Tag: smartphone games

Mobile gaming successes grow as a result of holiday travels

While the hottest smartphone games remain popular, previously overlooked titles get a new chance at this time of year.

At this time of year, holiday travelers are on the roads, sitting in airports, or crammed in the seats of planes, buses and trains, heading to various destinations around the world, and mobile gaming has become an important part of that experience.

These mobile games have allowed children and adults alike to remain entertained throughout long wait times.

The trendiest mobile gaming apps are typically easiest for users to find, since they are often featured at the marketplaces from which they can be downloaded. However, for many travelers, who have to spend hour upon hour in waiting areas and in vehicles as they cross the country to be with their loved ones over the holidays, the most popular games aren’t enough. They need more in order to fill that amount of time. This has opened up opportunities for hidden gems to be discovered.

There have been a number of mobile gaming apps that have already started to be found to be diamonds in the rough.

Mobile Gaming - Popular GamesAmong the mobile games that have seen considerable increases in their successes due to holiday travelers are:

• SimpleRockets (By Jundaroo) – this app is available for Android, iOS, and Windows Phone and is a mobile take on the game designed for PC called the Kerbal Space Program, which was highly popular. It requires players to assemble different components to build a rocket ship that will work and take the user to various parts of the moon, the solar system, and the rest of the universe.

• Auralux (By War Drum Studios) – this is a free strategy game app that is simple in design and rules, but complex in the strategy required. It is available for Android and iOS devices and uses the very basics in military planning to create complicated events for defense and capture.

• Virtual Pool Mobile (By Celeris) – this is a mobile gaming alternative to a PC game that had been designed to provide a billiards playing experience that was physically accurate. In fact, the PC game came with a promise that if the accuracy of its physics didn’t allow the player to improve his or her real game of pool, they would get their money back.

Mobile gaming could be turned on its head by Nintendo

The company has filed a patent that suggests that an official smartphone Game Boy emulator could be on the way.

Nintendo has filed a patent that has now been published which could suggest that the company is looking to greatly enhance its position in mobile gaming by bringing some of its Game Boy titles to smartphones and tablets by way of emulation tech.

The idea of emulators isn’t anything new, but this move by Nintendo is something new on official channels.

This type of mobile gaming emulator is something that can help to make it possible for all of the Game Boy favorites to become playable on smartphones and tablets. There are a number of emulators that already exist online that function by mimicking old types of game consoles to allow gamers to be able to play all of their old beloved games that have been converted into ROM files for PCs and Macs. Nintendo may now be doing the same thing and it could be possible for it to accomplish this goal without having to do a massive amount of rewriting to get there.

Emulators for mobile gaming on a low capability target platform duplicate the experience of a handheld video game device.

Mobile Gaming - NintendoThis would use a number of different optimizations and features to be able to take the old games and boost the graphics quality and sound so that the mobile game version will be a near duplication of what the game had been when played on its native platform. There have been a number of successful emulators and platforms online, but Nintendo would be able to provide an official and legal experience that has not been available for Game Boy games in the past.

Among the examples of what is accomplished through emulators include using bit BLITing, the reformatting of graphics characters, and the modeling of the LCD of a native platform controller through the use of a sequential state machine, as well as skipping frame display updates selectively if it appears that the mobile gaming play is falling behind what would have occurred in the same experience on the native platform.