Mobile Ports and stripped down games

Hi all, I was wondering whether this great community can help me out one more time. In 2018 Jenny ;( was a great help
when I asked for game recomendations for Jochen and my 'mega gaming session' (once a year we meet up and play three days in a row). In this thread ( https://www.gameboomers.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/1157391 ) Jennifer also told us about games on GoG/Steam being stripped down (compared to the orginal release). I have two questions here

1) Jenny used the term 'mobile port'. I still dont know what that exaclty means. 'To port' I think means for example to modify/rewrite a windows game program code in a way that it runs on a Mac OPS. But I don't get what the word 'mobile' is supposed to mean in that context. Can anyone explain?

2) In 13 days, Jochen will come for a visit and this years mega session will begin. One of the games we consider to
play is Return to Mysterious Island. It is form Kheops. Jenny mentioned that ALL 1st person games from Kheops on GoG are stripped down, but I am
not 100% sure, if seh refers to Mac-versions only or if that statement incldues Windows versions as well. As I cannot find any infos in the GoG forum about this game, my quesiton is: does anybody know for sure whether this game on GoG is stripped down or not?

It would be great if one you could help us here, we would like to play the full version of course, thanks! Mike

Mobile port refers to games played on phones, tablets etc. it has nothing to do with pc or Mac.

I have Return to Mysterious Island from GOG for the PC and it is the complete and uncut version. Jenny was only referring to Mac versions when she was talking about the possibility of certain games being stripped down and it had been one or more of the Cryo Atlantis games for Mac where she had experienced that at some point. GOG does not sell stripped-down versions of any games to the best of my knowledge.

Mobile port just means that the game started on PC and then was ported over to tablets/smartphone (mobile devices) such as iOS, Android, iPad, etc.

I played some game on GOG that was missing one puzzle. Trying to remember (find it on my list) which game that was. I know I posted about it before. Ah, Journey to the Center of the Earth.

Don't they sometimes port some games from mobile devices to PC? Sometimes I read stuff about the games being "bad ports".

Return to Mysterious Island and Return to Mysterious Island 2 are both on sale at Steam right now for under a US dollar and can be bought even cheaper in a "bundle". I played both games from there. If anything was missing, I couldn't tell.

Yes, this happens sometimes too.

First off, thanks to all of you who responded.
@Marian, thanks for conforming that Return to Mysterious Island is the full version on GoG.


I also, as a non-native speaker, would have assumed that when one speaks about 'mobile ports', a mobile device (cell phone, tablet)
is involved in some way, so either a game being ported to a mobile device (more often) or the other way around. But what confused me, when you read
the thread I posted above, Jenny used this term in a context where we were talking about (older) games on CD-Rom having being ported to Steam and GoG, and then in this context 'mobile' didnt make any sense to me. Nowhere in the whole thread you will find us talking about playing games on a mobile phone or tablet. Did Jenny maybe use the word 'mobile' also for games on GoG and Steam, but if so, why? An alternative would be that Jenny played a lot of games on her MAC-tablet iIPad) so with that in the back of her mind, that's why she mentioned mobile ports and Mac?

Anyway, thanks for clarifying what a mobile port in general means, and yes, Marian, maybe Jenny only refered to MAC versions mainly when she talked
about stripped down games (so she excluded Windows-versions when labeling them as stripped down), but it stills sounds like she meant MAC-versions on GOG (and not MAC versions on CD-Rom) - I might be wrong about that, though.

Cheers

Marian, I read one of your posts above again and maybe you are right: Did Jenny maybe have a Macbook and played older games om CD-Rom for the Mac and those were stripped dwon comapred to the previously relreased windows version (which is usually the first version released)? That could be what she mean, but this defintiely would not be a mobile port, it would be just a game that was first released on windows and that ported to mac os. Also still I am not 100% if the mac games she meant were MAC-CD-ROM games or MAC-GoG games... :-)

Edit: I hope it is ok for everyone that I mention Jenny multiple times. I still am very thankful how supportive she was, answering all of my questions to me, a newbie on the board.

Jenny did indeed have a Mac that she used for gaming. In my opinion, we can't mention her enough! She was a big part of Gameboomers for many years and I will always miss her expertise.

I am the least "tech" person you will ever know but MY understanding of it goes something like this:

Some older games were ported to mobile devices and were dumb-downed for those mobile devices, and then some of those dumb-downed mobile versions were ported to GOG and Steam (mostly Steam, and mostly Mac) but also some Windows (especially Steam).

Jenny and her brother had quite a few different computers as I recall including a Mac. And I agree with what Drac said about Jenny. I will always very much feel her presence and influence here and she is definitely still here with me in spirit. I miss her every day.

I did hear a rumor that Big Fish Games hacks up and dummy’s down games so I never buy from them and they do this on all platforms.

I have been buying games from Big Fish since 2006 and have a large number of adventure games for the PC from them. Not a single one that I have has been altered in any way, shape, or form from the original releases: they are all exactly the same. This may or may not be the case on other platforms - I would not know, as I only buy games for the PC.

My experience is the same as Marian's. Any adventure game I've purchased from them was the same as the original. I also only purchase for the PC.

I am not familiar enough with the adventure games on Big Fish though I do have some of them from there, however, at least one game was broken down into 3 different parts - Syberia (apparently anyway). I've never heard that any of the games were dummy downed though.

Yes, Syberia was in parts, but the game remained intact. No content was cut. That is the only exception that I can think of in terms of it not being released in its entirety at once. And this decision was made to the best of my knowledge by the distributor/publisher of the game and not Big Fish. I have played many Big Fish adventure games larger than Syberia and they were all released as standalones.

I just remembered one that was stripped down to practically be a casual game... Mystery of the Nautilus. From what I understand it was called Secret of the Nautilus in Europe and is called Secret of the Nautilus on Big Fish. But it was the same game as I still have the disc and played it on my old XP computer.

Now that you mention it, I do remember reading about that one, Drac. It may well be that is the only one that was changed like that, but it is good to know. The developer/publisher was probably thinking maybe they could make a little more money off a redo.

But that is still the one and only stripped down adventure game for PC I've encountered from Big Fish.

Yes, now that you mention it, I remember reading about that one too. I never got to play the game as my disc would not work in either of my XP's or my 98.

The original Nautilus was VERY pick about when it would work and when it wouldn't!

Marian, is there a listing of full-sized "Adventure" games available from Big Fish (not mixed in with the thousands of HOA games)? Or do you have to have a specific game title in mind and search by that title in order to find it?

Reenie, I would look under the Adventure section, but unfortunately adventure games are mixed in with other things like HOPAs so you would have to wade through extraneous listings as well. And if you were going to search for a title, I would use an external search engine like Google (for example, using keywords like Big Fish Games Sherlock Holmes vs Jack the Ripper). I find this method more reliable than trying to do a search on Big Fish.

It seems like they used to have a place to search "large file games" though I may be wrong and certainly haven't run across it recently.

That is what I was afraid you would say. There are many thousands of Casuals, scrolling for many pages, listed under the umbrella of "Adventure," including Hidden Object, Bubble Pop, jigsaw and TM games, among others. I don't understand why they mix them that way. Someone who likes to work jigsaws would not find that enormous mixed list any more fun to search through than I do. ha ha If they separated the genres, they might have more people looking up and buying the different games available!

In any case, I will try an external search engine as you suggest, and see what turns up. Thanks for the advice!