Ports of Call (iPhone)
Oh my good god .. Ports of Call. I spent countless hours playing this on my Amiga 500 in the late 80s/early 90s. I’ll guarantee you that I won’t be doing this with many of the titles that are coming out at the moment, but this classic manages to still capture your attention.
Controls – The user interface is directly copied from the Amiga version. We’re not talking about a conversion here .. it’s literally the same game. This also means that the UI isn’t designed for clumsy fingers on an iPhone screen, but despite this, it’s actually simple enough to work. You do have a few difficulties hitting the right button from time to time, but overall it’s okay-ish. However – there are in fact two sets of UI’s, the original one, and a custom iPhone one. I wouldn’t recommend the custom one, though, because it is quite simply rubbish 
Gameplay – PoC is all about building your shipping empire from humble beginnings. You start out with 5 million US dollars – just enough to buy a couple of cheap, run-down ships, or maybe a single one in a bit better condition. From there on, it’s all about scoping out the good trade routes.
There are a number of action elements in the game as well, such as ‘steer the ship clear of the icebergs’, or ‘steer your ship into the proper spot in the harbor’ … or indeed ‘steer your ship away from the other ship on collision course’. Overall, there is a lot of subgames of the ‘steering’ variety – but it’s all good, because on this iPhone version… you can disable them entirely! Awesome!
Multiplayer – There’s no multiplayer via internet or bluetooth, only hotseat. This is just as it should be, to be honest, since it’s like the original. Oh yeah.. this IS the original, silly me.
Sound – There isn’t a whole lot of sound in the game. In fact you sometimes wonder if there’s any at all. A scritchy-scratchy noise of an elevator coming down, or a tinny sample of wind blowing. That’s about it.
Fuck it, it’s Ports of Call, who cares!!?
Conclusion – I’ve tried a few iPhone versions of classic games now, and I wasn’t expecting a lot. But as it turns out, the iPhone is a rather good fit for this type of game. In general I think the iPhone is best suited to turn-based games of some sort, since you won’t have problems with obscuring the action, like you do in realtime action games.
Ports of Call absolutely does what you expect. It’s the same game that you knew and loved back in 1986 when it came out. It still has the draw and long-lasting appeal, and now you can bring it along in your pocket! Saving and loading is easy and fast, and there’s an auto-save feature as well. There are a few negative points as well though:
The game doesn’t auto-save on exit, so make sure you’ve saved before you close the game! This is uncool since most other iPhone games (and Nintendo DS/PSP/whatever) ‘just lets you close’ and it’s saved once you start it up again. The UI is another slightly negative thing, which can make hitting the right buttons an issue. The iPhone specific UI is horrenduous – but luckily the original one works okay. So all in all, it’s highly recommended!
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