With the Christmas shopping fever coming soon, Nintendo had to increase production to satisfy the demand for its bestseller Switch. Gamers want to be able to move around with their consoles and it’s not a new trend.

Even though the first handheld console was Microvision of 1979, Gameboy was the first device of its kind to achieve a mainstream success. It was a true revolution. A player was able to play video games while on the go, not worrying about the need for a TV.   What’s even more revolutionary, is that players could play with each other – long before any online multiplayer game was created. The most popular case was when two friends would come together and trade their Pokemon, but there were titles that allowed for 16 players to play with each other! Another revolution that came with the original Game Boy was that around 46% of its players were female! An unprecedented phenomenon back then 

Let’s return to our times. According to BGR, Samsung has sold 20 million copies of its flagship Galaxy S8. Why is it important? When you compare Switch’s NVIDIA Tegra X1 to S8’s Snapdragon 835, you notice that in terms of performance, there is a marginal difference. By the way: in case you have missed it, lately games such as FIFA 18, NBA 2K18, Skyrim, LA Noire, or even Doom – are all either available for Switch right now, or will be available shortly.   It’s a very important message for game developers around the world – “don’t worry about the speed.” The only problem is the controls. If you had played any shooter on your mobile phone without the use of a gamepad or another external controller, you know how difficult it is to control your in-game character. The only problem is how to come up with innovative game mechanics.   That’s the general issue that I have with many mobile games. It is that they are trying to take what works on consoles and PCs and implement it on a touch-screen device. I would even call it “irrationality of rationality.”  Let’s take a look at some outstanding games either created for cell phones or later ported to them, that defied the limitations created by mobile phones. 

Your task seems simple – you have to connect different metro stations. The task is only during the first five minutes of gameplay or so. As the number of stations to connect increases, the number of passengers waiting on every station increases too. A great game to play while sitting in an underground system of your city. 

Even though this game was not the first one to implement AR system, it was surely the first one to achieve a stunning success. I think the game mechanics do not need to be explained in detail. In this game, you control a Pokemon coach. The best part is that you control him by moving in the real world, and catching little creatures that appear on your screen as if they were real. Even though it was extremely resource hungry, and buggy at times, it is the first game ever to cross $1 billion in revenue. Yes. That’s 1 000 000 000 dollars. Just to somehow make this number more familiar – with this money you would be able to buy 704 Ferraris LaFerrari.  

Midnight Star is a sci-fi FPS, set 120 years into the future, that reinvents controls to make it possible to play a first-person shooter on a mobile phone.  

    FPS games often portray soldiers fighting in a war. Either with aliens, humans or robots. Hardly ever, does any game focus or even mention the situation of civilians during an armed conflict. 11 bit studio, inspired by the war in Balkans of the 1990s, created a game where your goal was to survive. Survive for as long as possible. This game takes what’s expected of a video game set during a war and turns it 180 degrees. Without any doubt, this was one of the most moving, if not the most moving game I have ever played. Innovative graphics and touch-friendly controls are overshadowed by the brutal reality of life.