iPhone games nominated for 2010 Meffys

Every year, the Mobile Entertainment Forum awards a number of applications the Meffy – their award for excellence in mobile software. This year’s nominees were just announced, and iPhone games make up 3 of the five contenders for best game.

Because of the relative newness of the iPhone, this will only be the second year that the device’s games have made the nomination shortlist. Last year the award went to Real Football 2009, a sports title for the iPhone released by Gameloft. Previous pre-iPhone winners have included Tower Bloxx, and Pathway to Glory for the short-lived Nokia N-Gage.

This year’s nominees are;

• Doodle Jump (iPhone)
• The Last City (various)
• Bloons (iPhone)
• Ovi Maps Racing (Nokia)
• Plants vs Zombies (iPhone).

We can’t help but find it interesting that out of the thousands of games released on the iPhone last year, two of the three they selected were ports of games that originally appeared in a different format. Plants vs. Zombies was a port of a popular PC release, and Bloons a port of a popular web-based game. Do the Meffys really think so little of original iPhone games? Or is this merely coincidence?

The two non-iPhone games were strange choices as well, though no less deserving. Ovi Maps Racing is a neat top-down racer exclusive to Nokia phones that uses GPS to create tracks based on the player’s real world location. The Last City is a post-apocalyptic multiplayer role-playing game available for a variety of mobile devices, and recently won Best Mobile Game 2010 at the Global Mobile Awards.

Jim Squires

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Jim Squires is the Editor-in-Chief of Gamezebo. Everything you see passes his eyes first, so we like to think of him as "the gatekeeper of cool stuff." He likes good games, great writing, and just can't say no to a hamburger. Also, he is not a bear.