Itadaki Street is a party video game series originally created by Dragon Quest designer Yuji Horii. It is currently owned by Square Enix and Kadokawa. The first game was released in Japan on Nintendo's Famicom console in 1991. Since then, new installments in the series have been released for the Super Famicom, PlayStation, PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable, Nintendo DS, Mobile Phones, Android, iOS, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita. The series was exclusive to Japan prior to the 2011 Itadaki Street Wii, which is released as Fortune Street in North America and Boom Street in PAL regions.
Insaniquarium is a 2001 virtual pets simulator video game, developed by Flying Bear Entertainment and published by PopCap Games and MumboJumbo. Before PopCap Games's involvement, the game was a web-based Java game released in 2001. The game was made downloadable by PopCap Games in 2004 and was ported to mobile devices in 2006 and 2008 by Glu Mobile and Astraware respectively. Insaniquarium has the player maintain a tank full of fish while protecting it from alien attacks.
A casual game is a video game targeted at a mass market audience, as opposed to a hardcore game, which is targeted at hobbyist gamers. Casual games may exhibit any type of gameplay and genre. They generally involve simpler rules, shorter sessions, and require less learned skill. They do not expect familiarity with a standard set of mechanics, controls, and tropes.
Pet Society is a defunct social-network game developed by Playfish that could be played on Facebook. The game ranked as one of the most popular Facebook applications. Players could design their pets by choosing genders, names, colors and altering appearances. The user interacted with their pets through washing, brushing, petting and feeding.
Playfish was a developer of free-to-play social network games. Playfish was founded in 2007 by Kristian Segerstråle, Sebastien de Halleux, Sami Lababidi, and Shukri Shammas. It closed in 2013. Playfish in the past had attracted up to 55 million users a month, with over 37 million users coming from Facebook users. In October 2008, they secured US$17 million in venture capital funding from Accel Partners and Index Ventures. The company was acquired by Electronic Arts in 2009, with the last of Playfish's games being retired in 2013.
Who Has The Biggest Brain? is a brain training social video game by Playfish and published on Facebook Connect. It was Playfish's first game. The game, along with other Playfish titles like Word Challenge and Geo Challenge, were rolled out onto iOS. EA acquired the rights to the game in 2009 after acquiring Playfish.
FarmVille is a series of agriculture-simulation social network games developed and published by Zynga in 2009. It is similar to Happy Farm and Farm Town. Its gameplay involves various aspects of farmland management, such as plowing land, planting, growing, and harvesting crops, harvesting trees and raising livestock. The sequels FarmVille 2 and FarmVille 3 were released in September 2012 and November 2021, respectively.
Playdom was an online social network game developer popular on Facebook, Google+ and Myspace. The company was founded in the San Francisco Bay Area by University of California, Berkeley graduates Ling Xiao and Chris Wang and Swarthmore College graduate Dan Yue. In 2009, the market for games played on social networking sites was valued at $300 million, consisting mostly of online sales of virtual goods.
Rock Band is a music video game released for the iOS. It was co-developed by EA Montreal and Harmonix, and was published by Electronic Arts and MTV Games. The game was released as a part of the Rock Band series for download through the App Store in several regions on October 19, 2009. On May 2, 2012, RockBandAide announced that EA intended to discontinue Rock Band with servers being disconnected and support being dropped on May 31, 2012. However, EA stated that the message was "sent in error" and the app would remain available to those who purchased the app. It was later announced that due to an expiring contract with Harmonix the game would be removed from the App Store. This occurred on July 31, 2012, and the game is now currently unavailable; though users who have previously downloaded the game can continue to play it.
Drawn is a casual game series developed by Big Fish Studios and distributed by Big Fish Games through their digital distribution portal. The games are adventure games, with Hidden Objects and Puzzles elements.
FIFA Superstars was a football managing game developed by Playfish and Electronic Arts. It was available for play via Facebook. A mobile application was available for iOS. In the game, users take the role of a football manager, managing a team by purchasing players, hiring a coach, upgrading the stadium and keeping the club fit in practice. FIFA Superstars is the first social gaming entry point for the FIFA franchise. FIFA Superstars became unavailable starting 31 March 2013.
Temple Run is a 3D endless running video game developed and published by Imangi Studios. The player controls an explorer who has obtained an ancient relic and runs from demonic monkey-like creatures chasing him. The game was initially released for iOS devices on August 4, 2011, and later ported to Android systems and Windows Phone 8.
Triple Town is a freemium strategy puzzle video game with city-building elements. It is available for social networks and mobile devices and was developed by Seattle-based Spry Fox.
NFL is a series of American football games that are developed by Gameloft, which is supposed to be a simulation of the National Football League. The game series is released on iOS, as well as Palm, and was originally released on the Nintendo DS. The series first came on the DS as NFL 2009 in 2008. Starting with NFL Pro 2012, the game became free, even though players still have to pay for extra XP. 2012 is also the first game to have experience points, team points, which can be used to boost players, as well as credits, which can be earned by leveling up, as well as watching Gameloft trailers. In NFL Pro 2013, when the player is in a passing play, the camera will zoom into a first-person view from the quarterback's perspective.
Subway Surfers is an endless runner mobile game which is co-developed by Kiloo and SYBO Games, private companies based in Denmark. It is available on Android, iOS, HarmonyOS, Kindle, and Windows Phone platforms and uses the Unity game engine. In the game, players take the role of young graffiti artists who, upon being caught in the act of "tagging" a metro railway site, run through the railroad tracks to escape from the inspector and his dog. As they run, they grab gold coins, power-ups, and many other items along the way while simultaneously dodging collisions with trains and other objects. They can also jump on top of the trains and surf with hoverboards to evade capture until the character crashes into an obstacle, gets caught by the inspector, or gets hit by a train, at which point the game ends. Special events, such as the Season Hunt and other, can result in in-game rewards and characters.
Star Command, is a video game developed initially for iOS, then later Android, and eventually PCs. The game is a space exploration and combat simulation game, with players acting as captain of a starship who is tasked with exploring the galaxy and defending his crew from hostile aliens.
Jurassic Park Builder was a 2012 construction and management simulation video game developed and published by Ludia for iOS and Android operating systems, as well as Facebook. The game, based on the Jurassic Park series, allows the player to build a theme park featuring extinct animals. Ludia ended the game's support as of March 30, 2020.
SimCity: BuildIt is a city-building mobile game. Developed by TrackTwenty and published by Electronic Arts, it was launched in late 2014. The game is part of the SimCity franchise, and is available to download from the Google Play Store, Amazon Appstore and the Apple App Store.
The popularisation of mobile games began as early as 1997 with the introduction of Snake preloaded on Nokia feature phones, demonstrating the practicality of games on these devices. Several mobile device manufacturers included preloaded games in the wake of Snake's success. In 1999, the introduction of the i-mode service in Japan allowed a wide variety of more advanced mobile games to be downloaded onto smartphones, though the service was largely limited to Japan. By the early 2000s, the technical specifications of Western handsets had also matured to the point where downloadable applications could be supported, but mainstream adoption continued to be hampered by market fragmentation between different devices, operating environments, and distributors.
Snoopy's Street Fair is a freemium city-building video game developed by Beeline Interactive and published by Capcom for iOS and Android devices, first released in November 2011. Based on the Peanuts comics and TV-series by Charles M. Schulz, the game sees the player as Charlie Brown, who starts a street fair to earn money for uniforms for a baseball game in New York City.
