With the creation of the cell phone, one was easily impressed with the fact that the phone required no cables. However, towards the end of the 20th century, cellular phones started to modernize, and people wanted more out of their cell phones.
With the introduction of the "candy bar" style cell phone, the appearance of a cell phone as well as its features and calling capabilities became a lot more important to people. Cell phone games were among the many new features that could be expected in this new type of cell phone.
Older cell phone games were not as expansive or as popular as console games, as the phone's hardware was not suited to high-color screens or sounds beyond differently pitched beeps. The games were usually animated with black squares. A good example of an early cell phone game is
Snake. Unlike today's cell phone games, which usually have to be purchased, these games came pre-installed on the cell phone, and could not be copied off or removed.
When the
camera phone was introduced to the public, cell phones started to become a lot more common. The storage and graphic capabilities on these new phones were a lot better than the older candy bar style phone, which meant that higher quality games could be created. This of course also meant that companies could make a profit off these games. Some of the early companies to utilize camera phone technology in mobile games were
Namco and
Panasonic. In 2003, Namco released a
fighting game that uses camera phone technology to create a
player character based on the player's profile, and interprets the image to determine the character's speed and power; the character can then be sent to a friend's mobile to battle. That same year, Panasonic released a
Tamagotchi-like
virtual pet game where the pet is fed by photos of foods taken with a camera phone.
[5]In the early 2000s, mobile games had gained mainstream popularity in
Japan's mobile phone culture, years before the United States or Europe. By 2003, a wide variety of mobile games were available on Japanese phones, ranging from
puzzle games and
virtual pet titles that utilize camera phone and
fingerprint scanner technologies to
3D games with
PlayStation-quality graphics. Older
arcade-style games became particularly popular on mobile phones, which were an ideal platform for arcade-style games designed for shorter play sessions. Namco began making attempts to introduce mobile gaming culture to Europe in 2003.
[5]Nokia tried to create its own mobile gaming platform with the
N-Gage in 2003 but this effort failed mainly because, at the time, the convergence of a cell phone and a
handheld gaming platform did not mix. Many users complained of having to talk on the phone 'taco-style' by tilting it sideways in order to speak and hear. There were hardware issues as well, and though some quality games came out, support for the platform was anemic.
Today, cell phone games have come a very long way. Their graphics are about the same as you would expect on a
4th or
5th generationgame console (which may not seem like a very big improvement yet is considered one because the game is being played on a cell phone). Cell phone games now tend to take up a large amount of memory on cell phones. Still, certain games such as "
Tetris" and "
Solitaire" are somewhat popular cell phone games.
