Welcome to “I’ll Buy That for $5,” in which I review games both good, bad, and truly awful that cost $5 or under. If you want to see more of these, please subscribe! If you don’t want to see more of these, I really respect that.
First off, this game is $1.99 on Switch. Not on sale. Not for Black Friday. It’s just $1.99. You’ve got the Nintendo eShop points. Use them.
Second, I once tweeted about this game and got yelled at by a games critic who hated it and was mad that I was talking about a game they considered useless.
Third, it’s not that useless.
Fourth, the name “Original Mobile Games” actually tells you less than what you need to know to understand what it actually is. It’s like naming a fucking game “Blocks” and hoping people get what happens. They might guess right. They probably won’t. Why would you give something the most generic name possible? Why?
Original Mobile Games sounds like shovelware designed to fill the nostalgia for early 2000s Nokia phones with games like Snake, knock-off Tetris, and then a different version of Snake. That ain’t this. It’s both better and worse and weirder than that.
You see, Original Mobile Games is collection of old - and I mean old - handheld wooden puzzles. You’ve probably seen them before when you didn’t buy one at a garage sale and certainly didn’t buy one at Cracker Barrel. You hold a little wooden box with a glass window on it. Inside the box is a little obstacle course and little metal balls (and sometimes other crap) that you need to roll into the right positions.
Sound fun? It sure is! Kind of. Sort of. Not really. But the games are interesting little historical documents and reading the descriptions of them and playing them for five minutes feels like walking through a virtual museum about children who used to roll hoops with a stick and get an orange for Christmas. And the puzzles can get a little addictive. They’re not hard to solve, but they do contain some enjoyment.
On the more clever front, the game uses the Switch’s motion controls to move the wooden puzzles - you know, the way you’d actually move the box to roll the balls around a fake ocean or whatever the theme happens to be. With the Switch in your hands, you can - theoretically when it works right - get a nice feel for how the games used to play. It’s pretty entertaining. With the Pro Controller or detached JoyCons, the experience is rougher since your movements and the movements of the puzzle on screen don’t quite correspond to the same directions.
Still. $1.99 for goofy old game history ain’t bad.
Now, here’s the downside: That $1.99 is the base game that only includes a handful of puzzles. To get all the crappy / fun / I love this wooden boxes, you’ll need to drop money on the five DLC expansion packs, each of which contain a few more each. Here’s where they screw you: Each expansion pack costs $0.99. So if you’re going to get the full package, I hate to say you’ll end up dropping $6.99, which is far over budget.
Still, for something to do while bored - especially something that actually uses the Switch’s motion controls in a quirky unusual way - it ain’t a bad buy.
I'll Buy That for $5: The Original Mobile Games
I bought this when it first came out, and got a couple hours of good fun or of it. Maybe it's time I revisit it and buy a DLC. Wasn't it released by some education group too? If so, it's like buying a ticket to a very specific little museum.