![]() Intriguingly, the entire Sims 3 collection – The Sims 3, World Adventures and Ambitions – all still run smoothly – despite being in an outdated aspect ratio, and fairly pixellated on the modern screen. Many of the games were no longer playable (around 70% by estimate) as a result of a decade’s worth of system updates, digital degradation and store removal – but I could still download plenty of these titles, and enjoyed a wild throwback to my distant gaming past. They were all there, preserved in digital amber. Spider-Man and Iron Man were both there, as was the original Final Fantasy for mobile, Pocket God, MapleStory, and the entire Sims 3 mobile collection. Out of curiosity and a sense of nostalgia, I clicked through the ‘Purchased’ user tab, and discovered mounds of apps I’d downloaded as a young child – pimple poppers, sand timers, solitaire, metronomes, the Watchmen movie app, Hangman, and more. The battery life was also a noticeable strength – with normal everyday use, the phone can last around 2-3 days without charging.Īfter playing around in the phone’s settings to familiarise myself with any changes, I soon realised that the App Store retains knowledge of every download you’ve ever made. Read: Apple appears to be removing older apps from its App Storeīeyond these major features, the phone is easy to manoeuvre, conveniently thin (despite the size), and is capable of playing graphically demanding games ( Genshin Impact, LEGO: Builder’s Journey, The Survivalists) that run smoothly, with no noticeable warming to the device. This was a bugbear that plagued the original iPod Touch – and I have vivid memories of frustration with touch tracking. Input is similarly chic, with a pixel-accurate touchscreen that allowed for what seemed like more precise control. The screen is also very impressive – crisp and brightly coloured. The first thing I noticed was the size – it’s a massive phone, almost too big to handle. The Apple App Store always remembersįiring up the iPhone 14 Pro Max was a wild experience – it felt so different to how I remembered these devices. As it turns out, mobile gaming on Apple devices has evolved phenomenally since I last experienced novelty pimple popping and tap-tap-revenging. When I was offered the chance to review the latest iPhone 14 Pro Max, with all its modern high-end hardware and potential, I was extremely curious about how much the experience had changed in the last decade. ![]() I eventually graduated from an iPod Touch to an iPhone 5, and then to the ‘dark side’ as an Android user. As phones integrated better-performing hardware and higher resolution screens, these games continued to change – with each device generation bringing drastic improvements. The novelty wore off in this period, as apps led way to games – and ‘mobile gaming’ evolved, as a concept. ![]() Just some of the highlights from my now-preserved iPod Touch app library. In the early 2010s, mobile action adventure games took off, with adaptations of Iron Man and Spider-Man being core standouts for me, as a young and impressionable iPod user. Later, games became more complex – and we got hits like rhythm tapper, Tap Tap Revenge, and even mobile ports of titles like Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars. There were lightsaber simulators, puzzle block games, AI illustrators, ‘love calculators’, and countless imitations of Diner Dash. In another, you could pop pimples by tapping the screen. In one, you could tilt your screen and ‘beer’ would flow across your device. Some didn’t even really have a true function. There were no sweeping, large-scale adventures, cute puzzlers, or subscription services like Apple Arcade. ![]() In this era, mobile games weren’t what we know them to be now. Even in this early stage of the iPod and iPhone era, when apps were relatively simple and experimental, I fell in love. More than that, games at your fingertips. I begged for one, as a Christmas gift, keen to get my sweaty hands on a device that was, at the time, fairly revolutionary. I was 14, and the first generation of iPod Touch devices had hit the market. I remember the first time I played games on an iOS device – vividly. ![]()
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