A month ago, when we first covered App Craft Studio’s Retro Widget that gave the iPhone and Apple Watch a Nokia make-under using iOS 14’s widget tools, we lamented that for two bucks it should have included Nokia’s classic Snake game, too. A month later, Retro Widget has been updated and our wishes have come true: Snake is now playable on both the iPhone and Apple Watch.
As part of the update, Retro Widget has been renamed Retro Widget 2 with a new icon in the App Store, but it includes the same functionality as the original — namely using widgets to make your modern devices look like a classic Nokia 3310 mobile phone. The functionality was limited, aside from displaying battery life and signal strength using old-school pixelated graphics, which made paying two bucks for a sight gag kind of a hard sell.
Retro Widget 2, on the other hand, totally justifies its $US2 ($3) price tag with a series of iOS 14 widgets that let you play Snake, quite possibly the first justification for carrying a mobile phone with you everywhere. The game plays the same — your simple goal is to guide a snake around the screen to gobble up power-ups that extend its length without crossing your own body — but instead of a keypad the iPhone lets you play with gestures while the Apple Watch version lets you play by rotating the Digital Crown.
[referenced id=”1526326″ url=”https://gizmodo.com.au/2020/11/give-your-iphone-and-apple-watch-a-classic-nokia-dumbphone-demake/” thumb=”https://gizmodo.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/05/d9592u9xxbu85v3v6hae-300×169.jpg” title=”Give Your iPhone and Apple Watch a Classic Nokia Dumbphone Demake” excerpt=”Tired of that beautiful OLED screen on your Apple Watch boring your eyes with over 164,000 colourful pixels? App Craft Studio has created the perfect solution. A widget that will take your smartwatch and smartphone back to the days when screens needed just 7,000 chonky pixels to inform and entertain,…”]
If you bought the original version, Retro Widget 2 is a free upgrade and finally worth putting back on your mobile devices. I can’t imagine I’m the only person who bought the original only to delete it a few days later once the novelty worn off. The new version, however, is a keeper.