N-Gage

The N-Gage is a mobile phone and handheld game console made by Nokia, released in October 2003. It combined a Series 60 smartphone running Symbian OS with a games-focused layout, MP3 playback and an FM radio, and games were sold on MMC memory cards.

The original model was criticised for having to be held side-on during calls, a habit known as “sidetalking”, and for needing the battery to be removed to change games. Nokia replaced it in 2004 with the smaller N-Gage QD, which fixed both problems but dropped some features.

The library included ports such as Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, Tomb Raider and Rayman 3, as well as original games like Pathway to Glory and The Elder Scrolls Travels: Shadowkey. Several games supported multiplayer over Bluetooth, and some went online through the N-Gage Arena service.

Sales fell well short of Nokia’s plans, with around three million units sold. Nokia later reused the name for the N-Gage 2.0 platform, which brought games to several of its Nseries phones from 2008 until it closed in 2010.

Today the best way to play N-Gage games is EKA2L1, an open source Symbian OS emulator that runs many N-Gage titles on Windows, Linux, macOS and Android, provided you dump the firmware from a real device.