Sure, the fact that new Game Boy games are coming out in 2025 is incredibly exciting, but I bet you didn’t think you’d be seeing a new game complete-in-box for the Nokia NGage?
Say what you want about Nokia’s entry into the handheld world (and Nokia’s stupidly timed release date competing with the Game Boy Advance), it’s still an interesting bit of kit and has a loyal cult following of gamers who still wonder ‘what could have been’ if the NGage had managed to defy all the odds and become a commercial success.
I love stuff like this! I never had an NGage because the competing handhelds at the time were better. I’ve never even seen one in person.
When it first debuted, I remember the gamestop near me was selling it by itself for $399. I think that was 2003 or 2004. Something like that. I remember within about 9 months or so it was $100 and came with 3 games. A few months after that I remember them being like “Ok, $30, comes with 10 games. PLEASE just take these out of our store!!!”
I bought one.
Then I got home and found out you can get an MMC card (think SD card, before SD cards existed…and also much thinner), and you could download ALL the N-Gage games for free. You could even store like 20 games on 1 MMC card at a time. So yes, I had 10 boxed games, but I never even opened them. I just downloaded them so I wouldn’t have to remove the battery between game swaps.
Now they did also release an N-Gage XD, which is kind of like how Nintendo releases NEW DS after the original DS was slowing down sales. The N-Gage XD solved the issues of taco talkin, and needing to remove the battery. By this point it was already too late.
The fact that you had to remove the battery to change the game cartridge is absurd
This was said and true even even at the time. N-Gage did SO MUCH ahead of it’s time that it had a true chance to be a sale record giant to compete with the GBA (nintendos current handheld at the time).
It has so many quirks, and things that innovate that it feels like a nintendo product honestly. That is up until they miss the mark SO HARD with stuff.
First off, it has this really bizzare screen aspect ratio. It’d be great for arcade emulators…if it could run them. I assume any game post 1992 or so in arcades would be too hard to emulate on this. As a result, I never saw any arcade emulators on here.
Then there’s the issue you describe. Card reader UNDER the battery. No idea why they did this. Zero sense.
Then there’s the taco talkin. I have no idea who thought this up.
There’s no L or R triggers. They have a 12 button dialpad that they double as buttons, which works surprisingly well…but no triggers. So 1 and 3 are your default triggers, and it feels SO weird.
The fact that this was made by Nokia shows. It had amazing build quality. Phone OS for the time was top of the line. But it just has so much head scratching baffling moments that makes it very clear that this is designed by a phone company. Not a video game company.
You might like this channel then: https://youtube.com/@ngage-archive
You’ll find high quality captures of longplays of those old NGage games. There are only w couple currently but I believe they want to archive all games this way - obviously that consumes a lot of time.