In 2008, a weird little Japanese RPG made it Stateside for the DS called The World Ends with You. It had a fun soundtrack, a Shibuya backdrop and the pedigree of having been developed by Jupiter, who had also worked on Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories. It was a great game, one of those one offs that people pick up on a whim and then proceed to pass around to all their friends, and in 2012 they streamlined the the game and tossed it up on the Apple store for $18 (which is still cheaper than you can get the original cartridge form for).
Square Enix had remastered the game to be compatible with a single screen and it was actually pretty awesome on mobile versus its original handheld incarnation. They smoothed out some of the mechanics and it became a lot more forgiving. At least until ioS 8 came out, which essentially broke the game, prompting Square Enix to pull it from the App Store.
The good news is, four months later, the game is back and fixed and just as fun as ever. While $18 is a chunk of change for a mobile game, it’s par for the course with Square Enix. However, eight years after its original debut, it’s also one of the few games that is actually worth it.
