So many Android games just don’t work. Graphics-intensive games like Dungeon Defenders chug on a Droid X’s 1gHz processor. But there’s a huge wealth of games from older systems that would run beautifully on an Android phone. Here’s my wishlist for Android game ports from other systems.

Dungeon Keeper
I’ve replayed Dungeon Keeper a number of times, and despite the antiquated graphics, the game is still a lot of fun. Given the low-res graphics, I’m sure that it would translate wonderfully to a mobile platform. Selecting squares for imps to dig would be easy, as would picking up monsters. And zooming in and out could be accomplished via multi-touch gestures. Although it might be best to do away with the bottom menu for more screen space, the side menus could remain, with the option of collapsing them. Dungeon Keeper would be a kick-ass phone game.

Starcraft
I recently heard that Blizzard released iPhone and Android versions of World of Warcraft. If they can do that, why not the original Starcraft? The immediate reason that comes to mind is that they couldn’t charge for mobile Starcraft on a monthly basis like they do with WoW. Still, I think Starcraft portable would be fantastic, especially in Korea.

7th Guest
The 7th Guest was one of my favorite PC games back in the days when CD-ROM was new and cutting edge. A point-and-click adventure game with many puzzles that were loosely tied to the story, lots and lots of poorly-acted FMV, and horribly annoying voice-overs that would repeat ad nauseum as you worked on the puzzles. There’s already an iOS version of the game. Why not an Android version too?

Wasteland
You may have never heard of Fallout’s progenitor. Back in the days of the Commodore 64, Wasteland took the top-down gameplay of the Ultima series and the enemy portraits and scrolling text battles of the Bards Tale series and combined them into a gameplay experience that managed to perfectly blend the two, resulting in a gameplay experience better than either. And on top of that, it allowed you to split your party so that the melee characters could rush forward while your machine gunners could stay in place and spray lead into the enemies. If Android had a native version of Wasteland, or at least a DOS emulator, I’d definitely give the game another playthrough.

2D Zelda Titles
Ocarina of Time is on my list of shame. People talk about how it was the bestest game evar, but I’ve never played. And I started playing Link to the Past once as well, but never got far. I actually own Ocarina of Time on the Wii Virtual Console. I think I’d be much more likely to play these games if I had them with me at all times on my phone. Nintendo isn’t very likely to release their first-party franchises on a non-Nintendo handheld, but I can always dream.

Popcap Games
Popcap just released Chuzzle for the Android platform, and Plants versus Zombies is due out in a matter of days. When will we see Peggle? Why not Word Worm? And a Zuma release would kill the second-rate clones out there on the Android marketplace.

Elite Beat Agents
And here’s my number one pick. It’s likely to never happen, but Elite Beat Agents could be absolutely huge on a mobile platform if the right people got ahold of the license. It could be the Rock Band of phones. The Nintendo DS original title was one of my favorite DS games. The licensed music was great and very catchy, and the little stories that accompanied each were a lot of fun. You’d tap small circles and draw along lines in time with musical cues from the song. At each stage – usually one per verse – you’d see the story’s character succeed or fail at a sub-task along the way depending on how well you’d done. Fail too many and you fail the song. The DS game had Canned Heat, Sk8er Boi, Y.M.C.A., and Let’s Dance. An Android Elite Beat Agents game could sell individual songs like Rock Band does, and I’d eat them up.

List analytics aside, let’s look at the next five games.

30 – Dungeon Keeper (Bullfrog Productions, Windows, 1997)
Despite being more than a decade old, Dungeon Keeper is still a lot of fun. The graphics are horribly dated, but the mechanic of digging out an area for your dungeon – creating your own space – is a lot of fun. I’ve never realized it before just now, but Dungeon Keeper really has a lot in common with Desktop Tower Defense. In both, you build a maze to channel creeps through so that you can kill them. In Dungeon Keeper, you’re just building traps and placing creatures instead of building towers and cannons. You’ve also got to mine gold and keep it away from those pesky adventurers. Ah, there’s nothing like laying waste to the kingdom…

29 – Fallout Tactics (Micro Forte, Windows, 2001)
The consensus about Fallout Tactics was that it was a pale shadow of the two main Fallout titles, and I’ll admit that the story and the RPG options present in the original were missing. Fallout Tactics is just a series of missions. But it lets you form a full party and control each of them in combat, which is something I’d wanted badly in the main games. It allows for quite a lot of strategy, and that’s where the game shines.

So you can create a party that consists of a ghoul with a high driving skill behind the wheel of your APC, a sniper who sits up on a fire escape, a sneaky guy who gets close, plants land mines, then waits nearby with a shotgun, and a deathclaw who sneaks in close before attacking. Then, BOOM! Your shotgun guy pops-up at point blank range and cuts two slavers in half with a shotgun blast just as your deathclaw charges in. The other slavers go after the deathclaw but hit landmines. And the ghoul driver comes in and runs down some others with the APC. Meanwhile, your sniper picks off strays. I love it.

28 – Wasteland (Interplay, Commodore 64, 1988)

Wasteland had a release on both the Commodore 64 and DOS platforms, and as such there’s still a version floating around that’s playable on modern computers. Wasteland was a hugely influential game – it ended up inspiring a little title you may have heard of: Fallout.

Wasteland is Fallout, only more so. It’s less tame. Sure, the Fallout games have plenty of blood, but in Wasteland you could do a lot of things that you just don’t see in more modern video games. In Wasteland, you’re attacked by a ten-year-old boy after you kill his dog, and you’re forced to kill the lad. And this is in the first 20 minutes of the game. One of Wasteland’s climactic battles has you battling nuns with assault rifles. And you can sleep with a prostitute and contract wasteland herpes. Good times.

27 – Mechwarrior 4: Vengeance (FASA Interactive, Windows, 2000)

Another reason I loved the old Mechwarrior games was because they were so unlike other mech games. Armored Core and Chromehounds are twitch games. Mechwarrior is not. Even when you’re in battle using jump jets to dodge gunfire, locking on with your missiles, and aiming your PPC shots, it isn’t frantic. The timing feels so much more relaxed – like a real time strategy than a shooter.

26 – Typing of the Dead (Smilebit, Windows, 2000)

Before the Sega Dreamcast version of Typing of the Dead was released in 2001, this was a PC title. It’s now very rare and difficult to obtain, but it’s very much worth it. It’s so choice. If you have the means, I highly recommend picking it up.

Typing of the Dead is a game about which I may never tire of ranting and raving. It’s got a lot of camp value, and to fully enjoy it you need to enjoy the humor of the terrible voice acting and outdated graphics as much as the humor of the ridiculous things you’re typing. I keep Typing of the Dead installed on my PC and play it from time to time when I don’t have any other games lined up. It’s always fun, and since it’s already so old, it never gets old… er.

Keepers is a weekly segment in which I discuss games I’ve played that I’ve seen fit to keep after playing. I generally sell a game that I’ve finished, so the only reason I keep one is because I plan to replay the game some day. Classifying a game as a “keeper” is generally a badge of merit.

Dungeon Keeper is an old game now. Twelve years old. But it’s still as fun as it was back in 1997, and I know that I haven’t played the last of it.

There was a sequel: Dungeon Keeper 2, but it wasn’t nearly as good as the original. In the original Dungeon Keeper, you were given free reign of various underground levels, and could tunnel them out in an infinite number of different ways, creating a lair for your evil minions and defeating the heroic adventures.

In Dungeon Keeper, the dungeon has its own ecology. Certain creatures couldn’t share living quarters without fighting and killing each other. Likewise, if you didn’t give them what they wanted, they’d grow frustrated and leave. Then, when the heroes showed up in your dungeon, you’d be at a lack of defenders. Still, it was an absolute blast to set traps such as rolling boulders, electrocution traps, and lava pits, and then watch the heroes fall prey to them.

A third Dungeon Keeper game was tossed around for a while, but never released. If the game had been more like the second Dungeon Keeper, it’s just as well.

If you can get ahold of Dungeon Keeper, I think it’s worth it. Its multiplayer mode is great too.