It's fair to say that Nintendo's latest mobile title, Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp, has met with a mixed reception.
In the press, reviewers have expressed a number of complaints about the game, including its monetisation mechanics, intermittent server issues and lack of certain gameplay elements that were found in earlier console versions of Animal Crossing.
Don’t be fooled by the nostalgic graphics and simple gameplay. Nintendo’s new mobile title, Super Mario Run, is a real battery guzzler due to its blistering 60fps frame rate, high CPU usage and always-on network connectivity. This is true of both the iOS and Android versions of the game, but the impact on user experience (and hence potentially on user reviews and revenues) is more surprising on certain top-end Android phones. Let's take a look at some numbers...
Mario has arrived fashionably late to the iPhone party and no one is holding it against him. Such is Nintendo’s reputation for quality that many gamers are actually expecting this week’s launch of Super Mario Run to set a new standard for mobile gaming.
We’ve been using GameBench to find out whether Super Mario Run delivers the objective hallmarks of quality: Does the game run at a perfect, console-like 60fps? Does it make efficient use of system resources and battery power? And does Mario manage to keep up with his Sega rival, Sonic, who has already had a long career in the “endless runner” genre on smartphones? Read on to find out...