Nowadays, there are thousands of mobile games and new ones arrive at app stores every day, but this wasn’t like this. When they were first introduced, mobile games revolutionized the gaming market and introduced gaming to many new enthusiasts. With their invention and mass dissemination, the concept of gaming changed; what something previously considered an expensive hobby with a niche audience became something easily accessible and universally appealing.
The First games
The first mobile phone featuring a mobile game was the Hagenuk MT-2000, which ran the classic Tetris. However, upon its release in 1984, it generated little interest. But in 1998, Nokia tried again with this concept and released two mobile phones, Nokia 6110 and 5110, which would change the mobile phone industry forever. Both these devices featured three simple but extremely engaging games: Memory, Snake, and Logic. As it turns out, one of them, Snake, was an immense success.
As a result, developers and especially mobile manufacturers invested in this new feature. For instance, Nokia added new games to their next phones, including Snake II, Bumper, Dance 2 Music, Link5, Magic Draw, and Space Impact.
The Java era
Years later, in 2002, the first phones with Java support reached the market: Nokia 3410 and Siemens M50. This new software changed the industry and allowed manufacturers to develop some of the most iconic mobile games from the 2000s.
For instance, Nokia pushed the boundaries even further and developed a device that could make calls and support console-quality games. The Nokia N-Gage became one of the first devices to support 3D games, which at the time, were only available for consoles. Using this device, users could play some of the most popular gaming titles, such as Tomb Raider. This famous video game saga was first released in 1996 for PC, Macintosh, and PlayStation 1, and is known for its 3D graphics, innovative gameplay, and its story. In fact, the Tomb Raider has always been at the forefront of gaming innovation, adapting its games to many devices. One of the best examples of this is the Tomb Raider game released for Nokia N-Gage, which revolutionized mobile gaming by successfully adapting the original Tomb Raider to mobile devices.
Since then, the franchise has heavily invested in the mobile industry, launching over ten games for mobile devices. The games’ formats have evolved significantly since then and currently, users can enjoy the Tomb Raider saga on a variety of platforms, including themed slots available in the Genesis Casino app which allows players to play casino on mobile devices. These slots are easily accessible using a smartphone and employ many of the game’s animations, symbols, and sounds capturing the experience that the video games offered.
However, back in 2002, this technology didn’t immediately dominate the market. Most displays were still monochrome, and games couldn’t take up more than 30kb of storage, which was the amount of memory needed for a Java application. This forced users to constantly delete games to free up space on their phones. Adding to this, the first Java games were very basic and shallow in comparison to more traditional video games.
It was only in 2003, after the first experiments with Java, that the industry started to seriously invest in mobile gaming. As a result, in 2005, large companies working in the gaming industry entered the mobile universe, including Capcom, Namco, THQ, Activision, Disney, Konami, and Electronic Arts.
Following this, there was a boom in Java games from 2007 to 2009. The best mobile games were released during this period, namely Splinter Cell – Pandora Tomorrow, Chaos Theory (Gameloft), Wolf Moon (Rovio), and Stranded (Glu Mobile). In fact, by the time the iPhone and N-Gage 2.0, were announced, ordinary phones were still increasingly becoming more accessible and introducing state-of-the-art games.
After 2009, with the growth of the smartphone market, there was a drop in Java game production in Western countries. Even so, Java remained popular for a long time thanks to China, which became a major producer of mobile games for older phones. And while currently Java has been surpassed in terms of usage, it is one of the key pillars of some of the most important smartphone software, such as Android.
Whatever is next in the mobile gaming industry, one thing’s for sure, these ‘vintage’ games were crucial in starting one of the most important industries in the technology sector and will always be remembered with great nostalgia