DownGrader
Member
Mobile (smartphone) gaming receives a fair share of good publicity in the last several month, mainly because of indie game developers making a lot of quite good games. I am very happy to hear it since I consider that this market deserves something way better than the flood of adware and freemium-broken entertainment apps. But I think we are forgetting something...
Remember these clunky little devices called Pocket PCs, by the name of Microsoft's operating system (later renamed Windows Mobile) they were powered by? They were aimed at enterprise sector and computer enthusiasts and tried to compete with Palm PDAs in early 2000s. Palm machines were less functional but way more popular due to better usability, better mobility and better price. But in the mid-2000s, Palm failed to keep up with times - their then-current OS was very limited and aged bad, their then-new OS was finished but never released, and they failed to Windows Mobile. Microsoft and its partners had their 15 minutes of market domination until consumer smartphone marked, with the help of iPhone and Android-based devices, destroyed the whole PDA/communicator market by late 2000s to early 2010s.
That was the brief course of history no one ever asked. But the topic I want to discuss now is the fact that Pocket PC, despite its focus on business (look at these tasks and appointments!), was actually one of the best gaming platforms of its time, tragically overlooked by most of people.
As you understand, in reality "Pocket PC" was just a clever marketing move since, well, TI/MIPS/ARM-based device just cannot be compared to x86 PC - mobile gadget is mobile gadget, and nothing more. But if you are talking about games, Pocket PC sure lived to its name. Did you like PC gaming in the 90s? Well, you will definitely love Pocket PC's share of games.
Look, it's a Sim City 2000, a commercial port by ZioSoft! It looks like SimCity, it plays like SimCity 2000 and it have no features cut (like the water system from GBA versions).
ZioSoft also covered your willing of playing Ultima Underworld on the go. Being the straight carbon-copy-like port, this 3D RPG classic really benefitted from touch controls. Managing invertory, analog walking (one could also move by using D-pad if he or she wanted to) and especially battling made a perfect transition to touchscreen several years before the first popular touchscreen-based handheld (Nintendo DS) was released. It was actually really painful going to mouse controls of the original after playing the Pocket PC version.
Actually, there was a lot of PC RPGs ported or being adaptated to Pocket PC. I remember diving in Warlords II - Pocket PC Edition for hours and hours, and Palm Heroes (previously Pocket Heroes) was an excellent fan-made adaptation of HoMM III. These are just ones that came first onto my mind.
Of course there was your usual Doom/Quake/Heretic/Hexen interpreters, as well as pretty darn good clone of XCOM (Pocket UFO) and maybe the best portable version of ScummVM interpreter, control-wise. (Look at this toolbar!)
But do not think there wasn't any original games for Pocket PC! For example, K-Rally was a quite good and beautiful arcade racer based on touch controls which actually work wery well (you press physical buttons for throttle, break or boosts and slide the stylus on the screen as it you were dragging the car with the rope). For some reason, I really liked touch-based racing games, and I had two more games of this genre on my favourites list... but, sadly, I just forgot the names and cannot find any information online. (Another proof of the platform being overlooked...) I clearly remember one game being a parody on SW Episode I: Racer, where you had to deliver coffee to aliens.
Speaking of deliveries, HyperSpace Delivery Boy by Monkeystone, being originally released on PC, Linux and Pocket PC, was a very fun puzzle-adventure game with light-hearted but interesting plot and dialogues and quite challenging puzzles. It was later poted to GBA by another company, as far as I know.
There was even a bunch of full-fledged RTS games, like Warfare Incorporated (which, again, benefitted indefinitely from stylus controls), and some interesting mash-ups like SPb AirIslands, combining elements of strategy games and city simulations with Animal Crossing-like real-time nature. It even had a screensaver mode where the game's light version was automatically lauched after several minutes of device idle so your island could live by its own. Speaking of SPb Software House, which made a lot of amasing software for Windows Mobile - I always liked their interpretations of classics like Sudoku, Xonix, Arcanoid and others... (Oh, how could I forgot - they were featured in SPb AirIslands as a way to earn resources! So that game was also a minigame colection.) but my favourite is their take on Brain Training called SPb Brain Evolution. I really liked its minigames and challengens, as well as the process of unlocking different game modes and trivia facts.
So... how much of you owned a Windows Mobile-based device back in the days and what games did you play on it? Finding forgotten or missed games for it becomes really hard due to the lack of centralised and living places to duscuss the platform, as well as the fact that nobody cares for it. And that's actually pretty sad since, as you see, there is a lot of stuff available for these devices, despite the willing of everyone to present them as business-only device of the past era. I hope that this lenghty post will somewhat helps to keep the legacy and awareness of Pocket PC's past glory.
Remember these clunky little devices called Pocket PCs, by the name of Microsoft's operating system (later renamed Windows Mobile) they were powered by? They were aimed at enterprise sector and computer enthusiasts and tried to compete with Palm PDAs in early 2000s. Palm machines were less functional but way more popular due to better usability, better mobility and better price. But in the mid-2000s, Palm failed to keep up with times - their then-current OS was very limited and aged bad, their then-new OS was finished but never released, and they failed to Windows Mobile. Microsoft and its partners had their 15 minutes of market domination until consumer smartphone marked, with the help of iPhone and Android-based devices, destroyed the whole PDA/communicator market by late 2000s to early 2010s.
That was the brief course of history no one ever asked. But the topic I want to discuss now is the fact that Pocket PC, despite its focus on business (look at these tasks and appointments!), was actually one of the best gaming platforms of its time, tragically overlooked by most of people.
As you understand, in reality "Pocket PC" was just a clever marketing move since, well, TI/MIPS/ARM-based device just cannot be compared to x86 PC - mobile gadget is mobile gadget, and nothing more. But if you are talking about games, Pocket PC sure lived to its name. Did you like PC gaming in the 90s? Well, you will definitely love Pocket PC's share of games.
Look, it's a Sim City 2000, a commercial port by ZioSoft! It looks like SimCity, it plays like SimCity 2000 and it have no features cut (like the water system from GBA versions).
ZioSoft also covered your willing of playing Ultima Underworld on the go. Being the straight carbon-copy-like port, this 3D RPG classic really benefitted from touch controls. Managing invertory, analog walking (one could also move by using D-pad if he or she wanted to) and especially battling made a perfect transition to touchscreen several years before the first popular touchscreen-based handheld (Nintendo DS) was released. It was actually really painful going to mouse controls of the original after playing the Pocket PC version.
Actually, there was a lot of PC RPGs ported or being adaptated to Pocket PC. I remember diving in Warlords II - Pocket PC Edition for hours and hours, and Palm Heroes (previously Pocket Heroes) was an excellent fan-made adaptation of HoMM III. These are just ones that came first onto my mind.
Of course there was your usual Doom/Quake/Heretic/Hexen interpreters, as well as pretty darn good clone of XCOM (Pocket UFO) and maybe the best portable version of ScummVM interpreter, control-wise. (Look at this toolbar!)
But do not think there wasn't any original games for Pocket PC! For example, K-Rally was a quite good and beautiful arcade racer based on touch controls which actually work wery well (you press physical buttons for throttle, break or boosts and slide the stylus on the screen as it you were dragging the car with the rope). For some reason, I really liked touch-based racing games, and I had two more games of this genre on my favourites list... but, sadly, I just forgot the names and cannot find any information online. (Another proof of the platform being overlooked...) I clearly remember one game being a parody on SW Episode I: Racer, where you had to deliver coffee to aliens.
Speaking of deliveries, HyperSpace Delivery Boy by Monkeystone, being originally released on PC, Linux and Pocket PC, was a very fun puzzle-adventure game with light-hearted but interesting plot and dialogues and quite challenging puzzles. It was later poted to GBA by another company, as far as I know.
There was even a bunch of full-fledged RTS games, like Warfare Incorporated (which, again, benefitted indefinitely from stylus controls), and some interesting mash-ups like SPb AirIslands, combining elements of strategy games and city simulations with Animal Crossing-like real-time nature. It even had a screensaver mode where the game's light version was automatically lauched after several minutes of device idle so your island could live by its own. Speaking of SPb Software House, which made a lot of amasing software for Windows Mobile - I always liked their interpretations of classics like Sudoku, Xonix, Arcanoid and others... (Oh, how could I forgot - they were featured in SPb AirIslands as a way to earn resources! So that game was also a minigame colection.) but my favourite is their take on Brain Training called SPb Brain Evolution. I really liked its minigames and challengens, as well as the process of unlocking different game modes and trivia facts.
So... how much of you owned a Windows Mobile-based device back in the days and what games did you play on it? Finding forgotten or missed games for it becomes really hard due to the lack of centralised and living places to duscuss the platform, as well as the fact that nobody cares for it. And that's actually pretty sad since, as you see, there is a lot of stuff available for these devices, despite the willing of everyone to present them as business-only device of the past era. I hope that this lenghty post will somewhat helps to keep the legacy and awareness of Pocket PC's past glory.
