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Emulation (Games) Classic Games (Games) Portables (Games) Entertainment Games

Mame on the Nokia N-Gage 217

Posted by CmdrTaco from the start-your-lust dept.
wraggster writes "The Nokia N-Gage has now joined the club of consoles for whom the excellent MAME (Multi Arcade Machine Emulator) was ported to. Staffan Ulfberg has ported EMame over to the N-Gage - the emulator supports a mass of games."
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Mame on the Nokia N-Gage More

Mame on the Nokia N-Gage

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  • System was dead before it was out the door... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 04, 2003 @05:19PM (#7632937)
    Honestly, who actually wants an N-gage. Even if it could emulate a GBA and SNES to perfection I wouldn't go 10 feet near it. Who the hell wants to talk into a taco? Worst design ... EVER.

    • Re:System was dead before it was out the door... (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      "This is Al Gore, and I am so totally sidetalkin' [sidetalkin.com] at you right now!"

    • You are already talking into a (Slashdot story posted by Cmdr)Taco.

    • Re:System was dead before it was out the door... (Score:4, Funny)

      by Frymaster ( 171343 ) on Thursday December 04, 2003 @05:30PM (#7633034) Homepage Journal
      ... and how are you going to cram four people around it for guantlet 2?
    • Actually it's not, I can tell you've never been near one for at least three reasons:

      1. If you use it traditional phone style, you really don't have to hold it in the exagerated sidetalkin' style, it's fine held more discretely and a hell of a lot more comfortable in the hand.

      2. It comes with a wired headset, which has a few uses, it's the antennae for the built in FM radio, it means you get to hear our MP3s in stereo, and you can use it for non taco-stylee phone calls.

      3. Oh yeah, it's got Bluetooth too,

      • Re:System was dead before it was out the door... (Score:5, Informative)

        by thesolo ( 131008 ) <slap@fighttheriaa.org> on Thursday December 04, 2003 @06:11PM (#7633428) Homepage
        Actually it's not, I can tell you've never been near one for at least three reasons:

        I have to disagree, it's still dead on arrival for one main reason: changing games.

        Those three positives you mentioned (and bluetooth is a big one, in my opinion) don't outweigh the fact that to change games on an N-Gage, you have to do the following:

        1) Turn the unit off (which means, turn your *phone* off).
        2) Flip it over, and remove the battery cover & battery.
        3) Take out the very tiny game chip, replace it with a new game.
        4) Replace battery & battery cover.
        5) Turn unit back on, wait for system to load, go to the right menu, and then start your game.

        Compare this to a GBA, where the steps are turning it off, removing the game cart, putting in a new one, and turning it back on. Especially compare this to a GBA if you're on a train, bus, streetcar, or any other form of public transit. Try easily changing a game on the N-Gage while crammed into a seat on a subway.

        This flaw in their design absolutely kills any of the positives of the system, and makes it, at least to me and many other people, D.O.A. Not to mention that I personally really don't want to turn off my phone when I swap games.
        • How about you compare it to a GBA when you relize that you can have a 512MB memory card in the NGage with a bunch of games and emulators installed. In fact there is a GBA emulator out there allready. Just transfer games and ROMs over via blue tooth. So you have NO game swapping on the NGage VS removing the cart and installing another in the GBA.
        • Changing chip based games sucks, I couldn't agree more.

          But that only applies to some of the N-Gage games, downloadable games are selling better than originally expected, and I'm even cynically wondering if Nokia deliberately left hot-swap capabilities out to try to get games companies out of their cartridge fixation.
        • Another problem with this gadget is that you will be unable to play it while flying in an airplane (at least in the U.S.). Airlines will not allow you to turn on your "cellphone" even if all you plan to do is play games on it.

          I was asked to shut mine off even after I explained to the flight attendant that I was not on the phone, just playing a game. I even showed her the screen. Her reply was that no cellphone devices of any kind were to be powered on while the plane was in flight.
        • Sorry, no. The game swap issue is not a deal breaker, given that hundreds of games and at least four emulators supporting possibly as many as 5,000 games total can all just be loaded onto a single MMC. Heck, with the cracked games doing the rounds, you can have them on your MMC too. There are 512MB MMCs that are compatible with the N-Gage.

          I have at least 150 games with me on my N-Gage. When you're carrying around a GBA, how many carts do you have with you? The answer is often one, making swapping games

    • Honestly, who actually wants an N-gage. Even if it could emulate a GBA and SNES to perfection I wouldn't go 10 feet near it. Who the hell wants to talk into a taco? Worst design ... EVER.

      I understand what you mean, but I rarely use it as a taco-phone. I use the earphones which are included and which include a microphone. They are very small and yet very effective. Usually I am playing games or listening to music on it, anyway, and use the earphones because you can hear the sounds better and it does n

  • Even games... (Score:4, Funny)

    by jayhawk88 ( 160512 ) <jayhawk88@gmail.com> on Thursday December 04, 2003 @05:19PM (#7632940)
    ...that don't look like ass?

    Seriously, have you seen those "This is where I..." ads for this thing? The game screenshots they show look like total crap. I don't know about you, but if I was a developer, I'd be embarrassed to see my game on national TV looking like it was running on an Atari Lynx.

  • This Is A Hoax (Score:5, Funny)

    by lewp ( 95638 ) on Thursday December 04, 2003 @05:20PM (#7632948) Journal
    For this to be true, someone would actually have to own an NGage. Come on, nobody's that dumb.
  • I would love to take a bunch of old NES or arcade games with me to travel.

  • n-gage? meh... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by twiggy ( 104320 )
    I forget the name of it, but a new n-gage like competitor is coming out that supposedly may cost as little as $100... It also won't require you to remove the battery just to change games...

    MAME is cool and all, but man... even geeks don't seem to like the N-gage (they hate it more than most).. I wonder why someone bothered with this...
    • Just ignore the little N-Gauge toys and go with the more popular HO-Guage as you will find more equipment available and as you grow older the largher scale will work better with your eyes when it comes to the finer detail work. Plus I think the track looks more realistic.

      Oh... wait, that's n-gage... well, that's just a bunch of hooey.

  • Also supports other phones (Score:5, Informative)

    by rjbrown99 ( 144423 ) <rjb.robertjbrown@com> on Thursday December 04, 2003 @05:24PM (#7632977) Homepage
    You guys bashing the N-Gage are missing the point. I have a Nokia Series 60 3650 phone. It's based on the same Symbian OS that the N-Gage uses. I can use this on my phone. The 3650 is very widely deployed in the US and Europe. This is a great thing not just for the N-Gage folks, but regular guys like me who happen to own one of the Series 60 phones.

    I can't wait to try it. My phone has a 128mb MMC that can store a ton of games. Should be a lot of fun.
    • "You guys bashing the N-Gage are missing the point."

      Though your point is interesting, nobody's missing the point. It's a horrible game machine.

    • Re:Also supports other phones (Score:4, Informative)

      by Kris_J ( 10111 ) * on Thursday December 04, 2003 @09:06PM (#7634951) Homepage Journal
      I can use this on my phone.
      Actually, you can't -- you don't have enough RAM. 6600 owners can use it though.
  • This makes MAME the only cool thing that the NGage does that I'd be interested in. $199 for a portable MAME isn't worth it.
    • I'm curious if Nokia would be angry that they'd lose sales for their own games from people that would prefer to just use "free" MAME games instead. Are they selling the hardware at a loss hoping that game sales will make up the difference.

      N.

  • i wonder... (Score:5, Funny)

    by simcop2387 ( 703011 ) on Thursday December 04, 2003 @05:26PM (#7632990) Homepage Journal
    ... how long it will be before Mame can emulate N-Gage Games, then it'd only be a matter of time before it could emulate itself!
    • No! Whatever we do, we can not let such a piece of software exist! The creation of a singularity in software would make black hole that could destroy all life on this planet as we know it!

      Or, barring that, open up a whole to an alternate dimension where the N-Gage doesn't make you look like you've got a metal taco sticking out the side of your head.

  • So does... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    So since it's been found many n-gage games, including Sonic-N, can be run on other smartphones, such as the Symbian, without any modification, does that mean other smartphones can now run mame too?

    • Re:So does... (Score:3, Informative)

      by albat0r ( 526414 )

      many n-gage games, including Sonic-N, can be run on other smartphones, such as the Symbian

      First of all, Symbian isn't "another smartphone", it's an OS. Second, there's a lot of smartphones that use Symbian OS, and one of them is the Nokia N-Gage. Other Symbian OS phones include the SonyEricsson P800, Nokia 3650, BenQ P30, Motorola A920, Sendo X Smartphone, etc.So, if a game is able to run on the Nokia N-Gage, for sure it runs on Symbian OS! (but probably not all devices running Symbian OS...)

      • Sorry, Series 60 only. That doesn't include the P800. Only needs a port, but the binaries are not compatible. Also, the 3650 doesn't have enough RAM. Sendo X looks promising through. The N-Gage isn't "just" a Series 60 phone, it's *A Series 60 Phone*! With Lots Of RAM!

    • Re:So does... (Score:2, Informative)

      by TonkaTown ( 186808 )
      A little clarification on this.

      Many N-Gage games will work on other Symbian Series 60 smartphones (such as the 7650, 3650, 6600, Siemens SX1, Sendo X), no big surprise really, as the N-Gage is a member of the series 60 family of devices. [symbian.com]

      There's an interesting article on MAME and other games on Symbian devices on Mobitopia [mobitopia.com]

  • what about multiplayer? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Comsn ( 686413 ) on Thursday December 04, 2003 @05:27PM (#7633006)
    does mame on n-gage support multiplayer? finally! pong! head to head!
    • Actually, MAME no longer supports Pong. Pong didn't run in a ROM-style architecture. So, when it emulated Pong, it was all in the source code, which means they were distributing a game internally to the code, which went against the spirit of MAME, so it was removed from the code somewhere around .55.
      • The argument was about whether it was being emulated or simulated, and in this case, it was the latter. I remember when they yanked it.

        On the other hand, it appears to be back in.

        I don't use MAME32 anymore, but I did recently get an Xbox and MAMEoX 0.76b1, and it comes with Pong. Falz and Noodle basically just wrap the existing MAME cores without any modifications unless needed for compatibility/performance (see the MK2/3 debate), so I doubt they added this on their own.
        • On the other hand, it appears to be back in.

          Any version of Pong in MAME is using the crusty old driver someone wrote many many versions back. The official build doesn't carry Pong and neither do most of the straight ports. This is because Pong has no ROMs, can't be emulated and any driver that isn't a discrete simulation (requiring more CPU power than your computer has, or will have for many years) is just somebody's best guess.

      • Pong was "removed" (we'll get to this in a second) because there is nothing to emulate. No code, no ROM, nothing.

        Pong was originally entirely run off of discrete circuitry (much like my beloved Magnavox Odyssey 1). There was no code, just combinatorial circuits that controlled the game. As MAME is intended and designed as an emulator, well... when you have nothing to emulate...

        However, it's not actually removed AFAIK. It's still in the source code if you want to compile it yourself, just not in the "offic
    • what about multiplayer?

      I suppose that Bluetooth could be leveraged to allow this possibility?

  • Bah! (Score:4, Funny)

    by musingmelpomene ( 703985 ) on Thursday December 04, 2003 @05:28PM (#7633012) Homepage
    You kids and your fancy game systems.

    My Vectrex works perfectly fine for me.

    But I would like to get one of those Nintendo things. I hear there's a game on there about some plumber that jumps on turtles and stuff to save a princess. That sounds pretty high-tech!

    Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go back to playing Star Trek: The Motion Picture: The Game. You suckers with your Playstations don't know what you're missing!

    • Re:Bah! (Score:3, Informative)

      by GoRK ( 10018 )
      Man, the Star Trek vectrex game was horrible even by Vectrex standards.. It was just an endless shoot-em-up space game and it had nothing to do with Star Treck except that they were both set in space.

      The Vectrex could draw text on the screen. They should have at least pretended to add a bit of a plot (one line of text would have improved the game 10000%!

  • Can't miss an opportunity... (Score:4, Funny)

    by gklinger ( 571901 ) on Thursday December 04, 2003 @05:30PM (#7633030)
    Forget MAME, get SideTalkin'! [sidetalkin.com]
  • Yaaaaaaay! Just what we need...more options to distract drivers! I just can't WAIT to get hit by someone scrolling through a list of games trying to figure out what to play while they drive!

    Damon,
  • It is the only tax-deductible gaming system.

    Seriously... in European high-tax countries this means that the state gives a discount of 40-50% on the item (plus VAT back!).

    Even grown men like to play games now and then. And the N-Gage is surprisingly snappy, not like playing Java games on other GSMs, which is slow and boring.

    MAME on N-Gage is a great addition, Nokia should try to license these arcade games since many of their potential clients (men aged 30+) are probably more familiar with some of them than with the "real" games actually available on the thing.
    • And the N-Gage is surprisingly snappy, not like playing Java games on other GSMs, which is slow and boring.

      You clearly haven't tried playing Java games on a Sony Ericsson T610. Sure, the built-in games aren't that great, but T610Downloads [t610downloads.co.uk] takes care of that. After that, it's the best hand-held console I've ever used (disclaimer: I haven't used many). And it looks damn good to boot.

      Anyway, I guess I don't really "get" why anyone would want to put a full hand-held console into a mobile phone. Whenever

  • How Long... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by da3dAlus ( 20553 ) <dustin.grau@gm[ ].com ['ail' in gap]> on Thursday December 04, 2003 @05:38PM (#7633089) Homepage Journal
    Until Nokia sues somebody for this? I'm sure they'll say that their product was hacked, even though it might actually add some value to that PoS. Maybe people will actually buy one just to run MAME......naah...
    • The NGage is an open system, so anyone can write games for it. That's why it costs so much*; Nokia has already got enough profit when you buy the device and they don't care if you never buy an official game. The hack simply means that cartrige games can be pirated and run on other Series 60 phones. It's always been the case that anyone can go out and write software for the NGage without paying Nokia a penny. (There's a special games SDK that comes with some games libraries or somesuch that costs money, but
    • Why do you say that the N-Gage was hacked? The N-Gage run Symbian OS and Symbian OS allow you to install what you want on it, and it support Java and CPP, so you should be able to run whatever you want, including a MAME port.

    • Re:How Long... (Score:5, Informative)

      by rbeattie ( 43187 ) <russ@russellbeattie.com> on Thursday December 04, 2003 @06:20PM (#7633527) Homepage
      Actually, Nokia is promoting the use of MAME [n-gage.com] on its N-Gage site.

      -Russ
      • Sweet zombie Jesus. Grab your ice skates kids, we're going deep.

        A major coporation has its product modified to do something entirely unintended, AND could be linked with piracy, and isn't suing right out of the gate.

        Hell hath frozen over. Finally, a company I can respect.

  • MAME is great but.... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by crush ( 19364 )
    how the hell do you get games for it? The whole dk.mame website had to take down ROM images because of copyright threats.

  • Not Another One (Score:5, Funny)

    by nathanh ( 1214 ) on Thursday December 04, 2003 @06:14PM (#7633455) Homepage

    What hasn't MAME been ported to? Wouldn't it be easier to just have articles listing the rare mobile phones and cameras without MAME? I can just imagine a future article...

    MAME Not Ported To Enigma Machine
    mame-maimed-in-spain department 2006-01-04

    In news that has shocked the MAME community, a project to port MAME to the 1940s Engima machine - used for encryption and decryption by the German forces during WW2 - was cancelled yesterday due to lack of interest.

    Miguel De Mameiza said "We were halfway through the port when we just decided to stop. We already have MAME ported and running on buildings, phones, cameras, watches, books, elephants, asteroids in the deepest part of the Kepler belt. We looked at each other and said 'OK, enough is enough, let's stop there'. We unanimously agreed that MAME is pretty much everywhere it needs to be; we don't need it ported to what is essentially an advanced mechanical typewriter."

    The gaming community had mixed reactions to the news. "I'm really glad they stopped" said one gamer. "MAME is everywhere. It's more pervasive than the SoFreakingBig virus." [Ed: referring to the Windows virus that crippled international commerce in 2005 when it managed to infect 140% of all Windows computers, an intrusion level that still baffles mathematicians] "Yesterday I bought a loaf of bread from the store and some bastard had ported MAME to the RFID tag. It's really weird to have your shopping basket bleeping Pacman music while you're waiting in line. And the checkout chick gave me the oddest look when I asked for my change in quarters."

    But others were angry at the decision. One MAME enthusiast maliciously commented "bleep bleep bleep bwowowowow" and then disappeared in an explosion of pixels. The journalist unfortunately had no change so could not ask for clarification.

  • Oh man, that is cool... sure, the NGage isn't... it's ugly as sin (Exactly how ugly is sin anyway? Surely there are some pretty darn attractive sins? Lust for example... man, that can be a darn puurty sin).

    But this is for any phone using the same base operating system, so in effect it runs on others already (as shown in the article), and more in the future... maybe even phones that... wait for it... look like phones!

    When the contract on my current phone runs out (in around 10 months I think), there is bou

  • MAME - greatest thing... ever? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by strictnein ( 318940 ) <strictfoo-slashd ... m ['oo.' in gap]> on Thursday December 04, 2003 @06:20PM (#7633526) Homepage Journal
    Given a choice between MAME and any other invention (even sliced bread!) I would nominate MAME as the greatest thing ever.

    I love my MAME cabinet. Support up to 4 players on thousands of games. It's just great. My latest obsession is now NBA Jam TE (which I have determined that the CPU players cheat like crazy). Before that it was Street Fighter Alpha 2.

    Yeah, it's illegal (except for NBA JAM TE for me, I own the ROM =), but you show me someplace I can go and pay to play all of those games and I'll be there. I know it will never happen, but as I've stated before, if I could buy a license for my MAME cabinet I would. I would gladly pay $300 - $400, maybe even more. Hell, how about a monthly fee, I don't care. And it's not like I didn't spend 10 years of my life plugging all the money I had into arcade machines anyways.

    The MAME scene might start running into a little more trouble soon now that they're getting close to emulating some of the newer, still commercialy viable games (Tekken 2 works, but is choppy and without sound, Tekken 3 and Tekken Tag are almost there, along with a number of other pretty new games like Blitz 99, Wayne Gretzky's 3D Hockey, Mace: The Dark Age, CarnEvil and San Francisco Rush).
    • (I know, I'm cool responding to my own post)

      Didn't even notice this either, the controller they show for the MAME stories is the one I currently use and really really recommend. Bought two of them. Check it out at http://www.x-arcade.com/
    • you show me someplace I can go and pay to play all of those games and I'll be there

      Try:
      StarROMs [starroms.com]

      *Very* limited selection of legal ROMs for purchase - pretty much only about 50 Atari ROMs at the moment, but I'm sure the catalogue will grow, given enough support.

  • N-gouge has GAMES now?!?!?!?!!? (Score:3, Funny)

    by doublem ( 118724 ) on Thursday December 04, 2003 @06:27PM (#7633588) Homepage Journal
    Cool!

    Now that you can actually play games on this sucker, it might be worth owning...

    Naaah.

  • What I want to know is... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by webslacker ( 15723 ) on Thursday December 04, 2003 @06:32PM (#7633642)
    Why isn't there a MAME for PalmOS yet? There are NES, C64 and AtariST emus, but what I'm really wanting is MAME!

    • While there's no MAME for PalmOS, there is XCade [codejedi.com], which runs Pac-Man, Ms. Pac-Man, Space Invaders, Galaxian, Asteroids, Donkey Kong, Phoenix, Star Castle and a few others. Support for more games is on the way, though Galaga is fairly low down on the list.

      Here are some screenshots [codejedi.com].

  • EMame has been around for quite some time. You can even read a paper on Symbian.com about the good work of Peter van Sebille who ported it to Epoc 5 and Epoc 6 (read Symbian/UIQ/Quartz whatever you like). I'm sure the guy who changed the key mapping for the N-Gage would acknowledge that most of the work was already done for him, but nice work anyway!

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