I like the Force Unleashed, the effort put into it to make it a substantial part of the Star Wars universe. Lucasfilm wanted to get it out there on all the platforms, so even though it was getting a little late for this sort of thing in 2008, a game with that name was released on Java phones. There was another version on more advanced phones, including iOS, but it’s gone from that app store now, gosh darn it.

This one is a static 2D affair, with an admittedly unique control scheme. Your character Starkiller stands stationary on all the levels, while enemies (mostly Stormtroopers) steadily enter the screen to shoot at you. All actions in the game are taken by drawing patterns using the phone’s keypad (the layout of which is very hard to replicate on another platform such as a PC due to the patterns being spatially oriented, without some finagling to rearrange your inputs). The screenshot shows some of the join-the-dots shapes that you have to draw with your nine-button grid.

These patterns start to build up thick and fast, so even on easy mode fast fingers are required to see you through. It’s a game well suited to its original hardware but is a struggle in emulation. Still, it feels good to become a numpad wizard, even if the game ultimately lacks variety. Once I got the hang of it, I clocked the thing in 20 minutes. For a mobile game it’s a decent experiment and can become an interesting study in juggling objectives—building force power in stages, dealing with enemies, the occasional contextual obstacle—as the rush of troopers doesn’t diminish even in boss fights.

The plot of the Force Unleashed game has predictably been sliced back beyond the bare essentials. Kota actually dies after your first encounter, there’s no PROXY, no Rakdos, the faked-death twist is very much glossed over. The cutscenes use attractive pixel art portraits; much more pleasing than the real game’s uncanny soulless 3D faces, and the brief dialogue sections do their job nicely with a touch of personality, but understandably fail to deliver on character arcs. Overall it’s actually decent for a mobile game, but really the only way you can play it is to remap a numpad, unless you can remap your brain more successfully than me.