Last updated on October 16th, 2025 at 11:45 am
Taipan! Mobile – Strategy Game Review
Taipan! Mobile is a Strategy/Simulation game from Fair Oaks Labs, Inc., first launched in 21st July 2010.
It’s rated 12+ and currently has 128+ ratings on the App Store.
What Makes Taipan! Mobile Stand Out
A complete port of the classic 1982 game Taipan!, balanced to mimic the original Apple ][ release. This game’s look evokes the phosphorescent glow of an early-80’s CRT, but its interface has been tailored for ease-of-use on a mobile device.
- Sail the Western Pacific of the 1860’s!
- Trade exotic goods!
- Battle fierce pirates!
- Evade customs officials!
- Fend off muggers, cutthroats, and thieves!
- And, Li Yuen reminds you to always pay proper tribute to Tin Hau, the Sea Goddess!
Download the game for free, pay only if you want to extend play beyond 12 months game time. (We feel confident that you will!)
This Strategy game offers engaging gameplay and regular updates for mobile players.
Player Feedback
As a newer release, Taipan! Mobile is building its player community. Early feedback suggests .
Recent Updates & Development
Latest Update: 21st September 2017
Recent improvements include:
This app has been updated by Apple to display the Apple Watch app icon.
Updated for 64-bit compatibility
Download & Availability
Taipan! Mobile is available through the official App Store for iOS devices.
Get Taipan! Mobile on App Store
Requirements: Requires iPhone 5s / iPad Air / iPad Air (Cellular) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina, Cellular) / iPhone 6 / iPhone 6 Plus / iPad Air 2 / iPad Air 2 (Cellular) / iPad Mini 3 or later.
Compatible with iPhone and iPad devices.
Player Experience Highlights
Community Insight:
At last, Taipan the way is was ! Great port of a great game ! Thank You.
We love the way of handling huge amounts of cash All of It. Theres a bug where clicking out of the game will sometimes drop you to the Leave Port screen without remembering the last purchase, but its great fun racing to essentially unlimited money. Totally worth the few dollars to recreate the originals excitement.
Scored over 5 trillion and still trading in 1992.
This is a great port, so much like what we remember in 1982 on Apple II. We also would have loved audio to top of the nostalgia.
We grew up playing this game in Ms Littlejohns computer class at Kamehameha Schools. Our all time favorite game back in the Apple II days!!! Great teaching game for kids. Risk, reward and trading fun.
Brings us back to some good times with the apple 2e. Even left the bugs in which is perfect.
This is the same game our friends and we played back in 1982. It runs much, much faster now so some of the suspense is lost and it makes the game a bit easier. We are just as addicted now as we were in ’82. Our 12 year old and 15 year old play it, too.
Game is fun and reminds us of the game we used to play in the 1980’s. You must pay to unlock the game to get anywhere in it. We do not mind paying the $2.99 but it is not indicated anywhere that you must pay to unlock it. That is pretty uncool.
We played this game for hours on our Apple II back in the 80s. We respect that the money lender glitch is there, too. Unfortunately, guns get hit with incredible frequency and there just isnt a good way to keep up; not a lot of opportunities to buy a new gun. Its also odd that you can pay a lot less for a gun than a larger ship in this game. Also, a Ma Tsu should have some bodyguards and not get beat up so often.
Great port of the original BASIC game we played on the TANDY 4 computers in High School. ( we are that old). The only issue with the game is the start version with 5 guns and 0 cash has 0 ability to progress. No way to earn money and elder brother Wu will not lend you a single yuan. We hope the dev team will fix this as it is nearly flawless otherwise.
Overall we would give it a 9.5. We wish the controls were more like the PC version from Digital Labs.
Very good but the price to repair your ship is way too expensive compared to the original computer game.
Ever since upgrading to IOS 11. Our other version of Taipan has failed. This is a good version of you are feeling like a mogul, smuggler, or both. One request: In the code, the number of ships attacking is tied to the number of guns you have and (we think the size of your ship.) we started out being attacked by over 100 ships, so we had no chance. Other than that, thanks.
Now updated for iOS 11. TY! We used to play this on our old Palm Pilot. It was a fun game. We tried the other free versions, but they were not the same. We love playing this. We only gave it 4 stars because we think it’s slightly over priced. Other than that its a great retro game.
We were so fun at first to play this mobile recreation of the classic game Taipan! However, as at least one reviewer noted previously, the algorithm is skewed. You get too few opportunities to buy guns, they send more and more massive numbers of pirate boats against you, and the game seems to get locked into a pattern of having pirates hit your guns repeatedly. Its predictable. Once the buggers hit your guns once in a big fight, they go on to hit them every time they attack and you run out of guns fast. The probability does not seem random at all once past a certain point. No matter what strategy you use, the bias in the game will bring you down. Its too bad because its a fun game. But you get tired of the bias fast.
Talk about blatant ask for money.
Played this game endlessly on our Apple II like 30 years ago. Randomly googled it today to find this app and we were stoked! Seemed odd that it was free at first but we were happy to pay the 3 bucks for unlock. They put in the effort to port it after all. But after playing it for awhile, its not quite the game we remember. We remember playing for hours while we built up our shipping trade. Now we cant get more than about 20 minutes before the game throws so much at you it pretty much kills you off. Theyve cranked up the difficulty like 2000%. But we dont see why? You see this kind of stuff in p2p games with lots of paywalls. But this ones a flat 3 bucks. We dont get it? Definitely needs some heavy tweaking to make it fun again.
Enjoy the game just get tired of having to buy bigger boats for cargo rarely be given opportunity to purchase guns then have to fight off 3000 ships attacking us. Only to have those ships driven off by 52634 ships who then attack us. If we survive and make it back to get ship repaired Im lucky to have enough money for partial as in 15% to 19% of the 100% repairs completed and then to sail to another harbor be attacked again. 3 or 4 turns later Im dead.
Its a fairly accurate representation of the Apple ][ game, its kind of a moot point today. A nice refresh would be better. Additionally, you can play for an extremely limited time before youre hit up for $2.99 Meh.
This game is freeware distributed on the Apple IIe, back in the 1980s. We doubt that you actually created this game and so you have no rights to charge for it. Drop your paywall and let people freely enjoy this old classic game, as it was meant to be.
Annoyed that this game let us play for 5 minutes and then wouldnt continue without paying. Jokes on them as we had no interest in continuing, at cost, after such a short playing time. Got attacked by pirates twice and jacked up by the money lender for half our money in that short window too. Geez yeah let us pay for the cavity search :).
This is a good adaptation of the original game. There are also some versions you can play online with your browser. We would recommend that, because this one lets you play your first year (about 5 minutes of play) and then demands an upgrade fee to continue. We’d have been far less offended if they’d just charged a nominal fee for the real game. Not a fan of this developer.
This isn’t a free app. You play a few rounds and then bam…. Pay to continue.
We have the original game of this still for the Apple][ As for this game on the Apple store? Its FREE for ANDROID and for iOS=$ What gives? Where is the money going? To the original creators.
Will this great port get updated to 64 bit so apple doesn’t keep us from using it.
Takes us back to school’s computer club and all the times spent plunking on a Apple IIc.
Update: it doesn’t look like there was an update, but after picking this game back up and playing it a few times, we are constantly getting beaten and robbed and mobbed by pirate ships. And we almost never get a chance to upgrade our ship or buy a gun. It has been a while since we’ve played, but we don’t remember the game being like this before or even back on the Apple ][. Old: The gameplay is spot-on, and better. All the one-star ratings are a little unfair to the quality since they all relate to the fact that this game utilizes Apple’s in-app purchase system instead of offering free and paid options as separate apps. We’ll grant that it could be more clear during the process about how the in-app restore would work. (Happens on the same screen where you hit "buy". There’ll be a new option after you reinstall.) we were previously uninitiated with in app purchases. There’s most definitely nothing shady going on.
Grew up playing this. Great game.
We played this game back when the only colored monitor was a green screen. We enjoyed it then and am happy to have found it again. Just our speed.
True to the original game. We love it.
Pure replica of Taipan but thankfully with a turbo version for the ship battles. Fun and quick entertainment – thanks so much for a great game.
We are having so much fun playing again – and YES, it’s just as we remembered. App is stable and functional and we can play all day. Not that we’re admitting anything.
We love this game. It takes us back to when we were in our single digits and Dad had just gotten the IIc. We used to keep the IIc running for days at a time, hoping a power failure didn’t happen. We love the turbo feature, allowing the player to skip past hours of ship battle. And the auto save is a godsend. Today we essentially beat the game. We got ALL the money! Over 999 Trillion. It even displays in the bank line "All of it". We can keep playing, so now we’re going to see how big our ship can get, how many guns we can amass, and how long we can keep our shipping company "afloat.".
We used to play this game all the time on our Apple ][. Loved it. And this is so like the original. Now we play it all the time on our phone. We hope they come up with more of those old games.
We love this game. It is a great replica of the one we used to play in the late 80s. Ah, memories.
… Then you pay. Well, 12 turns is enough for us. Good game; back in the day. In modern times, we’ll happily blow our three bucks on something better although, we’d buy this for a dollar :).
Played this game a ton in high school. This one is really true to the original. Fun time killer. If you are looking for high action, this isn’t it. If you love nostalgic games from the early Apple days, you will love this.
This game is just as addictive as it was in 1984 only less boring because of turbo.
Great little game, still with the money lender bug.
Reliving those 80’s memories of our green screen Apple ][e.
It was great to find this game. Brings back memories of the old Apple II e game.
Remade exactly as it was on the Apple IIE.
Nicely done. Perhaps a Taipan 2 with expandable warehouse, higher value items as you go, ability to put warehouses in every city.
Thanks for bringing back the fun game from youth.
Awesome game of strategy and trade.
Playing this makes us feel like we’re back in our garage in Santa Clara in 1980- all the way down to the font and the green plexiglass tint on our TRS-80 CRT. Well done.
Love this game. You know your good when your net worth just reads all of it lol Trillions.
Just like the game we played back in our childhood on the first computers.
We loved this game in the 80s. Still do. Great little time waster.
Simple but teaches trade and addicting.
User feedback from Apple App Store
App Details
- Version: 1.5
- Size: 3.02 MB
- iOS: 8.0 or later
- Languages: EN
- Content Advisory: Infrequent/Mild Alcohol, Tobacco, or Drug Use or References, Infrequent/Mild Cartoon or Fantasy Violence
- Developer: Fair Oaks Labs, Inc.
Last updated: 21st September 2017 | Genre: Strategy, Simulation | Developer: Fair Oaks Labs, Inc.