Your full list — researched, deduped, and ranked best to worst for a one-thumb phone remake in a single file. Work down it together: mark each game Build it, Talk about it, or Pass, and download your picks when we're done.
Hard penalties were applied for: steering wheel/pedals, light gun, trackball/spinner with no good touch substitute, twin/rotary joysticks, 5–6-button panels, laserdisc, dual/triple screens, vector + flight yoke, button-mashing, monochrome vector art, and very large content loads (100s of mazes/levels) in a one-file hobby build.
The tags: EITHER = works as a faithful remake or a remix · REMIX = only worth building re-themed/reworked · IP — remix only = licensed-character game (your rule; mechanics still ranked on merit) · ⚑ insect = your rule: Centipede/Millipede may only be remixed with a non-insect re-theme.
The researcher's first picks, with the full reasoning. These are the ones to talk through first.
The single best fit on the whole list: the original used a spinner, but a finger dragging the paddle is better than the original control, and it is portrait, bright, and endlessly replayable in 3-minute bursts. One playfield, one ball, breakable bricks and a dozen power-ups is a weekend-sized build in a single file.
The definitive one-thumb shooter — drag to move, autofire, no buttons at all. The tractor-beam capture-and-rescue loop (risk a ship to win double firepower) is a genuine decision, not just reflexes, which is why it still feels modern. Formations, challenge stages and dive patterns are all simple sprites and sine paths.
Criminally under-remade: one joystick and one button, 50 self-contained stages, and the split-the-balloon mechanic creates natural escalation as every hit makes the problem smaller and faster. The world-landmark backdrops give bright variety for free, and a stage lasts about a minute.
Swipe-up/down/left/right to hop — Frogger was designed for touch forty years early. Two half-screens (road, river), five home bays, a bonus fly and a timer: the entire game is a few dozen lines of lane logic, yet it has never stopped being tense. It is also the most instantly understood game here by non-gamers.
Drag-to-position plus autofire reproduces the trackball more faithfully than any joystick port ever did, and the segmented, splitting enemy remains a brilliant mechanic. Per your rule, remix it: a conga line of pool inflatables, a string of sausages on a barbecue, anything but bugs — the mechanic survives any skin.
Drawing territory with a swipe is the most "mobile-native" mechanic of 1981 — it is the ancestor of a whole genre of phone games. The risk calculus (slow draw = double points, one touch on your line = death) produces constant near-miss drama, and the fill-in rendering is trivially pretty in canvas.
A falling-tile puzzler that is not Tetris (which you have shelved): drag the paddle, tap to drop, make lines of three. Bright solid colours, 100 short waves with rotating goals, and a built-in "one more wave" pull. It also diversifies the portfolio — everything else in this top 10 is action.
On pure merit nothing beats it for buildability (one maze, four ghost personalities) and swipe steering works perfectly. The IP tag means the build should be a remix — new chaser characters and a new maze theme on the same chase/fruit/turn-the-tables skeleton — but the skeleton is the most proven in arcade history.
The most charming two-button platformer of the decade: blow bubble, trap, pop, collect fruit. Single-screen stages mean each level is a small data table, so a 25–30 stage version is realistic in one file where the full 100 is not. Bright, funny, and the bubble-riding physics gives it depth beyond its looks.
Digging your own maze is still a unique verb in games, and drag-to-dig maps cleanly to a virtual stick. Two kill methods (inflate, or tunnel under a rock) plus vegetables-for-points gives short sessions a scoring texture most 1982 games lack. It just edges out Rainbow Islands and Rod Land, which are the first two alternates if a cuter platformer is wanted sooner.
First alternates, in order: Rainbow Islands (#11), Rod Land (#12), Galaga '88 (#13), 1943 (#14), Mr. Do! (#15).
Build one of these next. Top-30 entries carry a one-phrase remix concept or faithful-remake note from the research.
No games in this tier match your filters.
Very buildable — one flaw each: content load, a landscape screen, or a second button.
No games in this tier match your filters.
Buildable, but dated, very hard, landscape-bound, or a big content lift.
No games in this tier match your filters.
A real control, screen or hardware problem to solve first.
No games in this tier match your filters.
Wrong hardware, wrong screen, or unverifiable — don't build these (as faithful remakes).
No games in this tier match your filters.
Six titles from your list sit outside the ranking: three you've already built, three you've shelved.
What the research could not verify, and the hedges it attached — carried here exactly as reported.
All read via web index on 2026-10-21. Key sources from the research (full notes were kept with the research report):
Ranked for phone-first, single-file builds — faithful remake or remix is the discussion on each card. Rod Land is dated 1990 in the research (the one title just past the decade). Dyger appears in the research sources but was not in your final cleaned list, so it is not ranked here.