N-Gage

N-Gage Specifications

The N-Gage is a feature phone and handheld game system from Nokia, announced on 4 November 2002 and released on 7 October 2003. It runs on the original Series 60 on Symbian OS v6.1.

N-Gage attempted to lure gamers away from the Game Boy Advance by including mobile phone functionality. This was unsuccessful, partly because the buttons, designed for a phone, were not well-suited for gaming and when used as a phone the original N-Gage was described as resembling a "taco", which led to it becoming a well-known mocking nickname along with the "Frankenphone".

Nokia introduced the N-Gage QD in 2004 as a redesign of the original "Classic" N-Gage, fixing widely criticized issues and design problems. However, the new model was unable to make an impact, and with only 2 million units sold in its two years, the N-Gage and its QD model were a commercial failure, unable to challenge their Nintendo rival.

The N-Gage was met with mixed reviews upon its release, with criticism aimed at its design and the quality of its games. While some popular titles like "Tomb Raider," "Tony Hawk's Pro Skater," and "Sonic N" were available for the platform, many gamers found the control scheme and graphics to be inferior to those of dedicated handheld consoles like the Game Boy Advance.

The N-Gage was discontinued in February 2006, with Nokia moving its gaming capabilities onto selected Series 60 smartphones. This was announced as the N-Gage platform or "N-Gage 2.0" in 2007, carrying on the N-Gage name.

The N-Gage is used in a wide physical form with a 2.1 inch TFT display in the centre with a D-pad to the left and numerical keys to the right, among other buttons. This kind of design was roughly used before by the Nokia 5510 mobile phone.

Instead of using cables, multiplayer gaming was accomplished with Bluetooth or the Internet (via the N-Gage Arena service). The N-Gage also included MP3 and Real Audio/Video playback and PDA-like features into the system.

Besides its gaming capabilities, the N-Gage was a Series 60 smartphone, running Symbian OS 6.1, with features similar to those of the Nokia 3650 (it does not have an integrated camera, however). It was able to run all Series 60 software (other than those that require a camera), and Java MIDP applications as well. Its main CPU was an ARM Integrated (ARMI) compatible chip (ARM4T architecture) running at 104 MHz, the same as the Nokia 7650 and 3650 phones.

Around 2000, gamers increasingly carried both mobile phones and handheld game consoles. Nokia spotted an opportunity to combine these devices into one unit. Nokia announced in November 2002 that they would develop the N-Gage, a device that integrated these two devices. Its original development codename was Starship.

Many of the preloaded ringtones and sounds were composed by former demoscene musician Markus Castrén, who worked at Nokia during mid-2002. For both the N-Gage and Nokia 7600, he wrote ringtones in a variety of popular dance genres, as well as creating a small set of sounds inspired by 1980s arcade games; he chose to compose those in a chiptune style as music in video games of the time did not stand out as sounding distinctively game-related.

Games for N-Gage used to cost $600,000 to $1.5 million to develop.