CHENNAI: Sony is making its big announcement on the next generation PlayStation this week. “Stunning gameplay” and “120Hz 4K support with 120 FPS” are now simultaneously thrilling and complex phrases circulated in the rumour market of tech journalism. This threw me into wistful memories of an age when I did not know these words. Simple, heavily pixelated times. I remember playing Age of Empires and Sims on a 3-inch screen. I could count pixels while the game screen loaded.

I could let my imagination run free on how the characters would look — the colour of their eyes,the length of their hair, and wonder if I was actually seeing their hands or if it was just a crack on the screen. After a minute of savouring this pleasant memory, I did the only thing that made sense - bargain hunt nostalgia on the Google PlayStore… … and download the first game I found — “Gameloft Classics: 20 years”. The developer released 30 retro games customised for an android phone.

The game took two minutes to download, and I spent that time scrolling through PS5 rumours (experts seem to think it would be priced at $500. Is this a valid reason to shift to the lower priced Xbox Series X?). It was clear why these 30 games were for free. The controls were not customised for an android touchscreen. Instead, the buttons covered half the screen.I first started playing Diamond Rush. It was this ancient puzzle- type where you played this man in a jungle, whose aim was to collect diamonds and avoid rolling boulders and snakes. I spent 30 seconds stopping myself from swiping at the characters instead of the buttons. I moved to the next game in a minute after struggling to get past level 3.

Alien Quarantine is a run-and-gun type. Mo’ games, mo’ problems. In this one, I couldn’t control the direction of the weapon. Surprisingly, none of the aliens made a dent on my player’s health. The lack of difficulty got boring in a minute and a half. There were still 28 games left. Cannon Rats was next — a beta version of Angry Birds. I spent 20 seconds trying to set the right angle to shoot the rat, and then decided to install Angry Birds instead. I had to check if I had backed up my level progression from seven years ago. I closed the game. Nostalgia ends. I rate retro mobile games a 1990/2020 for their f ive minutes of entertainment.

Anusha Ganapathi  @quaffle_waffle

(This economics graduate spends her leisure time preparing for the zombie apocalypse)