Dragon Slayer action RPGs by Nihon Falcom such as the 1985 release Xanadu and 1987 releases Faxanadu and Legacy of the Wizard. Auto-runner games are platform games where the player-character is nearly always moving in one constant direction through the level, with less focus on tricky jumping but more on quick reflexes as obstacles appear on screen. The subcategory of endless runner games have levels that effectively go on forever, typically through procedural generation. Auto-runner games have found success on mobile platforms, because they are well-suited to the small set of controls these games require, often limited to a single screen tap for jumping. Game designer Scott Rogers named side-scrolling shooters like Scramble (1981) and Moon Patrol (1982) and chase-style gameplay in platform games like Disney's Aladdin (1994 8-bit version) and Crash Bandicoot (1996) as forerunners of the genre. B.C.'s Quest for Tires (1983) has elements of runner games, keeping the jumping of Moon Patrol, but replacing the vehicle with a cartoon character. In February 2003, Gamevil published Nom for mobile phones in Korea. The game's designer Sin Bong-gu, stated that he wanted to create a game that was only possible on mobile phones, therefore he made the player character walk up walls and ceilings, requiring players to turn around their mobile phones while playing. To compensate for this complication, he limited the game's controls to a single button and let the character run automatically and indefinitely, "like the people in modern society, who must always look forward and keep running". While the concept thus was long known in Korea, journalists credit Canabalt (2009) as "the title that single-handedly invented the smartphone-friendly single-button running genre" and spawned a wave of clones. Fotonica (2011), a one-button endless runner viewed from the first person, that was described as a "hybrid of Canabalts running, Mirror's Edges perspective (and hands) and Rezs visual style". Temple Run (2011) and its successor Temple Run 2 were popular endless running games. The latter became the world's fastest-spreading mobile game in January 2013, with 50 million installations within thirteen days. See also List of platform game series References External links Platform games at MobyGames The evolution of gaming: computers, consoles, and arcade from Ars Technica Puzzle Platform Games Best Action PC Games Benefits of Playing Games Video game genres Video game terminology Articles containing video clips Games and sports introduced in 1980