I just wish phone controllers would start selling enough that more developers would design their games to use physical buttons for gameplay and touch for menu selections etc. Are the current options just that shitty?

I considered buying one when I had a 5S, but decided against when it leaked that the 6's would be bigger. Don't know if the situation's changed.

Physical buttons are complex to make and expensive. And bulky; when not playing a game you still have to use up space on the phone for them.

Not that I don't agree with you --- I do; gaming on phones is a miserable experience. You do get game controllers for phones, but they're frequently awful and game designers can't assume that people have them so they have to design for playing on the screen anyway.

I'd love to see a proper solution for this.

I'd rather just game on my 3DS or PS Vita instead - phone battery life is still miserable with intense games, and performance is also questionable.

Phones are just not built to be a good gaming platform as is, and I am not convinced they will be comparable in experience for at least another decade, if not longer. The technology isn't optimal yet.

Ability to swipe anywhere on screen and tap could replicate alot of those mechanics.

So many people have tried that I feel compelled to say, "prove it." SMB1, SMB3, SMW, and even Mario 64 all require remarkably precise controls for movement--and I tend to think that moving away from that sort of precision of play moves away from something intrinsic to Super Mario games.

Maybe we need to look towards the DS for inspiration. At the beginning, the touch aspect was heavily promoted and a lot of games came out with only touch controls, that worked mostly well. On the other hand, the DS has one very important feature - a stylus with a sharp point. Even if you do get a stylus for your phone, most have very wide ends, nothing like the precise pen that came with the DS. I sometimes wonder whether if mobile phones had all come with styluses, we'd have better games.