It's Critter Time!

hello friends have you heard the good word about the nokia n-gage



This was a combination cell phone/handheld game console released by Nokia in 2003. It was known for its rather...unique design quirks. For instance, you needed to change games by taking off the back plate of the N-Gage, taking out the battery, and then change out the card. There's also the way you talked on the console, which looked like this:


(art by ParseNoire)

This was a phenomenon known as "sidetalking", which inspired a series of early memes. The original sidetalking website is still alive and kicking for your perusal.

A lot of the design quirks of the N-Gage would be fixed with the N-Gage QD, which allowed you to talk on it like a relatively-normal-looking N-Gage owner and had an external cartridge slot. Also the buttons felt more like game console buttons and less like phone buttons.



In total there were 65 games released on this console during its two year lifespan. Some notable examples include Advance Wars clone High Seize, a series of GBA & PSX ports (including Tomb Raider, Sonic Advance being ported as Sonic N, etc.), and the only known video game adaptation of the Rifts tabletop game.

I've been obsessed with this perfect piece of mediocrity for years (and currently own 6 of them); anyone else have "fond" memories of this thing?

I actually had both models and had a fairly good time with mine. It helps that I found a site that let me basically pirate all the games and I had a fascination with J2ME games so I had a fairly good amount of games for it. I believe the only version of Prince of Persia - Sands of Time I've ever played was on an N-Gage. I also had some fairly basic NES emulators that ran at sub-NESticle standards.

Was it as good as my GBA? Lord no, but it got the job it needed to done

Lolo De Puzlo wrote: Thu Jul 17, 2025 3:44 pm I actually had both models and had a fairly good time with mine. It helps that I found a site that let me basically pirate all the games and I had a fascination with J2ME games so I had a fairly good amount of games for it. I believe the only version of Prince of Persia - Sands of Time I've ever played was on an N-Gage. I also had some fairly basic NES emulators that ran at sub-NESticle standards.

Was it as good as my GBA? Lord no, but it got the job it needed to done

Sometimes you just need to get the job done!!

I didn't have one when it was new because it was really cost-prohibitive (the joys of growing up more on the broke side), but it's definitely one of those systems that becomes really intriguing for exploring things like any sort of saved J2ME games later on in life.

I don't know if N-Gage emulation is fantastic but as an Elder Scrolls Freak, I'm contractually obligated to figure it out at some point to play Shadowkey. I'm kind of looking forward to it, tbh.

Oh my stars, I wanted one of these, just to have a portable MP3 player combined with a phone. I could never find a retailer who would sell me one.

Serendipity! The only computer adaptation of RIFTS was for the N-Gage, for ... some reason. There's currently a crowd-funding to port it to PCs.

https://www.backerkit.com/c/projects/pa ... r-reforged

Xinjinmeng wrote: Thu Jul 17, 2025 11:07 pm Serendipity! The only computer adaptation of RIFTS was for the N-Gage, for ... some reason. There's currently a crowd-funding to port it to PCs.

https://www.backerkit.com/c/projects/pa ... r-reforged

Sad it didn't reach its goal, but still! Glad to see that they tried! Some of that game's dev team (especially when it comes to art via Chris Bourassa) moved over to Red Hook, so I'm at least glad that they're still active in the industry!

Rifts is an interesting game that I do want to go back to/play in full some day. I had a lot of fun with how it flowed as an isometric strategy RPG, but I also felt like I should research the tabletop books to see how good of an adaptation it is overall.

Its a shame this system was kneecapped by both internal issues/meddling and timing because I think it having some real solid ports of some PS1 titles would of been a showstopper under better circumstances. Have a huge soft spot for the weird ass thing