Goodbye, Ridiculous Fishing: How Android’s 32-Bit Purge Erased My Favorite Classic Games

Hadlee Simons / Android Authority

Android has come a long way since its inception, and it’s delivered a ton of features I can’t do without. From the simple notification shade and permissions system to autofill and notification history, there are so many additions that are simply indispensable in my daily life.

Unfortunately, Google has also made some disappointing changes to Android over the years. This includes the Scoped Storage saga, which saw Google limiting storage access for apps, breaking many apps in the process, as well as a crackdown on calling and texting permissions. However, there’s one deprecated feature I really miss on recent Android phones, and that’s 32-bit app support.

Unfortunately, Google’s Pixel 7 series shipped without 32-bit support back in late 2022. Google and high-end chipmakers then decided to kill it entirely the following year, with Android 14 generally lacking this feature. There were some benefits to ditching 32-bit support, such as freeing up system resources, better security, and improving performance in general. This is also a boon for chipmakers as they have freed up silicon that was previously devoted to 32-bit support.

Say goodbye to my favorite games

Hadlee Simons / Android Authority

Despite all these benefits, I have reasons to dislike this change after all this time. The biggest is that I’ve accumulated over 130 games via Humble Bundles over the years, and I can no longer play many of them. These pay-what-you-want deals for Android games were my favorite way to get new premium Android games, including hits such as the Metal Slug series, the King of Fighters franchise, and This War of Mine.

Some of these games still work, but many titles were 32-bit-only, or their Humble Bundle versions never received 64-bit upgrades. I have loads of classics in my library that I’d love to play once again, including classic mobile platformer Mikey Boots, retro puzzler Chu Chu Rocket, early mobile hit Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor, Doodle God, and more.

Killing 32-bit app support means many of my purchased Android games no longer work on new phones.

Ridiculous Fishing is easily my favorite Humble Bundle title I can no longer play on newer Android phones. Seriously, I tweeted about it multiple times over the years. It’s a whacky premise that has you initially avoiding fish as your reel plumbs the ocean depths, then trying to collect as many fish as possible as you reel in your line. It doesn’t stop there, as you then hurl your catches into the air and shoot them before they hit the water. Ridiculous. There was a great gameplay loop here as you could invest in better guns, a longer reel, a chainsaw lure (what), and other upgrades. It got me through many flights, and it’s a real shame it hasn’t received a 64-bit port. At least I can fire up an old LG V60 and play it, complete with mildly unpleasant letterboxing, as seen below.

It’s not just my extensive collection of Humble Bundle Android games that haven’t received 64-bit ports. Loads of old Android games on the Play Store didn’t get updated to 64-bit versions, which is a massive disappointment as I’m big into video game preservation. This includes big-hitters like Flappy Bird, the landmark Chaos Rings series of Square-Enix RPGs, the Zenonia games, the Diablo-like Dungeon Hunter series, and the original Geometry Dash.

This legacy support is also important to me as these early games were often one-time purchases as opposed to today’s ad-heavy games or pay-to-win affairs. In fact, there are loads of 32-bit-only and/or abandoned console ports and adaptations I’d love to play. These include Dead Space Mobile, Joe Danger, Mass Effect Infiltrator, Deus Ex: The Fall, Resident Evil 4 (a port of the original 2005 title), Jade Empire, and more. These were native ports in the case of Resident Evil 4 and Jade Empire, which means more polish, less fiddling, and more optimized controls than using an emulator.

Another of my favorite missing games is Wayward Souls, a top-down hack-and-slasher with some roguelike elements. Unfortunately, the game merely shows a white screen upon startup. My beloved late 2000s and early 2010s NOVA series of Halo-like first-person shooters haven’t been updated with 64-bit versions either.

Can you still play these games in 2025?

Hadlee Simons / Android Authority

I have a few options to keep playing 32-bit-only games in 2025. The easiest way is to use a phone with Android 13, as these devices generally still support 32-bit apps. But of course, you might not want to keep an old phone purely for this purpose. And there’s also simply no guarantee that some games will actually run on your device. Furthermore, this option becomes more of a challenge down the line as these older devices break down.

One of the few ways to play 32-bit games is to simply use an old phone, but this won’t be feasible years down the line.

It’s also worth noting that Xiaomi’s flagship phones, like the Xiaomi 15, retained a framework to run 32-bit apps on 64-bit-only phones. Unfortunately for me and others in the same predicament, Xiaomi restricted this framework and support to the Chinese market. What a disappointment. I really wish Xiaomi and other OEMs brought this framework to global users. Some users online have also recommended a virtual machine (VM) running an older version of Android to play 32-bit games. But this solution hasn’t worked for me, likely due to the intrinsic hardware limitations here.

Either way, dropping 32-bit app support has been a necessary evil. I’d like to think we’ve benefited from noticeable performance and security gains as a result. However, it doesn’t change the fact that I can’t play another round of Ridiculous Fishing on my Pixel 7 Pro while waiting for a flight.