To many, the PC (and later, Playstation 1) action RPG “Darkstone” is just some plain Diablo clone that came and went without fanfare or hype. Though to Diablo addicts like me who spent the entire year of 1997 in a battle.net-induced haze, Darkstone was a product of the fanbase’s desires…and the most egregious victim of the emergence of the modern day 3D accelerated graphics card.

One of the big advancements in PC gaming at that time was the 3D accelerator, and with the Voodoo 2 becoming both cheap and well-supported, a lot of forum hounds in the Diablo community kept asking the question “What would a game like this look like with a 3D accelerator?” It was a very common question and I can tell you as a community member and someone working in a video game store at the time that nothing was wished for more than a 3D Diablo.

Darkstone was that game. It tried so hard to fill that void, to make that game that Diablo fans wanted. The problem was that the sequel to Diablo eclipsed it soon after its 1999 release. throw in the fact that it had no real story and was constructed in such a way that modders were depended on to expand its meager content offerings and you had a recipe for disaster.

Shoot ahead 15 years later and this little game that time forgot is now being made into a Free to play mobile RPG.

Keep in mind that you have to put up with randomly inserted advertisements and the game is apparently a direct port of its previous unmodded version. Though it’s simplistic (even compared to Diablo), Darkstone’s ease of play and simplicity appear to work well in the mobile environment.

Darkstone is available for the iPad, iPhone and Android platforms.