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Comment by bdcravens | Hacker News Reader

The gameplay on mobile games mirrors many of those older games, and I think eventually Nintendo will give in and start publishing their catalog there. I think if Super Mario was released on iOS and Android, it'd blow Angry Birds numbers out of the water. (though maybe I'm just hopeful)

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> The gameplay on mobile games mirrors many of those older games

If only. There are exceptions but the vast majority of mobile games that "make it" have very simple and mindless gameplay. Games like Super Mario/Metroid/Zelda do exist on mobile but very rarely do well, and as a result not many people make them. It's nothing at all like the 80s/90s.

Exactly. I can't see the enemy because my thumb is covering him with my virtual joystick.

Give me a crosspad and two buttons. And then get off my lawn.

I just wish phone controllers would start selling enough that more developers would design their games to use physical buttons for gameplay and touch for menu selections etc. Are the current options just that shitty?

I considered buying one when I had a 5S, but decided against when it leaked that the 6's would be bigger. Don't know if the situation's changed.

Physical buttons are complex to make and expensive. And bulky; when not playing a game you still have to use up space on the phone for them.

Not that I don't agree with you --- I do; gaming on phones is a miserable experience. You do get game controllers for phones, but they're frequently awful and game designers can't assume that people have them so they have to design for playing on the screen anyway.

I'd love to see a proper solution for this.

I'd rather just game on my 3DS or PS Vita instead - phone battery life is still miserable with intense games, and performance is also questionable.

Phones are just not built to be a good gaming platform as is, and I am not convinced they will be comparable in experience for at least another decade, if not longer. The technology isn't optimal yet.

Ability to swipe anywhere on screen and tap could replicate alot of those mechanics.

So many people have tried that I feel compelled to say, "prove it." SMB1, SMB3, SMW, and even Mario 64 all require remarkably precise controls for movement--and I tend to think that moving away from that sort of precision of play moves away from something intrinsic to Super Mario games.

Maybe we need to look towards the DS for inspiration. At the beginning, the touch aspect was heavily promoted and a lot of games came out with only touch controls, that worked mostly well. On the other hand, the DS has one very important feature - a stylus with a sharp point. Even if you do get a stylus for your phone, most have very wide ends, nothing like the precise pen that came with the DS. I sometimes wonder whether if mobile phones had all come with styluses, we'd have better games.

I've tried playing platformers on a touch screen. I can never get the hang of it, because I have no idea when I'm touching a button.

The only Nintendo games I'd be interested in playing on mobile are RPGs like EarthBound or Pokémon.

imo flappy bird was pretty much the pinnacle of what action games are possible on a touch screen

Try Badland.

Kero Blaster is not half bad.

If either Mario or Pokemon were released on iOS or Android, they would blow every single mobile game out of the water EASY.

Perhaps. Would you be willing to pay ~$40 for it though? I don't believe the profit margins are high enough on mobile games to be interesting for productions like Pokémon or Mario. More likely, the mobile games will be free-to-play crapware utilizing existing Nintendo trademarks.

I would pay up to £30 for a Zelda or Mario on my phone. Why not? I've paid that for cart versions for years, and they don't get the attention they should because I don't carry a GameBoy everywhere any longer.

If enough people reason like this, then yes, there is a possibility that Nintendo will release quality games for phones. I doubt that will prove to be the case though.

No, but I'd be happy to pay a subscription fee.

Sure, That'll be $40/month.

Seriously, most games are finished in a month if they're good and maybe 2 if they're not. So lets go with $.99/Month on the mobile model.

Unless it's one of the endless time suck games like current mobile games, eg dudes fighting castles, or some big online multiplayer on PC you're not really getting a multi month subscription out of it.

The poster boy in this thread, any mario game, is maybe 2 months, 3 in spurts. That's 3 @ .99, 6 @ 1.99, or 9 @ 2.99. None of which gets you even close to what they were making.

And none of those games will hit the same scale as the dudes n castles games will because those games are simple time wasters with little barrier to entry, eg no skill required. You have to limit max players BEST CASE for your great yester year at the same for any console game, eg maybe 10M players max. If they all played for 3 months at max price your best case is 100M, but more likely 10-30M best case. And likely lower. Eg console numbers is console numbers.

These games cost 10M + to develop these days even great 2d ones because they're still modelled in 3d for parts of it. This isn't the multiple order of magnitude payback the mobile folks are getting on their hits with their quick iterate and the dogfight for the winner.

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