TL;DR: fun back in the late 90's, there's a decent mobile port available on Android. I'd love to hear more recommendations for classic games available on mobile.
I played the shareware version of this when I was young a lot. I loved the starting weapon (pulse cannon?), and then loved the laser and a few others... but hated a ton of them (multi cannon? vulcan canon? Those bomb things with trailing clouds? They all seemed so weak and hard to use effectively, even at the highest levels. It almost felt like they only existed to be avoided in arcade mode, where you changed weapons by touching things that appeared after killing enemies or destroying things).
You could also upgrade your shields, generator, ship, side weapons... I remember different side weapons had wildly different strengths. Some were short burst and a ton of damage (plasma storm! My favourite), others would fire continuously and do a little bit of damage.
I liked the arcade mode too, and I vaguely remember trying the two player mode with friends who had a joystick (one on the keyboard, the other on a joystick), or awkwardly trying to share the keyboard (probably one with WASD, the other with arrow keys, but I can't remember). We might have tried the mouse, but I feel like the keyboard was more effective.
There was even some tanks/aircraft mini game, like Worms Armageddon? I think you had to unlock it, possibly with cheat codes. And as I was writing this I remembered some other special ship (or game type, I forget) where you had to perform gestures to do special attacks? Like tapping move in a direction and pressing shoot would also shoot a bolt of lightning, in addition to your normal weapon? And there were other key combinations to do more powerful attacks.
A few years ago I played through a lot of it (even the non shareware episodes! Childhood goal unlocked) on my Android phone: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.googlecode.opentyrian ... I'd share an F-droid link but I'm surprised not to find one. I thought it was all open source now.
I found a bit of other discussion on it in a thread about dos games: https://lemmy.world/comment/248050 (side note: what is the best way to share a comment in a way that works well no matter what your home server is?)
I didn't grow up playing it, but I had heard good things about the "Ur-Quan Masters", a remake of Star Control II (wikipedia link). I still have the app downloaded to my Android phone, but it seems like it was taken down, the link doesn't work unless you're logged in to a google account that already has it downloaded: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sourceforge.sc2 . I found a github link and some other sites that reupload APKs, but I can't vouch for any of them.
Anyway, does anyone else have any recommendations for fun classic games with a decent mobile port? I love to stock up on games like this before a long flight. I'm also interested in iPhone recommendations, I haven't found as many in the Apple app store.
Awesome, thanks! I played Sonic when I was younger, but somehow I never tried any of the others you mentioned. I’ve been meaning to try the “Final Fantasy” series forever and it never occurred to me that it would work well on a phone.
You can either use on-screen touch controls, or you can press anywhere on the screen and have the ship move to that location (while constantly firing). The on-screen touch controls do not work very well for me, but the “follow my finger” method works pretty well. I think I made it through “hard” or maybe medium with it.
It’s not ideal, you have to stop moving to stop firing and let your generator catch up if your shields took a lot of damage. But it’s fun enough as a casual game if you have a few minutes to kill. Or maybe it’s just the nostalgia that makes me enjoy it.
And you trigger sidekicks or toggle weapon firing modes by pressing the info on the right side of the screen. I assume this was added for the mobile version, I didn’t think it was clickable in the original, though I doubt I ever tried it.
And yeah Ur-Quan Masters didn’t play very well. I figured it would be better than nothing on a long flight, though. (But who am I kidding, I always have my laptop with me anyway)
Ahhh… memories are flooding back now. I remember the screen would get distorted and change into the mini game. Agreed, it was amazing and I also can’t believe it was hidden. I miss little gems like that in older video games.
This is awesome! “The Incredible Machine” seems like it’d work great too. It was a bit awkward to control in the browser (having to bring up the keyboard a few times), but I’ll have to try their app later.
While not a straight ready-to-go port....exactly, I was really impressed by DeltaTouch and QuadTouch. It ports over a bunch of id software sourceports to Android making it possible to play not only Doom, Heretic, and Strife, but Quake and Hexen II - most with mod and controller support.
There is a little bit of prep involved - eg. you still need legal copies of stuff, and you will need to move files around on your device, but otherwise not bad.