My final Spyro handheld game to cover is this poorly-titled java phone release. It was released alongside Shadow Legacy and uses the same light/dark world mechanic, and it’s an OK game.
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.
Sabre Wulf couldn’t be more Rare, yet it seems to get overlooked. Its lush environments are almost DKC-esque, the music by Robin Beanland reminds me of Starfox Adventures, and the lewd jokes and silly characters are right out of Tooie or Ghoulies. Thanks Leigh. Of course coming from the handheld team there’s a slight roughness about it (and the occasional use of Comic Sans), but it’s also got charm in spades, and deserves to be mentioned towards the end of the same breath as all these other games.
Here’s a little oddity, groundbreaking in a few ways. It represents big publishers trying to get into the mobile phone game market, Konami collaborating with Westerners for one of their big franchises, and a hybrid of the two types of Castlevania gameplay. Too bad it’s not very good. Ok, ok, with the heavy disclaimer “for a mobile game” it’s fine.
Although this would normally be played in a narrow portrait view, using my java phone emulator I was able to expand the screen space, which really helped with visibility of enemies even if the UI ended up a little odd. Unfortunately I had other problems with my controller, apart from the regular control issues on mobile phones (only accepting one input at a time, button combos with overlapping functions, sketchy diagonal jumps). It looks decent for what it is, but you must toggle between music and sound effects; whatever midi rendering my emulator had made the SFX very unsuited so I kept the music, which was fine.
But let’s talk about how the game works, because it’s an interesting experiment. You have a slightly explorable world but broken up into stage-like bits. Progress gives you new abilities and you will loop back at one point, and you find sub-weapons that are permanently collected and switchable through the menu (but most of them are useless; either comparable to the whip but using hearts, or with more range but too weak). Desmond levels up with experience and can find usable health items and spells. So it’s a light Metroidvania in fact, albeit cut down for the platform, poorly executed and nowhere near as satisfying as its contemporaries. It didn’t really need the RPG elements and backtracking, especially as a mobile game.
At least we have a plot with cutscenes. Desmond is the Belmont of the day, and his sisters Dolores and Zoe pop up for exposition and to give you new abilities, such as alchemy (this and other plot elements tie it loosely to the PS2 game Lament of Innocence). It’s not really unique in Castlevania, except having multiple Belmonts, and it’s very brief. The game is over very quickly; I beat it in a bit over an hour without much trouble. Respawning in the same room on death helps.
So I don’t want this game to be overlooked; it’s not up to the standard set by many other Castlevania games, but it’s short and not difficult so as long as you can wrangle a mobile phone emulator, a fan of the series should give it a go. And I do push back against it being written off as non-canon, as I did with Legends for Game Boy, or the N64 games; I like being inclusive like that. Random trivia fact: the game’s designer went on to found indie publisher Nicalis very soon after this.
This is also part 3 of a series on Rayman mobile games, starting here and continued here. You can see more information and screenshots here and here. The Gameloft composer who made the original soundtrack has put it on his soundcloud (minus one track) here. And you can download the game yourself here; getting it properly and legally is probably impossible at this point. Of the many builds and configurations, for my emulator the best one was the Samsung SGH-F400 version in the 240x320 category, although it was actually 240x297 for some reason. Most others didn’t render the “alpha channel” properly on the sprites so there were pink squares everywhere. However this version did crash on pausing or failing a race, so it’s a tradeoff.
Now about the game. It’s kind of a more primitive Mario Kart 64 clone, or a more advanced Super Mario Kart. You have to take the limitations of Java phones into account for this game; while the music is nice and jaunty, there are no sound effects. The graphics are a mix of basic, Star Fox-esque polygon objects and scaled sprites with some drastic pop-in. The track often slopes up and down and there are frequent obstacles, boosts, or jumps to keep it interesting, along with fun stuff on the sidelines to look at. The items are your pretty standard Mario Kart set. Projectile, boost, invincibilty, hit-first-place item, hit-all-others item, and a character-specific item with various effects (such as dropping baby Globoxes or the Teensie warping into first place).
As I often do, I liked the mix of 2D and 3D graphics, as the developers come up against the limits of the hardware. Speaking of which, as a mobile game the controls have trouble responding to more than one input at a time. Therefore we have karts automatically accelerating at all times, and directional power slide buttons for sharper turns (which I never found the need to use) as well as normal steering. Driving the inside line is rewarded with a boost, so powersliding didn’t seem necessary, at least on the difficulty I chose.
Each of the eight tracks has four missions: an easy race, a harder race, a time trial (where you have to finish each lap ahead of a countdown), and a 1 on 1 coin collecting race. It’s good having a few more options, and winning each event rewards you Lums which count towards unlocks of more characters, tracks, and karts. So for the first two thirds you’re always working towards something.
So it’s a fairly standard kart racer, constrained by the phone platform it’s running on. So why is it remarkable? Well for one you have a course with both Rayman 1’s Moskitoes as obstacles and Raving Rabbids-style cows on the sideline. As I’ve said about previous games, especially the GBA Rayman games, it’s so cool pulling from different instalments in the series as a celebration of Rayman. The characters include Razorbeard, a Hoodlum (I like to think it’s Andre), and a Rabbid in the same game, which is unique to Rayman Kart. RRR is obviously being promoted as the new release, with some of the Rabbids’ technological terrors, the elephant demons, and zombie and scuba diving Rabbids hanging around but combine that with the courses being set in environments out of R1, 2, and 3 such as a swamp, the fire sanctuary, the Dream Forest, etc. and you have the most enjoyable aspect of the game to me. And it’s an excellent way to wrap up a playthrough of the Rayman series. Wait, I still have to play that soccer game? Oh, man.
A while ago I talked about some of the early Rayman mobile games, based mostly on Rayman 1. So now let’s cover the later ones. But first, a word on ports.
According to the excellent resource the Rayman Fanpage, there were a fair number of ports to Palm/Pocket PC systems. The original game was ported as Rayman Ultimate, with a shrunken screen similar to the GBA port. The GBC Rayman 1 game also was ported, but with a larger screen in some cases, and even monochrome versions. Information is still a little scarce but it would have been interesting to play that GBC port!
Mobile phones also apparently got a port of the GBC game with a much wider screen, according to information on this page from the same site. It’s also a good page for screenshots and information of the other games I’m talking about today. Finally, Rayman 2 was available on iOS (that’s how I originally played it… first Rayman game I completed too) but it seems to be have been taken down. Now on to the unique games. I found the best versions for download here; you’ll need a java phone emulator like MicroEmulator to run them, and possibly a configurable controller for convenience.
Rayman 3 (mobile)
Being based heavily on Rayman 3 GBA, this game does nothing new. It’s got basic graphics and simplistic level designs; not to say that they’re bad. There’s 9 levels including the extra one you get for collecting all Lums and cages, but only 2 environments: forest and fire cave. The controls are pretty weird, but I guess make sense for the platform. There’s 3 separate jump buttons: straight up and both diagonals; you have air control, so it’s just for convenience on unresponsive phone keypads. Honestly it’s not very interesting but if like me you see it as a source of new 2D Rayman levels, it’s passable.
Rayman Raving Rabbids (mobile)
Adding to the 3 existing unique game experiences with this name, RRR for mobile presents something different. On first glance you would say “Sonic clone”: Rayman runs fast, rolls into a ball, goes through loops. It’s odd that Gameloft would choose that fast-paced gameplay style for a Rayman game, especially on phones, but it’s actually pretty forgiving: plenty of health, automatic bouncing sections, and deaths and even game overs will replace you at frequent checkpoints inside levels. But playing further presents new gameplay: one almost QTE-like segment, a Rayman 1-style Breakout game, Yoshi’s Island-style rotating platforms, Battletoads-style snake platforms, ricocheting plunger-gun shots, even weirdly blowing up a Rabbid and using him as a balloon. In only 7 levels there’s plenty of variety with a jungle, desert, and mechanised Rabbid lair full of fun platforming and combat. Yes, it’s a 2D Rayman game with kung-fu combos! The sprites are super cute, there’s unique enemies not in the other Rabbids games, and despite having similarly awkward controls to R3 mobile it’s easy and enjoyable. Highly recommended!
While I was looking up these games, I checked out Rayman Raving Rabbids TV Party. It’s not part of my series playthrough as I officially stopped after the first Rabbids game, but it exists and it’s a reasonable attempt at a one-button minigame collection. Rayman shows up in an antagonistic role, since it’s from the Rabbids’ perspective, and there’s plenty of references to other Ubisoft franchises. It’s just odd that they skipped RRR2.
That will do for now: I was going to include Rayman Kart too but that game is pretty substantial, so I’ll save it for its own post. It’s really something!
