You can’t have innovation without constraint.  The smaller and tighter the box, the more creative the developers get when trying to punch a way out of it.  Mobile and handheld game designers are no exception to this rule.  They embrace it, they stare down the miniscule download sizes and teeny weeny memory cards with the gimlet eye of experience and an attitude that says, “I can break you with an ESC key and a couple of well-placed function calls.”

Within the space of ten short years, the mobile games industry, fueled by mad innovation and ever increasing hardware capabilities, is well on its way to crossing that barrier between “core” and “casual”.  Game players who never thought of themselves (and possibly still do not think of themselves) as game players have become a part of the wider audience.  This not only opens the window to new types of games but it allows us to find fresh eyes for games and game styles that have long since gone by the wayside for the “core” gamer audience.