Join us as we celebrate Pocket Gamer turning 20 years old
It seems like only yesterday we were wheeling out a digital cake, complete with those annoying candles you can't actually blow out, to celebrate Pocket Gamer turning 15. And seemingly in the blink of an eye, it's now 20 years old.
A lot has changed in those last five years in the mobile gaming world, so it's almost hard to fathom what was happening all the way back in 2006.
To provide some sort of reference point, that was the year Italy won the World Cup, although more entertainment was found in Zinedine Zidane's headbutting of Marco Materazzi. It also saw poor old Pluto relegated to a dwarf planet for lacking the orbital dominance required to be considered one of the serious players. Twitter also burst onto the scene and has remained a good, useful social media platform ever since, with no questionable changes whatsoever...
Back then, I was a mere thirteen years old, holding the opinion that Gears of War was the greatest game of all time and Under the Iron Sea the best album. As is usually the case with getting older, I believe neither of those things anymore, although Keane's sophomore effort remains their finest work. And, to swing it back around to the topic, my phone of choice was a silver VK4000, a dreadful little slider that could play a grand total of zero games. At least none that I remember with any fondness.
And despite not getting a device that could play much until a few years later, the mobile gaming scene was developing, something it has continued to do ever since, with PG being there every step of the way.
What of the giants that now dominate our conversations about mobile games? Apple wouldn't release their first phone for another year, Google's Android OS wouldn't debut (with the HTC Dream) for a further year, Samsung was continuing to shift from flip to slide phones, and Epic was busy releasing Gears of War as an Xbox exclusive. Mobile gaming, as we know it, was nowhere in sight.
So, to celebrate the site’s 20th anniversary, over the next few weeks, we're going to look back on every year we've covered mobile games. That's right, from 2006 to 2026, we'll highlight the highs, lows, and indulge in all that delicious nostalgia. There's plenty for us to filter through. In these last two decades, we've made almost 82,000 posts and reviewed over 11,000 games.
And if you miss a year, don't worry. We'll keep a big list of them here so you can pick which memory lane you fancy a stroll down.
