Admittedly, Chaos Rings I can be a bit underwelming, which probably wasn’t helped that I was plugging away at the PS Vita version for hours at a time on my couch, rather than playing the game in small chunks on a commute or work breaks. The logic puzzles that break up different areas are bland obstacle moving drivel, the combat is mindless once you progress far enough, and the story doesn’t significantly pick up until the end of the couples’ routes. Still, it’s interesting seeing such an earnest attempt by Square Enix making full-fledged paid original mobile games, before the company fell back on making a variety of gacha games and ports of their classic games. 

Unfortunately, the Chaos Rings games, outside of III, are now difficult to access. Square Enix delisted the games from their mobile stores in 2016, and the PS Vita ports of I, II and Omega require an Asian PSN account, since the games were download-only, despite having English-language options. A hacked Vita or the use of the improving Vita emulator are seemingly the best (and only?) ways to access these games now, and it’s probably only a matter of time before III joins its brethren in the mobile game graveyard. I’m not holding my breath for Square Enix to release these games as an HD collection, which is a shame since the Chaos Rings series is genuinely fascinating from a mobile game development context.

Zenonia

Zenonia, in contrast to Chaos Rings, are mobile action RPGs from South Korean developer/publisher Gamevil. Also, unlike Chaos Rings, Gamevil continues to release games in the Zenonia series, with an upcoming full-fledged MMO that encompasses all of the games’ scenarios. From a little digging Gamevil has been in the mobile game development scene for a while, with their earliest game dating back to 2005. 

Zenonia 1 focuses on the story of Regret, an aptly named young man ostracized by his hometown, where he’s considered cursed due to the death of his adopted father and the following invasion of demonic creatures. He subsequently opts to leave and travel to create a better name for himself. The game takes heavy inspiration from the 2D Legend of Zelda games, with a smattering of MMO mechanics. From the start, players can select a job class for Regret (Paladin, Warrior, or Assassin), which can vary the skills he’s able to use in battle. Regret also has access to a skill tree, and skill points can be used to power up specific skills and up Regret’s stats. The game even has a skill hotbar, similar to the ones used in many MMO UIs.

The first Zenonia is cute-looking but very dated and clunky gameplay-wise. I wasn’t a big fan of how the characters slowly putter around and the grindy combat loop was immediately tedious to me instead of satisfying. A shame, since I really enjoyed the game’s pixel art environments. The original Zenonia 1 was published in 2008, and boy howdy, does it show; I think this is a game that would’ve been better enjoyed by high school-me on my iPod Touch. 

Despite not caring much for Zenonia 1, I find it unfortunate that 1 through 3 were eventually delisted from mobile storefronts. Zenonia 1 did receive ports to other systems, like the DSi and PSP, but the other games did not. By the time 2 released for iOS and Android around 2010, I assume Gamevil decided to fully devote their resources to the mobile platforms since smart devices were increasing in general usage. While a PSP emulator can be used to play Zenonia 1, 2 and 3 require either sideloading or using an Android virtual machine that can run an older version of the operating system. Similar to Square Enix, I don’t think Gamevil cares to re-release the older Zenonia games (or even many of their older mobile games in general). It’s a massive shame, since I’ve seen many reviews online of people interested in playing the older Zenonia entries and having to do so in extremely roundabout ways.

Steven Universe: Attack the Light

Steven Universe: Attack the Light is a 2015 tie-in mobile RPG for the TV show. Attack the Light was developed by Grumpyface Studios, who primarily work on games for Cartoon Network Games and Adult Swim Games. The game is actually the first in a trilogy of similarly-named games, followed up with Save the Light and Unleash the Light, which received PC and console ports. I still have yet to actually play Attack the Light, but the game’s future availability concerns me for a variety of reasons.

Attack the Light has been a mobile exclusive game and hasn’t been ported or re-released on other platforms. Given the previous examples of Chaos Rings and Zenonia, I expect that Grumpyface will eventually stop supporting the game and delist it from storefronts. That being said, the game was updated as recently as 2020, and being from 2015, the game is probably easier to maintain on newer OS versions. Still, since Steven Universe as a show ended in 2020, there’s probably only so much incentive to keep maintaining its game for so long. It probably won’t be too much of an issue to play the game on an Android emulator in the future, but it saddens me to think that this unique game has a baked-in time limit to its legal availability.

Conclusion

Mobile gaming preservation, in general, is difficult, and I’ve only scratched the surface as far as mobile games on iOS and Android. What surprised me the most while working on this article was learning how emulation, particularly for iOS in general and older versions on Android, is still very finicky and far from perfect. It would be easier for me to grab an Android emulator for the newest gacha game du jour, but if I wanted to play a delisted game from the early 2010’s or so, I might be sent on a goose chase just to get things set up. I knew archiving games for dumb phones was difficult, but seeing the various issues for games on smart devices baffled me. I wouldn’t expect every mobile game developer to keep every game maintained until the end of time, but it’s surprising how difficult it is to preserve games on mobile platforms.

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