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[Drew1440]

This threads remind me I need to start playing some Java games on a couple of old handsets I still own (Samsung E900/ Sony Ericsson W800/ Motorola V547 and a Nokia 6230i)
Also have a Symbian Nokia 6260 which can do both Series60 and J2ME applets.

Don't have any Brew handsets (Europe) but I suspect the Nec e616 runs it but its heavily locked down, the only way to load Java apps on it is to use the UMTS 3G browser, since 3 only intended you to run apps from their platform, games had to be downloaded from there portal.

 

[stranno]

I have recorded a bunch of BREW games on Melange. The BREW "wrapper" for Android. According to /bin/cat, the developer, he has resolved the sound (BREW sound container wasn't documented well enough) and probably the controls (it only supports physical/virtual keyboard). Melange still does not support OpenGL, so forget about Zeebo or Mega Drive 4 for now. But games like Bioshock 3D are software renderer, so there is hope for those being supported in future versions.

Duke Nukem 3D (the last game in the video) seems a simpler version of Duke Nukem 3D for Tapware Zodiac, Battlefields for Zeebo or Duke Nukem DS for Nintendo DS (cancelled). Very boring game.
All 5 Need for Speed games on BREW use exactly the same engine. Only graphics and gameplay change a bit. Underground 2 is also dumped, but it does not work on Melange (probably different engine/developer), surprisingly enough, there's a Windows version of the BREW version, in a very very early stage.
Doom RPG is the best version of the game, by far, Java ME version lacks floor, ceiling and many effects. Doom 2 RPG is probably the same in every platform (iOS, Windows Mobile and BREW), since it probably uses the same software renderer.

 

[Spukc]

Zenonia Review

Though not for casual players, Zenonia is as lovingly crafted as the best 16-bit console role-playing games.

www.gamespot.com

even got a psp and ds port.

this is one of my fave old smart phone games.. it's basically an single player mmo.

other worthwhile games are..
doom rpg 1 and 2 .
wolfenstein rpg
imobster
dead space mobile (or whatever it was called)
peggle

 

[stranno]

Doom RPG, Doom 2 RPG and Wolfenstein RPG are among the best mobile phones ever donde. Really amazing twist in the Doom formula and perfect games for mobile devices of the mid-00s.

Dead Space Mobile was really ambitious, almost on par with Mass Effect Infiltrator.

I have been playing two interesting games of classic iOS.



Vektrax was the last known game from Nick 'Radivarl' Reed, no other than the developer of the legendary Muniki's Castle, probably the first Java ME 3D game.

Not a great game, but it was fully developed (from design to App Store publication) in just 3.5 weeks. And it was more a showcase of the Bedrock game engine than a proper game, since Metismo (ex-members of IOMO) was an SDK developers studio.



Moon Dancer: The Phantom Thief (aka Grappling Action: Moon Dancer) was, again, the last known game from Gen Suzuki, the designer of Ninja Five-0, one of the best Game Boy Advance games and a perfect mix of Shinobi and Bionic Commando. Grappling hook and balancing physics are very similar to Ninja Five-0, but the game is way less polished. I still enjoyed it and graphics design is pretty cool. My only complain is, as always, the motion controls.

 

[makaveli60]

Doom RPG, Doom 2 RPG and Wolfenstein RPG are among the best mobile phones ever donde. Really amazing twist in the Doom formula and perfect games for mobile devices of the mid-00s.

Dead Space Mobile was really ambitious, almost on par with Mass Effect Infiltrator.

I have been playing two interesting games of classic iOS.



Vektrax was the last known game from Nick 'Radivarl' Reed, no other than the developer of the legendary Muniki's Castle, probably the first Java ME 3D game.

Not a great game, but it was fully developed (from design to App Store publication) in just 3.5 weeks. And it was more a showcase of the Bedrock game engine than a proper game, since Metismo (ex-members of IOMO) was an SDK developers studio.



Moon Dancer: The Phantom Thief (aka Grappling Action: Moon Dancer) was, again, the last known game from Gen Suzuki, the designer of Ninja Five-0, one of the best Game Boy Advance games and a perfect mix of Shinobi and Bionic Commando. Grappling hook and balancing physics are very similar to Ninja Five-0, but the game is way less polished. I still enjoyed it and graphics design is pretty cool. My only complain is, as always, the motion controls.

I know they are generally liked but as a Wolfenstein and Doom fan the turn based combat felt terrible and made me quit them quickly.

 

[stranno]

I know they are generally liked but as a Wolfenstein and Doom fan the turn based combat felt terrible and made me quit them quickly.

It's turn based but quick enough, I'd say. Never felt sluggish or clunky, imo. The first game also had a big amount of lore, unlike any other game in the series. Most dates and events of the Doom's timeline come from here.

 

[stranno]

/bin/cat has added virtual keyboard and support for Orcs & Elves II (probably more games) to Melange (BREW wrapper for Android).

 

[stranno]

/bin/cat has finally made Bioshock 3D playable. Apparently, it was not an emulator problem, but the memory mapping difference between Android and BREW. He has modded the game itself and it plays fine already. Melange still does not emulate sound (due obscure audio container implementation), but that could be implemented soon™.

The game, well, it's disappointing and surprising at the same time. It had among the best graphics in BREW and control is really modern, similar to OmegaSoft's Call of Duty for N-Gage. But it feels slow, clunky and it's really short, only the first 6 chapters from the original game. More downloadable chapters were intended, but it never happened afaik.

 

[stranno]

Around 1/3 of ExEn games have been preserved. ExEn was a mobile platform by In-Fusio, the popular Java developer, created to compete with Java and other mobile platforms. It had less than 150 games, so it wasn't really popular. It had some weird-exclusive games of well-known licenses, like Worms, Tomb Raider, Terminator or Stars Wars. Including this Spyro for female players.

Noëlle Béronie, product head for Spyro the Dragon at IN-FUSIO, said: "A game designed for girls might be a surprise, given that gaming on mobiles is in its infancy, but nobody has thought about us yet! Spyro is an amusing and modern game, and by no means a soothing one. The hero has to do what he can to help the fairies, otherwise they rebel. They are just like modern women and girls, flirty and not submissive. As for Spyro, he may sometimes spit fire, but he always has to be at the beauties' beck and call!"

Researching in the Gameloft webpage, I also have found the first Java ME games they ever published (source). It happened on 14, March 2002 and they were five games for the Siemens SL45i (101x80) and two games for the Motorola Accompli (240x160). Before that they already did some WAP games (sort of interactive webpages for the prehistoric mobile network), but these were their first works in Java.

Prince of Persia – Harem Adventures.

Summer Volley!

Lock’em up!

Block Breaker.

Incubus.

Atomino (Motorola Accompli).

Those old Siemens phones had B&W graphics, but the display was yellow, pretty much like the Game Boy DMG with the green display. The Siemens SDK provided both themes, B&W and B&Y, in order to improve the design of the game with the yellow display.

 

[ProgenitorCastle]

Its hella nostaglic seeing those old phone game artsyles

One of my best game achievements was beating that Nokia phone spaceship game, it was viewed from the side and was pretty creative for the level themes from what I recall

 

[MadchesterManc]

I remember being blown away by the XDA Orbit back in the day when I got one, I still have it but no longer charges There was basic games available but I had a Gameboy emulator installed on it with Pokemon Blue and it ran well enough for me to enjoy. Old school Windows Mobile was surprisingly robust on those mobile PDA's

 

[buenoblue]

I used to have a Nokia n95 with little slide out dpad. I used to run megadeive and SNES emulators on it, lol good times. Also had the goat phone the Xperia play. Still have it but even with a new battery it won't turn on. I still use a controller grip on my phone nowadays to play retro stuff at work on breaks

 

[stranno]

Bent has added Midi support to EKA2L1. Lots of games used Midi for music or SFX. Prince of Persia: Sands of Time HD, for example, uses it for everything. Soundfont is not quite there, but I guess he cannot use the copyrighted Nokia soundfonts.



Camera support has been added as well. Of course it is not real camera support, just an stub, but it fixes a few N-Gage Service games that required a camera test, like Dirk Dagger or Mega Monsters. Other games with camera support already worked fine without it, like Metal Gear Solid Mobile.

 

[makaveli60]

Thanks for these posts, I really enjoy reading them, lot of nostalgia

 

[amc]

I had a lot of powerful handsets going back to the late 90s. Think I must have bothered with about three mobile phone games in all that time. I know some parts of the world they were more than a curio and a lot of people's way to play games but I wasn't going to piss around with shitty mobile games when I could play GBA and then later DS or PSP.

I did always like the look of those awesome Japanese phones that ran some decent games but never saw the light of day outside of Japan.

 

[stranno]

Both EKA2L1 and Melange are getting OpenGL support, so we will probably see Symbian^3 (the only platform left in EKA2L1) and Zeebo emulation this year

In the latest weeks I have bought a bunch of iOS devices (iPad 3 and 4, iPod Touch 5, iPhone 5s, etc) and a Samsung Omnia II, one of the most powerful Windows Mobile WVGA devices ever released.

To be honest, the Windows Mobile catalog is as disappointing as you can imagine. Incredible sluggish interface (even worse than Symbian S60v3 FP1) and really crappy ports. iOS ports, released at the same time, were light years ahead.

Kahvibreak people has discovered a weird port (considering the year it was released) of Gangstar to 96x65 resolution devices (i.e. Nokia 3510i). It is quite amazing to see this game running on 62KB and with such low resolution. I love it

 

[N30RYU]

 

[ethomaz]

Symbian... what year is that? lol

I have several Symbian phones... never played one game.
I'm really a console guy.

 

[stranno]

Symbian... what year is that? lol

I have several Symbian phones... never played one game.
I'm really a console guy.

June 2002 (Symbian 6.1) to ~October 2012 (Symbian Belle).

 

[Chittagong]

June 2002 (Symbian 6.1) to ~October 2012 (Symbian Belle).

It’s mental to think iOS has been around 50% longer than Symbian S60 ever was.

 

[stranno]

It’s mental to think iOS has been around 50% longer than Symbian S60 ever was.

And that's only how long Symbian lasted, from 2008 to 2012 it was completely irrelevant platform. iOS has been leading the mobile digital sales from the very first day of App Store, back on mid-2007, to this day.

N-Gage service (so called 2.0) for example had 49 titles along ~1.5 years. App Store had around ~100 titles THE FIRST DAY And, of course, iOS already had a few games between the launch of the iPhone and the launch of the App Store.

Even the damn Apple Clickwheel had 41 titles for the iPod series, which wasn't even a suitable device for playing (the clickwheel system pretty much suck in any genre).

 

[Kev Kev]

cool thread stranno !!

i mostly just played snake. but it was still a good time

 

[stranno]

So. Apple changed the world 15 years ago (+1 day).

 

[channie]

Marvelous thread stranno , keep it coming! I remember working in QA for Vivendi (Empire Earth, SWAT Force, Spyro...) good memories from troubleshooting these 15fps crappy games

 

[stranno]

Marvelous thread stranno , keep it coming! I remember working in QA for Vivendi (Empire Earth, SWAT Force, Spyro...) good memories from troubleshooting these 15fps crappy games

Amazing! Any funny story about those games?

Did you played the ExEn versions or just Java?

 

[channie]

I don't recall much except the dev studio was sometimes mis-targeting the hardware devices: some builds were unplayable on phones that had hidef screen but poor hardware (such as most of the Sony Ericssons) - they shipped them anyway *shrugs*

Here's some screens I dug from my archives:

 

[stranno]

I don't recognize any of those games

Do you still have any of those builds? Kahvibreak folks would probably enjoy them. You should join the Discord channel.

Join the Kahvibreak Discord Server!

Check out the Kahvibreak community on Discord – hang out with 1406 other members and enjoy free voice and text chat.

discord.gg

I have found, among tons of unsorted Symbian files, an interesting demo from the CDG 2006. It was a tech demo of OpenGL ES for the Nokia 3rd Edition series, developed by Futuremark. It is very cool and runs decently on the N95 8GB.



It was mentioned back in 2007 here in NeoGAF. Apparently it was shown first in the E3 2005, but I don't think it was actually running on the real hardware (it's HD to begin with).

https://www.neogaf.com/threads/tin-star.216854/#post-9031857

 

[nkarafo]

I have no experience with mobile games, i stopped playing with handhelds altogether after the GBA.

What interests me about this topic is how the several generations of mobile phones compare with consoles, handheld or not.

Those 95x95 color games don't look better than a GB color or Atari Lynx game so it seems like mobile phones had to cover a vast gap to reach proper console levels.

Also, that Prince of Percia game on the 6600 looks worse than a GBA game, even though the 6600 was a more powerful device. The scrolling doesn't look smooth at least. A lot of these games seem to have janky and stuttery scrolling. Nothing like the smooth stuff you got on console/handhelds.

 

[stranno]

Those 95x95 color games don't look better than a GB color or Atari Lynx game so it seems like mobile phones had to cover a vast gap to reach proper console levels.

Also, that Prince of Percia game on the 6600 looks worse than a GBA game, even though the 6600 was a more powerful device. The scrolling doesn't look smooth at least. A lot of these games seem to have janky and stuttery scrolling. Nothing like the smooth stuff you got on console/handhelds.

Game Boy, Lynx and Game Boy Advance have custom graphics hardware, unlike mobile phones, that had an ARM CPU and.. that's it. Everything was handled by the CPU, there wasn't any kind of graphics acceleration whatsoever.

Game Boy Advance, for example, has accelerated affine transformations, the so called Mode 7, for backgrounds and sprites (SNES only had for backgrounds, until the SuperFX2). On a 6600 you have to waste CPU time to calculate sprites affine transformations.

Java ME and Symbian games were somewhat slow not just because of the processing power, but because of the screen refresh rate. An smooth/fast game would end in a blurred display, they had to stick with the 10-15FPS standard, even if phones could move those games faster.

I don't think mobile users back then looked for a handheld experience, to see games running on a mobile phone was amazingly enough.

 

[AlteredForms]

I remember creating a similar thread a couple weeks after this one. Here's my introductory post from there:

One of the most entertaining things for me was playing Java games on a mobile phone in my childhood. Since I wasn't allowed a console, it became a memorable past time and purchasing new titles through mobile phone credit was a slippery slope. Many of those available were programmed using JavaME by established developers such as Gameloft and Digital Chocolate. Most of them were simplistic in terms of gameplay and many used the same engine, but the dialogue and graphics were more than enough to a pull a child into their small screens. You can submit as many selections as possible, but note that handhelds such as Gameboys or PlayStation Portables aren't to be included. This is about mobile gaming primarily on the Java platform, but modern smartphone titles are allowed.

Mine:

Joe Scarlotti's Mafia Wars 2

I never played Mafia Wars 1 assuming there was one but the sequel was something I poured hours into. Set during prohibition, you take on the role of the eponymous Joe Scarlotti. A pastiche of every mobster cliché under the sun who returns to town to exact revenge on those who murdered his wife and child. Your missions involve sabotaging rival gang warehouses, cleaning the streets with a Thompson machine gun and everything in-between. Gamespot actually reviewed this game upon release and rated it an 8/10.

https://www.gamespot.com/reviews/scarlottis-mafia-wars-2-review/1900-6130056/

Prince of Persia: Warrior Within

Out of the entire Sands of Time trilogy, Warrior Within is my favourite on mobile. Move through lavish levels ranging from a burning pirate ship to ancient temples to the hanging gardens of Babylon. Master button combinations to execute killer moves on the tonnes of brain-dead enemies. You can even jump into the sack with one of the women available at the end of the mission!

Get Rich Or Die Tryin'

Back when 50 wasn't trolling everybody on Twitter and pretending to be broke to avoid the taxman, there was the ironically named Get Rich or Die Tryin' movie alongside it's companion game. Visit different nightclubs and build up your rep through battle raps and diss songs. Collect the cheque come release day but be warned as dissing somebody else does earn favour with other MCs, but not the person on the receiving end who will attempt a drive by on your ass. Make enough money to run everybody out of the town and it's a rap.

 

[stranno]

I remember creating a similar thread a couple weeks after this one. Here's my introductory post from there:

Really good games. I played all of them back in the day.

Get rich or die trying reminds me the fake-game of Inside Man movie.

like my man fifty says: get rich or die tryin

 

[AlteredForms]

Really good games. I played all of them back in the day.

Get rich or die trying reminds me the fake-game of Inside Man movie.

like my man fifty says: get rich or die tryin

It was supposed to be an extreme GTA clone. I don't think even GTA lets you put a grenade inside an enemy's mouth.

 

[stranno]

It was supposed to be an extreme GTA clone. I don't think even GTA lets you put a grenade inside an enemy's mouth.

Yeah, robber was like: wtf is going on with this kid?

 

[nkarafo]

Game Boy, Lynx and Game Boy Advance have custom graphics hardware, unlike mobile phones, that had an ARM CPU and.. that's it. Everything was handled by the CPU, there wasn't any kind of graphics acceleration whatsoever.

Game Boy Advance, for example, has accelerated affine transformations, the so called Mode 7, for backgrounds and sprites (SNES only had for backgrounds, until the SuperFX2). On a 6600 you have to waste CPU time to calculate sprites affine transformations.

Java ME and Symbian games were somewhat slow not just because of the processing power, but because of the screen refresh rate. An smooth/fast game would end in a blurred display, they had to stick with the 10-15FPS standard, even if phones could move those games faster.

I don't think mobile users back then looked for a handheld experience, to see games running on a mobile phone was amazingly enough.

I guess early mobile games weren't different than early PC games vs Αmiga and 8/16bit console games.

 

[stranno]

I guess early mobile games weren't different than early PC games vs Αmiga and 8/16bit console games.

Java ME is amazing because studios had to go back to the basics in 2001+. In a market dominated by Playstation 2, XBOX and Gamecube, they had to work with 64Kb of size, 96x65 resolution and 8K of available scratchpad memory. Really crazy if you think about it.

Not only that, Gameloft and Fishlabs developed for many platforms, most of them ARM, but with different languages and limitations. Powerboat Challenge, for example, came out in Java ME (Mascot Capsule 3D), N-Gage Service (Symbian 3rd Edition), iPhone and Symbian^3 (OpenGL ES).

 

[AlteredForms]

Not only that, Gameloft and Fishlabs

Gameloft are around today and still copying other people's ideas no doubt lol. Another JavaME studio of note was Digital Chocolate, founded by EA demigod Trip Hawkins himself.

 

[01011001]

this was my first mobile game on a phone back in 2003:




well technically I had 3, the included and preinstalled Flo-Boarding:


and I also bought Red Faction for it (which is a completely independently developed game only on N-Gage that is vaguely based on the first Red Faction game). it wasn't that amazing but I had fun with it at the time



I also played a lot of Gameboy and MegaDrive games on it after i found out there are easy to install emulators I played through the entirety of Sonic 1 on a MegaDrive emulator at the birthday party of my grandma back in the day

 

[stranno]

Gameloft are around today and still copying other people's ideas no doubt lol. Another JavaME studio of note was Digital Chocolate, founded by EA demigod Trip Hawkins himself.

Mmm. Definitely not the same Gameloft. The current Gameloft just sucks. Even their main games are pretty mediocre. Like Gameloft Madrid NOVA Legacy, what a disgrace of cash-grab remake.

01011001 Very cool games, yeah. London studio Ideaworks 3D did some serious black magic with those Playstation ports to N-Gage. The renderer they used in all of them (including Tony Hawk's Pro Skater) was called Paella .

 

[raduque]

There was some Resident Evil game I played on my Motorla KRZR. I never did much gaming on mobile till Android came along. The first Android game I ever bought was crystal tower defense or something.

 

[stranno]

Given the miraculous port of Tomb Raider to Game Boy Advance, I have checked the official portable versions of Tomb Raider (1996). Except the Android version, which should be exactly the same as the iOS one, and the PalmOS version for Zodiac Tapwave, that should be the best portable version until Classic, but it never came out, leaked version is not finished and I don't have a Tapwave (that does not have TV output, so it's out of my list).

These are the Windows Mobile 6 version, the N-Gage (Symbian 6.1) version and the Classic version for iPhone/iPad. This last one was a remastered edition of the game, with improved textures en resolution, but quite many glitches.

 

[stranno]

Bent has added hardware acceleration OpenGL ES to EKA2L1. So S60v3+ games developed in OpenGL ES should run faster and can be upscaled to the native resolution of the display. This, of course, doesn't affect the vast majority of Symbian games, which are rendered in software.

I've been playing some of the first iOS games ever, since the opening of the App Store back on July 2008 (there were some games before that, but I'd say most of them were web-based).

Pole Position Remix. Namco did around 10 remakes of their classic arcades just in 2008, a few months after the App Store opening, which is really crazy. This Pole Position remake is probably the best of them, a very cool re-imagination of the original game + Pole Position II (an Expansion Kit, not a new game) tracks + one new track + 6 new Formula 1 models, including a futuristic one. The assets are completely based on the original graphics and it is very polished, a bit more easy than the arcade, but still quite hard. Every ingame graphic is packed in a tileset, except the road. I'd say it does not use line-scrolling like the original game (it was the second line-scrolling racing game of all time, after Sega's Turbo), but real time affine transformations to the graphic. For some reason, the initial vehicle is the legendary Fernando Alonso & Giancarlo Fisichella R26 from 2006, instead of the cars from 2008.

Remix also came out for the legendary Clickwheel Series for pre-iOS iPod devices (Video, Nano and such). All Clickwheel Games have been preserved, but unfortunately only ~30% of them are "cracked" (not really, someone just bought them and shared his firmware) and only for the iPod Classic 5 and 5.5. I suppose it is completely unplayable, given the really crappy control Clickwheel is.

The game was produced by Namco Networks and designed by Matthew Carlstrom.

I have also tried some other Pole Position ports and, to be honest, they're pretty unplayable. The Namco Museum Volume 1 for Playstation struggles like hell in the turns and the Namco Museum Virtual Arcade for XBLA just runs too fast. Both are emulation.

​

Wingnuts Moto Chaser. This one is actually a launch title for the App Store, along with other ~160 games. It was the first racing of iOS, with Cro-Mag Rally. So it could be one of the first racing games ever to feature motion controls. And, surprisingly enough, it is actually a very decent motion control, with good analog range and smooth turns. The game itself is nothing really impressive, Cro-Mag Rally is better. My biggest complain is that the punch button rarely works. The game was later renamed to Moto Chaser because.. Wingnuts, what the F?

The game was developed by Freeverse, a legendary b-tier developer for Android and iOS, they did a good amount of mediocre-to-good games. It is one of my guilty pleasure mobile studios.

​

 

[stranno]

Android | Market

web.archive.org

Old capture of the Android Market, the original Google Play. It opened on 22th October 2008 and, apparently, Gameloft made the first (store) Android game ever: Bubble Bash. Captures have the LG name, so they're probably Java, since the HTC Dream should have been the only Android phone available back then.

 

[MarkMe2525]

Yeah, I played it on this phone.

I think you meant this phone. I played that game as well and it wasn't on Android. It blew my freaking mind.

 

[stranno]

I wonder if anyone has that uber-obscure version of Metal Gear Solid Mobile nowadays.

 

[Synless]

I think you meant this phone. I played that game as well and it wasn't on Android. It blew my freaking mind.

You know what, I think you are right.

 

[stranno]

Kahvibreak folks have preserved and fixed a previously lost Monkey Ball Java ME game from a Samsung SPH-A500. Unfortunately only the demo.

G-Mode, the studio that has been porting DoJa games to Switch for a few years already, has announced his latest port (Archive), Mikuni Field Combat, in collaboration with City Connection (Cotton Collection guys). Fortunately it is a pretty shooter this time, their latest games were all Japanese visual novels.

​

三國フィールドコンバット - G-MODEアーカイブス

三國フィールドコンバットとは、近未来のUFO型攻撃空母「ジェネシス-3」を操作し、敵のユニットをキャプチャービームで捕獲することで味方として活用しながらステージ攻略を目指す、戦略性が魅力のシューティングゲームです！

gmodecorp.com

You know what, I think you are right.

That makes more sense, the BREW version is known.

 

[stranno]

Amazing tribute of NTT DoCoMo to i-Mode, their digital services for +25 years that will be terminated on March 2026, phones.

Tons of games lost. But, oh well, it's not the eShop

 

[Rest]

I guess God of War is shit now because God of War: Betrayal wasn't on a Sony platform:

I've always wanted to play this, never had a chance to.

 

[SF Kosmo]

I remember liking a lot of those Gameloft games back in the day. I even interviewed to work there as a dialog writer when I first graduated college.

 

[stranno]

Bent added motion controls (accelerometer) support to EKA2L1 two weeks ago, it should be available across the three generations. S60v3 was the first generation to feature this kind of hardware and there were very few games with support, it was popular on 5th Series (9.4) and ^3 (9.5). SSX3 is one of the very few games where motion controls were mandatory.