If you’re a mobile gaming enthusiast, you may feel like you have just about every imaginable kind of game at your disposal. This is a perfectly logical feeling, and even an accurate one in some respects. There are thousands upon thousands of available mobile games, and just about every exiting genre has been covered 10 times over. While genres are mostly covered though, there are some more specific categories that have yet to be put to use in the mobile gaming arena.
The following strike us as some of the most significant untapped categories in the medium.
Mobile Gaming Market Growth & Analysis
Super Mario
Super Mario Run was a revelation in mobile gaming, if only because it was the first attempt to bring the biggest character in video game history onto people’s phones and tablets. It actually isn’t a half-bad game, but it was unfortunately not the gateway experience some hoped it would be. Aside from a version of Mario Kart (which frankly is a bit less satisfying on a mobile device), Mario and the Super Mario world have remained largely absent from the mobile category. This is a shame when there are so many classic games from the earlier days of the franchise that could be adapted for mobile use just as they are.
Character-Driven Beat-em-Ups
The “Beat-em-Up” genre can actually take different forms, and to be fair there are some entertaining beat-em-ups in the mobile category. In fact, there are even a few adapted classics, such as Double Dragon. What the mobile medium is largely missing though is the character-driven, side-scrolling beat-em-up games that helped to establish the genre in the first place.
These games involved the likes of the X-Men, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and other beloved characters, and for the most part they’re missing from the space.
Video Slots
There are plenty of slot machine games available for mobile devices, and some are even quite popular. For the most part though, the high-quality, heavily animated video slots that define this genre at online sites are missing from mobile stores. If you don’t know the difference (and you may well not if you aren’t accustomed to these types of games), the slot collection on Foxy Games pretty much packages the best of the online category in one place.
In this single collection, you’ll find animated dinosaurs, adventurous game backdrops reminiscent of Aladdin, pirate games, titles based on gods and heroes, and more. Together they present a bold, colorful, and action-packed category that doesn’t look much like its mobile counterpart. More of these online video slots in the mobile category would be a positive change.
Games Based on Films
A lot of mobile games based on films exist already. For the most part, they’re connected to major blockbuster series, such as Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy or the Marvel Cinematic Universe. And occasionally there’s a good one-off.
For instance, there is an amusing mobile game based on The Adventures OfTintin: The Secret Of The Unicorn. And years ago, Android Police reviewed a game based on Interstellar as “surprisingly cool.” While these games are out there though, what we want is more. Action and adventure games come out virtually every month, and it would be a lot of fun if a majority of them came with decent accompanying mobile games.
Pokémon
And then there’s Pokémon! Clearly what comes to mind in this category is Pokémon GO, which is one of the biggest hit mobile games of all time, and which continues to produce updates with new characters and evolutions. It’s been a phenomenon since it was first announced. As with Super Mario Run though, it’s been a bit of a letdown as an anticipated trendsetter.
It was easy to expect when Pokémon GO game out that there would be standard, RPG-style Pokémon games to follow. So far though, we’ve seen no such thing — which is why we’d still consider Pokémon to be a significant untapped category in the mobile medium.
