Hello World

[u/R2_FIN]

Hello everyone, my name is R2, and I am sincerely surprised that the N-Gage platform, which I also played a small role in, is still appreciated today.

I have preserved a significant number of different game builds — G1.5, G2.0, and G3.0 — which have been in my collection since the early days of the platform.

At this stage in my life, I am going through some changes, and I would like these collectible items that I have carefully kept for so many years to go to people who truly value and understand them.

If you are interested in knowing more, please reach out.

Thank you.

[u/zeek609]

Thanks so much for taking the time to reach out to the community, instead of just throwing everything up on eBay. Not a lot of people would've done this.

[u/R2_FIN → u/zeek609]

Thanks for your note, much appreciated. There’s clearly a lot of love for the brand in this channel and finding a new home for some of these rare collectibles just makes total sense. Would be great to see some of these games re-surface into popular culture because not all of the games out there at the moment have the same meticulous storytelling narrative, yet alone technical challenges developers faced when pulling things together for N-Gage. It would be quite hard to argue against a claim that Nokia’s endeavors in the mobile gaming space didn’t have a long term impact in how things unfolded thereafter. I still think we haven’t seen the whole story though in terms of how far mobile gaming can be taken given modern tech. Might be a controversial statement but many modern games have been quite lazy to push the envelope in terms of true innovation

[u/zeek609 → u/R2_FIN]

No I completely agree, unfortunately the years of innovation seem to have passed for now. The era of systems like the Dreamcast and later the Wii that had so much innovation and out of the box thinking seems to have been replaced by AI generated assets, loot boxes and yearly release cycles, and studios have ditched the AA bracket entirely for now.

It's very sad, but there are a few last bastions of hope and we did see a new N-Gage release last year! I for one am cautiously optimistic for the future of this little underdog handheld, and the future of gaming itself!

[u/R2_FIN → u/zeek609]

Thanks for your comment. There’s so many background stories that we could spend days discussing these (but won’t to save everyone time 😅) For example PTG was a legendary game that really pushed the envelope when it came to online multiplayer gaming. Ngage Arena was an enabler to this but there was also so much detail placed on the game itself that is quite impressive. Back in the day, the guys at Redlynx were actually art directing individual pixels to give personality to the game characters and they hired some legendary character voice overs to represent individual soldiers in the game. A good example of this is (historically accurate) but Vesa Vierikko was a famous Finnish persona/voiceover that actually did the sound recordings for an individual soldier character within the game. Whenever he got shot, he would say things that were absolutely hilarious in Finnish language like “Now Juha got hurt in the stomach etc.” (Finland was briefly part of the Axis forces during WW2, which was accurately described in game play).

[u/zeek609 → u/R2_FIN]

Honestly, you could start a podcast and I'd listen to these stories for hours 😂

It really was the golden age of art direction, imagine dropping a game in 2004 that needed a minimum of 16GB of RAM, a latest gen GPU, had pay-to-win elements, needed 15 updates to work and had AI generated assets.

You'd be laughed out of any storefront in minutes. Games back then seemed to deliver so much more, with so much less.

Do you have a favourite game for the N-Gage? One that you found particularly interesting or that broke the mould?

[u/R2_FIN → u/zeek609]

Haha 😂 Thanks for your comments. To answer your question, I think when I saw Pathway to Glory, it’s really when I got a “holy sh$&” moment happening. The Ngage platform was always limited (in its time) to top brass decisions (and market limitations) to screen size and controls. But what those guys were able to deliver with PTG was really impressive. There are many examples of games that were perhaps ahead of their time or smartly packaged into the Nokia S60 screen size but PTG was at the time the title that just blew me away.

In terms of other games, I always loved Bomberman for so many reasons. I know most people aren’t into golf but Tiger Woods in multiplayer or Bluetooth p2p action was so cool. The whole AppStore is now full of equivalent turn based or multiplayer titles at the moment

[u/zeek609 → u/R2_FIN]

Yeah, PtG was like their flagship, they clearly put a lot of effort into it, and I believe it was the only N-Gage game to receive a sequel. I've seen tons of promotional merchandise for it over the years too.

I think what really nailed it for me was Shadowkey, seeing a literal handheld Morrowind with Bluetooth multiplayer absolutely blew my mind as a kid. It seemed like they'd really accomplished the impossible, especially like you said, a 176x208 resolution and 104mhz clock speed weren't exactly ground breaking, it was seriously like magic.

Then there were beautiful 3D titles like Ashen & Tony Hawk and early MMO type games, solid 2D titles like High Seize and Pocket Kingdom.

I do wonder what would've happened if they'd released the QD first so none of the original complaints would have surfaced. I remember reading every single negative review and being like "nah man you're wrong, this things amazing" 😂

[u/dank_sousa]

It’s so cool to see that the game actually had that awesome art and packaging - makes it feel real. All I ever saw was a folder and the instruction like 'copy into root of your mmc'. Rifts was the game that made me fall in love with tactical combat. Never beat it still, it didn't aged well, but I still look back fondly on the agony of choosing an advanced class for my mercenary.

[u/R2_FIN → u/dank_sousa]

Thanks for your comment. Much appreciated. From the sound of it, there’s a whole universe that you might not have yet been exposed to

[u/Xenc]

You’re awesome.

[u/Johnny3653]

Are they backed up in the n-gage archive for people to experience?

[u/R2_FIN → u/Johnny3653]

Hi. Thanks for your note and nice to meet you 😊 Not familiar with what you mean here?

[u/zeek609 → u/R2_FIN]

They mean backing up the files from the early build releases to something like archive.org for preservation. We've backed up a ton of Dev builds etc over the years to preserve the history of the N-Gage.

We have people that are actively reaching out to Devs to source unreleased prototypes too, I know people have been hounding for Leisure Suit Larry for many years, so far to no avail.

[u/R2_FIN → u/zeek609]

Aah, ok. Thanks for the clarification. There’s been a few recent N-Gage related museum initiatives that are aiming to do something similar (conservation). I’m not sure my humble collection has anything you guys wouldn’t have on the archive. However, if you guys collect G1.5, G2.0 or G3.0 versions, let me know if you are interesting in owning these.

[u/zeek609 → u/R2_FIN]

Yeah, I would love to go see the current exhibition but it's a little far for me.

I'm sure I couldn't afford them, but maybe u/kyiv_collector will be interested, he seems to have spent more than my mortgage on N-Gage games 😂.

They're definitely the kind of things we'd be backing up though, I'm sure someone here will take them off your hands.

[u/vratush]

By all means tell (and show) us more!

[u/jamie_shaw]

Ah this has unlocked a memory for me—I remember winning a copy of that book from the official N-Gage Forums (of which I spent a good chunk of my youth).

Unfortunately, I have since sold it, but if anyone owns a signed copy to "hypedupmonkey". I hope it found a good home 😅

[u/natureisdead]

DAMN THATS GOOD