gacha. But you don't need to spend a dime on it, just mute the ads and get free game monies. It's a nice solo JRPG.

Tried to get into this one but it couldn't hold my attention. Pretty, but bland writing, combat, and on incredible rails. Get to a new hub area, few meaningless quests to power up, go through hub area dungeon, onto next hub area which is the same as the last but with different art. Designed for the Japanese market do to one "zone" per rail ride I guess. Vastly simplified version of a SNES game.

I think I only did the first four or five areas, so maybe it gets better. I wanted to like it.

 

[Two Dollars]

Thats what sucks about apple, all this vertical integration and yet theres worse legacy support than on Linux. So its all that just gone? there are no early iphone emulators that can run those games?

Pretty much. Someone made an iPod Touch 1 iOS 1.0 emulator a few months ago, but everything else is a “simulator” meant for new app developers. But even if you could emulate them on a PC, would you want to? A lot of those games use gyro and touch controls.

Thread tax: Anti Chess is pretty good for a few minutes at a time. It’s Chess, but you win by losing all your pieces, and you’re required to take out an opponent’s piece whenever possible.

 

[cybertoaster]

Pretty much. Someone made an iPod Touch 1 iOS 1.0 emulator a few months ago, but everything else is a “simulator” meant for new app developers. But even if you could emulate them on a PC, would you want to? A lot of those games use gyro and touch controls.

Thread tax: Anti Chess is pretty good for a few minutes at a time. It’s Chess, but you win by losing all your pieces, and you’re required to take out an opponent’s piece whenever possible.

Can't get any modern benchmarks that go that far but the iphone 4 which afaik was more powerful than the first ipod touch could barely score 4890 points. Even a midend phone now scores a hundred times that so that emulator should be able to run on android easily.

 

[Muttley]

 

[Two Dollars]

Can't get any modern benchmarks that go that far but the iphone 4 which afaik was more powerful than the first ipod touch could barely score 4890 points. Even a midend phone now scores a hundred times that so that emulator should be able to run on android easily.

True, but emulation is more than just power; there’s a bunch of architectural and compatibility stuff involved. But hopefully this is the first step toward being able to play those games again with natural controls.

 

[Pissmaster]

Even on iOS? on Android its suicidal because piracy its all over the place but with iOS being the walled up bullshit it is and apple fanboys love of burning money on stupid shit I would expect they would pay for a damn game.

iOS piracy is possible, but hasn't been worthwhile for years. iOS updates are frequent, and you need to stay jailbroken in order to run pirated games, and there's a whole lot of shady chinaware lurking around when you try to pirate stuff. Your first stop is to visit https://old.reddit.com/r/jailbreak/ and figure out how to even get started, and then search your ass off for how to actually pirate stuff because Reddit is squeamish about specifically iOS piracy. It's a gigantic hassle.

Oh, also? Tons and tons of iOS games require very specific versions of iOS, many of which need different OS versions for different versions of the same game. If a full, proper emulator were ever to happen, it'd need to be able to hotswap entire OS versions on the fly in order to play everything. iOS is a mess, but that's what you get from an entire OS built from the ground up with SaaS ideas.

 

[cybertoaster]

True, but emulation is more than just power; there’s a bunch of architectural and compatibility stuff involved. But hopefully this is the first step toward being able to play those games again with natural controls.

Bad news:

The following hardware components are not functional yet but are also not essential to fully boot the iPod Touch:

• The PowerVR MBX graphics processor

NVM, no way you can emulate any games without the GPU.

Not saying its never gonna happen, the Dreamcast also has a PowerVR GPU and yet it got emulated.

Oh, also? Tons and tons of iOS games require very specific versions of iOS, many of which need different OS versions for different versions of the same game

Thats the real problem I was talking about, jailbreaking wouldnt be a problem, more of a hassle, but this is a dealbreaker. Meanwhile on android any game that ran on 2.3 which was a trillion years ago can run on 13.0

 

[BananaSplit²]

Emulators 100%, if your phone scores at least 400k on antutu you should be able to emulate up to Gamecube games, maybe even PS2. With a 512GB microSD you can get practically every console game worth playing from 1985 to 2005.

Out of curiosity, but how much should a phone score to enjoy accurate PSP emulation? Mine is rating around 117k (on antutu) and there are a lot of inaccuracies going on between black (flash) screens and sometimes hard emulator crashes, even for simple 2D games like Super Robot Wars. No problem with PS1 emulation on the other hand.

Just asking as a future reference in case I had to replace my phone one day.

 

[Pissmaster]

Thats the real problem I was talking about, jailbreaking wouldnt be a problem, more of a hassle, but this is a dealbreaker. Meanwhile on android any game that ran on 2.3 which was a trillion years ago can run on 13.0

Yeah, my best guess as to how to solve such an issue would be a custom version of iOS that can simulate iOS differences on a per-app basis. IIRC, The World Ends With You was broken for over a year because Apple changed a couple of directories, and Square-Enix needed to just fix a couple of lines of code that point to the right directories. They did, but most app developers didn't, so countless apps and games were just nuked from that. Even paid ones. And if a paid one becomes inaccessible, you're fucked.

Which makes it all the more gross when some games cost more on iOS than any other platform, like https://apps.apple.com/us/app/disgaea-1-complete/id1479933497

 

[cybertoaster]

Out of curiosity, but how much should a phone score to enjoy accurate PSP emulation? Mine is rating around 117k (on antutu) and there are a lot of inaccuracies going on between black (flash) screens and sometimes hard emulator crashes, even for simple 2D games like Super Robot Wars. No problem with PS1 emulation on the other hand.

Just asking as a future reference in case I had to replace my phone one day.

200k should be enough but like I said mid-end models and even a few low-end ones are scoring close to 400k so go for that and you get to run dolphin too.

At 400k you should even be able to run at 2x or 3x original resolution which is great because PSP its grainy af for modern standards.

Yeah, my best guess as to how to solve such an issue would be a custom version of iOS that can simulate iOS differences on a per-app basis. IIRC, The World Ends With You was broken for over a year because Apple changed a couple of directories, and Square-Enix needed to just fix a couple of lines of code that point to the right directories. They did, but most app developers didn't, so countless apps and games were just nuked from that. Even paid ones. And if a paid one becomes inaccessible, you're fucked.

Which makes it all the more gross when some games cost more on iOS than any other platform, like https://apps.apple.com/us/app/disgaea-1-complete/id1479933497

It costs more because apple users are willing to pay more for less, its that simple. There are entire marketing books about this conspicuous consumption effect.

 

[Pissmaster]

Out of curiosity, but how much should a phone score to enjoy accurate PSP emulation? Mine is rating around 117k (on antutu) and there are a lot of inaccuracies going on between black (flash) screens and sometimes hard emulator crashes, even for simple 2D games like Super Robot Wars. No problem with PS1 emulation on the other hand.

Just asking as a future reference in case I had to replace my phone one day.

At one point I ran PPSSPP on an iPhone 5S, a 2013 iPhone, and it ran great. PPSSPP runs on anything.

 

[BananaSplit²]

At one point I ran PPSSPP on an iPhone 5S, a 2013 iPhone, and it ran great. PPSSPP runs on anything.

Turns out the latest Android version of PPSSPP from January 3th 2023 (1.14) apparently fixed tons of compatibility issues I had with 1.12 and I just tested it out a bit. Like the attack animations in Super Robot Wars A Portable & Z2 can now display faithfully (no more emulator crashes when being hit by the dimensional rhino beast or regular flashing black screens popping up in many situations).

Guess that's a problem more or less solved but I still appreciate @cybertoaster 's info in case I wanted more firepower in the future

 

[56 others]

Emulators 100%, if your phone scores at least 400k on antutu you should be able to emulate up to Gamecube games, maybe even PS2. With a 512GB microSD you can get practically every console game worth playing from 1985 to 2005.

Get a good BT controller, got one of those with the clip and its basically like using a switch but with better ergonomics. Many games support controllers too.

Not related but I just wanted to say: fuck waifu games, that shit its all over the place, you click on one and theres no gameplay videos or anything, its just a slideshow of fucking generic anime artwork with the same copypasted face on a different combination of boobs and cat ears, holy fuck who keeps playing this shit? and there are so many of these fucking games, how is this sustainable? why arent they going broke?

Even on iOS? on Android its suicidal because piracy its all over the place but with iOS being the walled up bullshit it is and apple fanboys love of burning money on stupid shit I would expect they would pay for a damn game.

Any good RTS for android?

Thats what sucks about apple, all this vertical integration and yet theres worse legacy support than on Linux. So its all that just gone? there are no early iphone emulators that can run those games?

Any recommendations for good emulators on Android? I want to play Advanced Wars or Pokemon Platinum.

Also, one of the funniest and most embarrassing things Ive ever seen was when the Azur Lane gacha game had some sort of irl anniversary in the US. I'm pretty sure it was in Texas, where they plastered a whole bunch of anime girls all over a historical battleship. I am losing my fucking mind trying to refund the picture or information or anything, but I did find one:


Imagine being some grizzled war veteran, and seeing this shit, a bunch of weeb shit is stuck to the back of the turret. Also found a video :

 

[M3xus]

If you can track it down, Galaxy on Fire 2 was good enough to get ported to PC. You fly a ship and fight, trade, and explore to figure out how to stop an alien armada.

 

[cybertoaster]

Any recommendations for good emulators on Android? I want to play Advanced Wars or Pokemon Platinum.

Also, one of the funniest and most embarrassing things Ive ever seen was when the Azur Lane gacha game had some sort of irl anniversary in the US. I'm pretty sure it was in Texas, where they plastered a whole bunch of anime girls all over a historical battleship. I am losing my fucking mind trying to refund the picture or information or anything, but I did find one:

View attachment 4267638
Imagine being some grizzled war veteran, and seeing this shit, a bunch of weeb shit is stuck to the back of the turret. Also found a video :

Who the fuck authorized that? holy shit there's even a weeb with one of those ahegao or whatever shirts.

There is no god...

As for emus, there's nds4droid which is free and drastic which is paid, those are the best ones so try with that. There's also Retroarch which is multi-system but its a bit rough and you need to config things beforehand.

 

[Captain Chromosome]

Buriedbornes is surprisingly fun.
Void Tyrant is essentially roguelite blackjack.
Miner Gun Builder has been scratching my tism for a little bit. You design the interior of spaceships to minmax your projectiles and damage to clear levels by using the equivalent of reflective laser puzzles.
ReversEstory is also fun.
If you dare tread into the insane world of Mahjong, MahjongSoul is good besides the anime and the gacha has no influence on the actual game.
If you have a Bluetooth controller, DevilutionX is an incredibly good android port of Diablo 1. You also can't go wrong with various doom WADs or emulators.
Also Vampire Survivors for the gambling addict in you.

 

[Oilspill Battery]

Redcon is neat.

Fun little strategy game with a beggining, middle and end, good soundtrack, good artstyle and satisfying gameplay.

 

[56 others]

Who the fuck authorized that? holy shit there's even a weeb with one of those ahegao or whatever shirts.

There is no god...

As for emus, there's nds4droid which is free and drastic which is paid, those are the best ones so try with that. There's also Retroarch which is multi-system but its a bit rough and you need to config things beforehand.

Tried nds, it kinda sucked, so I bought drastic and it works great, thanks

 

[Smug]

Tried to get into this one but it couldn't hold my attention. Pretty, but bland writing, combat, and on incredible rails. Get to a new hub area, few meaningless quests to power up, go through hub area dungeon, onto next hub area which is the same as the last but with different art. Designed for the Japanese market do to one "zone" per rail ride I guess. Vastly simplified version of a SNES game.

I think I only did the first four or five areas, so maybe it gets better. I wanted to like it.

It gets worse. As you get closer to endgame your story characters will stop being good enough as they quickly hit a level cap and you'll all but be forced to roll the gacha for characters with a non-shit level cap or do some really tedious grinding. It's a malicious bait-and-switch, can't believe people are recommending it.