I recently downloaded RollerCoaster Tycoon Touch. I have fond memories of the original RollerCoaster Tycoon game, managing a park’s finances and building cool coasters. The touch version is garbage. I mean, it’s slick for what it is. But I have what mobile games have become. Rides make money. Then, you have to come back every so often to tap them and collect the money. Rides have a maximum amount of money they can hold, so you have to come re-open the game. It’s very Farmville-esque, but hyper-powered as games chase engagement metrics. Then, there’s the stupid slot machine mechanic. In order to build things, you have to collect cards. Cards are random. So, it could be forever before you get the thing you need.

Building a roller coaster wasn’t even allowed until I reached Level 5. Once there, the game noticed that I didn’t have the cards I needed, took pity, and gave me more. (Meanwhile, people leave the park because I can’t get the cards to give them the types of food they like.) The actual process of building a roller coaster was a disaster. The controls are difficult and unintuitive.

The game is completely joyless. I’m so tired of free-to-play. All of these mechanics make for things that aren’t actually games. They’re optimized for extracting revenue.

Some of the first games I played on iOS brought me so much joy. When I first played World of Goo on iPad, I thought it was magical. It felt like it was the way the game should be played. Lost Winds was similarly amazing. It was a platformer where you drew lines of wind to move your character around. The characters and story, the background and the villains, were all charming.

Lost Winds will be unplayable when I update my iPad. I’ve been putting it off. I wish we could preserve this history better. iOS versions go up and up. The game doesn’t make more money. Eventually, the game is no longer compatible. It disappears. In fact, Apple recently purposely purged a lot of unworking games from the store. I can’t download the games anymore. They’re gone forever. A lot of games from my childhood are better preserved. I can still boot up a DOS VM and play old shareware games. But what will happen to these old games?

With Lost Winds, I can still download the game from Steam, but it loses its magic when not played on the touch screen.

There are still a lot of amazing mobile games. I recently downloaded Causality. I’ve also been playing Mini Metro and Hoplite. Amanita Design’s wordless adventure games remain among my favorites. Monument Valley is beautiful. None of them are free-to-play, though. Maybe I’ll try paying for RollerCoaster Tycoon Classic.

It makes me incredibly sad to see these joyless games and to see some of my favorite games disappear. Are there any projects to preserve them?