There is a subset of games that work very, very well on the iPhone platform. There are also a subset of games that work well on a platform tailored for other types of games. I don't think that New Super Mario Brothers would play well on the iPhone. The graphics power on the iPhone is fine, but the interface to the game on the platform is a bit limited.

What would really be interesting is if Sony or Nintendo added a cell phone function in their next gen portable gaming platform.

"The fact of the matter is, the iPhone gaming experience isn't all that great."

But the Hero of Sparta review is not all that surprising to any gamer -- when you design for one piece of hardware, and port to another piece of hardware with different capabilities, the second port will suffer.

• Hero of Sparta suffered moving to a platform and not adapted to its strengths (iPhone->PSP). The PSP was dinged for "muddled controls," because they were a port of what the iPhone version's "wonky controls." (review quote). The PSP has more control options, but they were not leveraged, and the reviewers dinged it for that -- not because they were worse than the iPhone, but they should have been better, and the port was lazy.

• Wolf3D on the iPhone was far worse than even the 7 year old port for the Game Boy Advance, because the game did not play to the iPhone's strengths. The graphics were slightly better, but even with Carmack's personal efforts, the controls were much, much worse -- not quite unplayable, but far less fun.