Hades couldn't save Netflix Games. Are mobile games doomed?
Let's rewind. My formative gaming years were during the 8-bit era. People donning rose-tinted specs would have you believe everything back then was amazing and new. It wasn't. The market was rife with rip-offs. You'd see games like Munch Man that featured a legally dubious yellow blob eating dots and evading monsters. But the industry was young and IP owners hadn't yet learnt to throw lawyers at pretenders.
Still, it was also a golden age of experimentation, in part because so little had come before. Combined with the severe limitations of early platforms, you had an industry where game creators were freed to get weird. And they often did. It was dizzying, chaotic, and properly exciting.
Level up
Play Rhythm Tengoku. If this doesn't make you smile, you are DEAD INSIDE.
As the years rolled by, I grew more jaded. Part of that's just getting older. But I'd look at a PlayStation and wonder whether everything really had to be in 3D. And as creator teams and budgets ballooned, it felt like creative risks were sidelined.
I still bought consoles. My beloved Dreamcast. An Xbox that may as well have had its disc tray welded shut once the magnificent OutRun 2 was safely inside. But it was handhelds that reawakened my love of gaming, especially when they did something that dared to be different.
The GBA was a SNES in disguise but nonetheless gave rise to deeply weird games like Rhythm Tengoku and WarioWare: Twisted! The DS was mocked by people for daring to be inclusive, but I loved how it blew up convention with its stylus and touchscreen. And then the iPhone arrived, and it was only a touchscreen.
Stream time
Play Eliss Infinity. A gorgeous iPhone game perfect for the touchscreen. Alas, long gone.
For games, the lack of conventional controls was a problem. Yet smart devs embraced limitations, just as they had in gaming's earliest days. In Apple terms, they really did 'think different'. Gradually, though, enthusiasm was chipped away from creators and players alike as app stores trained everyone that mobile games should be free-to-play IAP-infested monstrosities. Buzz was killed in the name of whales and giants.
The last throw of the dice has been mobile gaming as a service. Apple Arcade pitched itself as an HBO Max of gaming before freaking out about retention and heavily pivoting towards casual games with IAPs ripped out. Then Netflix Games, lurking for years, made an audacious play. Included with even the cheapest subscription, it pulled in original titles, Netflix tie-ins, and big names. Street Fighter. Civilization. Braid. Monument Valley. Hades. GTA. Football Manager. World of Goo. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. And, er, Hello Kitty.
Game over
Play Poinpy. Great. Also: long gone. Removed from Netflix Games in June 2025.
On paper? Brilliant. In practice? Not enough. Over the past year, Netflix Games has had a tumultuous time, shedding and cancelling games. This week, What's on Netflix reported a full fifth of the library is being pulled, including Monument Valley – which only launched on the service in December – and Hades, one of its best games.
Turns out, Netflix is not immune to churn in games any more than films and TV shows. And with devs long cool on mobile and 'all you can eat', I wonder what's next. For Netflix, the linked report suggests the company will perform its own pivot – to 'big screen' games and away from mobile releases, which will be confined to occasional, safe, predictable fare for casual gaming and kids. Sound familiar?
Because, ultimately, it always comes back to money. Players don't want to pay for mobile games. Publishers and services are tired of footing the bill for prestige titles no one notices.
12 years ago, I warned on this very site that if we don't pay for what we love, we'll be left with garbage. On mobile, we're nearly there, knee-deep in shovelware, and waving goodbye to the good stuff.
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The Ramp might be small, but it does its thing so elegantly that it deserves a place on this list. 9. Session: Skate Sim (2022) Play The first time I played Session: Skate Sim, I spent over an hour in the tutorial section, which tells you everything you need to know. An heir to EA's Skate series (more on that in a bit), but far more hardcore in its approach to simulating real-life skateboarding, Session is far less interested in empowering you to pull off four-minute Tony Hawk's-esque combos than it is in showing you how challenging it is to simply ollie up a curb. The game revolves around a dual stick control system that maps each foot to a stick, so even getting the board off the ground is something you have to think about. There's no scoring system, so instead you're asked to think like a real skater and use the in-game video editor to create videos that prove you're not lying about that cool trick you did. It's pretty lightweight and unpolished compared to some of its rivals, but the commitment to ultra-realism is impressive. 8. Bomb Rush Cyberfunk (2023) Play I should say right at the top that Bomb Rush Cyberfunk isn't exclusively a skateboarding game, but it is one of the coolest games you will ever play with skateboarding in it. Heavily inspired by cult SEGA favourite Jet Set Radio, this ludicrously stylish indie gem sees you play as a kid in a youth gang who sets out to retrieve his recently decapitated head (it's a whole thing) by challenging rival gangs, doing graffiti and ultimately taking control of the fictional city of New Amsterdam. While Bomb Rush Cyberfunk's cel-shaded graphics and affection for early 2000s street culture make it feel like a spiritual successor to Jet Set Radio, that was an inline skating-only game. Here the traversal options extend to BMXing and skateboarding too, and while the actual skating isn't that deep, with a relatively limited tricks-set at your disposal, it's all so much fun to look at that you won't mind. 7. Skate City: New York (2025) Play Indie developer Snowman has cultivated a well-earned reputation of being the master of 2D board sports games for mobile. It's probably best known for the brilliant Alto's series of snowboarding side-scrollers, but its two Skate City games are arguably even better. Clearly inspired by the likes of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater and the Skate games, Skate City puts an impressively wide variety of tricks quite literally at your fingertips, thanks to intuitive touch controls that are easy to grasp but satisfyingly tough to master. Both games are worth a download, but the sequel adds more abilities and real-world skate spots in New York to cruise through. Whether you're going for big-score combos or just vibing out in the leisurely Free Skate mode, this is as slick as virtual skateboarding on your phone gets. 6. Tony Hawk's Underground (2003) Play For some, the Tony Hawk's series lost its way the moment it dropped the Pro Skater bit from the name, but if you were more sympathetic to the nonsense plots and creeping Jackass-ification of later entries, then they may well be your favourites. Tony Hawk's Underground was the first in this new era for the series, so its new story mode, which involved you creating your own skater and travelling around North America and beyond in an attempt to earn the respect of the various real-life pros who appeared in the campaign, felt quite novel at the time. THUG also enabled you to get off your board and climb for the first time, and it even had driving missions. While all this extra stuff undoubtedly meant the focus of the earlier games was lost, it was a fun evolution of the series at a time when the industry was becoming obsessed with GTA-style sandboxes. 5. Skate (2007) Play Tony Hawk's Pro Skater will always be the household name of skateboarding games, so when EA's Skate series first rolled onto the scene in 2007 it was less interested in snatching that title from the Birdman and co than it was in being the skateboarding game for skateboarders. Unlike your average THPS, in which combining three different grinds on the propeller of a helicopter before a landing in a nose manual is just another day at the office, Skate wanted to make it feel good just to successfully land a kickflip. Moving the emphasis away from Tony Hawk's face button controls and onto the analogue made it feel a lot closer a simulation of the real thing, which when combined with a deep understanding of authentic skate culture resulted in something totally fresh. 4. OlliOlli World (2022) Play When I reviewed OlliOlli World back in 2022 I called it one of the best platformers I'd played in years, and that still stands in 2025. This endlessly playable 2D skateboarding game was (tragically no longer in existence) developer Roll7's magnum opus, combining the ingenious analogue stick-focused control scheme it had been perfecting since the original BAFTA-winning OlliOlli, with an irresistible Saturday morning cartoon aesthetic. OlliOlli World's Radlandia setting might looking something that's been ripped straight out of Nickelodeon, but make no mistake: while it might be more accessible than its predecessors, there's a hardcore skateboarding game hiding under those pastel hues, and it would be a crying shame if it marked the end of the series. 3. Skate 2 (2009) Play After firmly establishing itself as the skateboarding connoisseur's alternative to Tony Hawk's in the groundbreaking first entry, Skate 2 was the classic sequel that built on everything that made its predecessor great (presumably learning from longtime Tony Hawk's developer Neversoft that changing things up too much risks the wrath of fans). The fantastic 'Flickit' control scheme was left largely untouched, with the only significant addition being that you could now get off your board and move objects around in the world to set up tricks. The fictional open world city of San Vanelona was once again the setting in Skate 2, but EA ensured it was bigger and more interesting to explore. It was never going to feel as exciting as the first game, but Skate 2's beefed up campaign and series' best physics systems means it was a superior one in pretty much every way. 2. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1+2 (2020) Play It's easy to be cynical about remakes in the modern era of video games, but when executed as flawlessly as Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1+2 it's very hard not to fall head over heels in love. The first two THPS games established a gameplay loop that feels as good today as it did in the early 2000s, blending real skateboarding tricks with an unashamedly video game-y disregard for the laws of physics. Vicarious Visions didn't mess with any of that old-school arcade goodness, but smartly retrofitted mechanics like spine transfers and reverts from later entries to both games, while bringing what were two pre-HD classics into the modern era with a ground-up visual overhaul that gave levels like Venice Beach, School II and the iconic Warehouse from the first game a new lease of life. Probably the ultimate Tony Hawk's Pro Skater game. Well, almost. 1. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 (2001) Play Your pick for the best classic Tony Hawk's Pro Skater game will probably come down to which one you recall playing the most of after school or in your university halls, and for me the debate always comes back to Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3. It had some all-timer levels in the likes of Airport and Cruise Ship, a great soundtrack, and at the time was a real graphical showcase. THPS3 is also a hugely significant entry in the series for what it added to gameplay, introducing reverts for the first time, which allowed you to link combos with manuals by tapping a button the moment you land a trick on a ramp. At this point we were about as far away from what is actually feasible in real skateboarding as you can get, but it further cemented the Pro Skater skater games as competitive multiplayer classics. Oh, and you could unlock Darth Maul and Wolverine as playable characters, so there was also that.
