Civilization Revolution 2
This title was originally created as a simplified console version of the original Civilization series by Sid Meier. I had a lot of fun with Civilization Revolution on the Xbox 360 and later on the Xbox One so getting Civilization Revolution 2 seemed like a no-brainer to me.
Basically, though, it does not justify to be a “part two” in my opinion. It is more or less the same as Civilization Revolution as it was originally released for consoles just with a tiny bit more content and somewhat improved graphics. Touch control absolutely works fine on this one but make sure to save often as this game can have matches that run for many hours. I didn’t encounter crashes yet but better safe than sorry, right? 😉
XCOM: Enemy Within
This is the ported version from the XCOM remake of 2013, with slightly more content than XCOM: Enemy Unknown, from 2012. If you’re asking me, they did a great job on making this title ready for touch input. Overall, not much has changed if you compare it to the original version of the game and that’s great. If you’re in for some classic round-based strategy gaming with shiny new graphics, this one is definitely for you.
The Bard’s Tale
If you enjoy a good fantasy RPG and a good satire, you might enjoy The Bard’s Tale, originally released in 2004. This title is basically a parody that picks up on all kinds of oddities we know from playing fantasy RPG and makes fun of them without ever being tasteless about it. As someone who likes RPGs, I never felt offended, but I often laughed playing this title. I used to play this on PC, so I was thrilled to see that they successfully managed to port a game like this.
HARVEST MOON: Seeds Of Memories
If you said this title is not a ported game, then I would probably not argue against it. HARVEST MOON: Seeds Of Memories is original in its own way, but then it also heavily reminds me of all previous installments of the Harvest Moon franchise. The controls take a bit time to get used to, but you’ll survive the trip.
The characters are well-done, and the story is nice as well. In a nutshell, HARVEST MOON: Seeds Of Memories is the full Harvest Moon experience on your smartphone with all the RPG elements, dating sim and of course the farming and collecting features.
GTA: Chinatown Wars
This particular title from the GTA series is a lot more like GTA 1 and GTA 2 than GTA 3 and all later games of the franchise. The gameplay and setting is similar to newer parts, but as this title was originally developed for the Nintendo DS, you have the camera fixed on top to get a bird’s eye perspective on everything that’s happening in the game.
I think this is worth checking out for many as I don’t think everybody who played GTA at that time also owned a Nintendo DS and possibly didn’t have the opportunity to play it before. Now you can play a story that you might not even know right on your smartphone. It’s also worth noting that Rockstar Games also released other great games for smartphones such as Bully: Anniversary Edition, Grand Theft Auto San Andreas, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, Grand Theft Auto 3, GTA: Liberty City Stories, and Max Payne. Find the Rockstar games here for iOS devices and here for Android via Google Play Store.
Grim Fandango
Unfortunately, there is no Day of the Tentacle port yet but for everybody who likes this type of adventure games Double Fine Productions built a port of the classic Grim Fandango. Originally this was done by LucasArts and one of the first games in which they used 3D graphics as an overlay on top of a pre-rendered static background. In this remastered ported version for your smartphone, they worked a lot on the graphics, so you get all the retro glam without the pixel pain in your eyes.
Crazy Taxi
Not long ago Sega started to publish ports of all kinds of their classics to be playable on modern smartphones. Unlike most of the other games listed in this article, the Sega titles are free, but you could encounter ads or in-app purchases in some way.
Crazy Taxi is one of Sega’s most popular arcade titles in which you drive a taxi car all around the city to pick up passengers and drop them off at their destination, and you have to do that quickly before the time runs out. We don’t have to argue driving physics here, but it’s a whole lot of fun. If you’re into titles from Sega, you should make sure also to check out some of their other new-old titles on the Forever Sega website.
Secret of Mana
When Square was still Square and not Square Enix, they had a couple of successful franchises running. One of the top-rated titles that were released on the SNES was Secret of Mana. Originally aired in 1993, this roleplaying game was a milestone for the JRPG genre as a whole.
They were possibly not the first to do a real-time combat system in an RPG, but they were one of the first who’d make use of a power bar mechanism. Though this is an excellent title, there are also other good ones up there from this publisher, including various Chrono Trigger, Dragon Quest, and Final Fantasy titles now made available for smartphones.
Jade Empire, Star Wars: KOTOR, Fahrenheit: Indigo Prophecy
Aspyr Media is a champ when it’s about porting great games to mobile platforms. It was tough to pick a particular title from them to get features, so I got my favorite three in here. I played the original games of all these, and it’s really great to see them ported in a sophisticated way to be played again by older gamers or get found by new gamers. We also did a full article on just this particular news and you can read it here.
Jade Empire is an oriental fantasy RPG. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (KOTOR) is one of the most popular Star Wars RPGs that got ever released. Fahrenheit is a mysterious action thriller that was one of the first games that I played which came with a quick time event function. All three of these are worth playing in my books but go ahead and pick your favorite. 😉
Apps store links for iOS and Android can be found here.
Z Origins (Z The Game)
Z is possibly one of the pioneers of real-time strategy (RTS) games, and it’s amusing, in a way, to see that this type of graphics still work today on modern smartphones. Of course, we can do VR and whatnot, so hardware should not be a problem. I am talking about the fact that the visual elements in Z are so well-designed that we can still accept them today and have fun, even though the original game was released in 1996. If you had trouble finding good RTS titles for the mobile before, you should definitely give this game a try.
Photo credit: All images and screenshots used here are owned by the respective developers and publishers.
