TwoSpacesSG

@2ssg.bsky.social

He/They, 24. "Musician", "speedrunner" and "video game archivist". Gonna be trying to post about retro mobile games and occasionally about random other stuff.

As I found out the other day, "The Mighty Troglodytes" (the French studio behind the Legend of Spyro mobile games) made their last game in 2009, but it was not their end. At least one programmer went to work at "Playsoft" in Poland and took their tech with him. Here is the game list with TMT tech.

Game listTitle screen of Battleship & Connect 4Title screen of Pac-Man Kart RallyTitle screen of Tekken Mobile

I would like to get back to this account in order to keep showing off my research and other accomplishments. Don't know for how long it will last because maintaining a blog is not in my habits.

On the topic of Mega Man feature phone games for MIDP (Western J2ME platform), I found the archived page of the publisher "8elements" that released Rockman mobile games in Asia: 1, 2, 3, Space Rescue, and the undumped localized ports of Rockman GP and Rockman Panic Fire.

Bild

Thanks to an accidental find by researcher Pirate Dragon, some never-before-seen Sega mobile games for J2ME cell phones can now be played. This includes Monkey Ball (full version), Vectorman and Virtua Cop.

List of games foundMonkey Ball gameplay imageVectorman gameplay imageVirtua Cop gameplay image

For the first time in emulation, the J2ME Nokia phone port of the Sega arcade classic Fantasy Zone can be played without graphical issues (using nightly builds of FreeJ2ME-Plus), big props to AShiningRay. This is a faithful port of the game, albeit with squished graphics.

Upon recent re-examination of #J2ME cell phone related archives, I found stuff I wasn't aware of, such as: - Doom RPG (Nokia 6280 version) unedited dump; - #Rayman Raving Rabbids, version for old Nokia phones with tiny 96x65 resolution screens (see video).

Cancel culture is such an unfunny joke these days. If you really feel like ruining someone's life because of something they've said off-hand 4 years ago, then you're the problem.

Happy belated Easter. The J2ME port of the Euro retro computer classic Jet Set Willy appears to include an exclusive Easter egg room. I don't know how to access it the intended way, but I've gotten into it before on video using a glitch. (Spoiler alert on the video)

Continuing on: Rockman 1-3 for J2ME (not Mega Man!) were released in Indonesia and were available at least in 2012. These versions aren't preserved and few people know about them, and it's not clear if 2 and 3 are based on the JP/CN or the US/EU releases. (tysm to Pirate Dragon for the tip!)

"Rockman - The blue bomber returns for his most celebrated adventure.""Rockman 2 - Rockman is back!""Rockman 3 - Dr. Wily n his robot masters are at it again n only blue bomber can save the day in this perfect adaptation of the original console classic."

Keitai Shojo: Ayano Spirits is a game released in Japan by G-mode for feature phones, and is part of their dating sim series. Also of note, however, is the dumped Chinese-language version released on J2ME by Joymaster. The game takes up almost 1MB of storage and has nice effects and music.

Title screenGameplay screenshot 1Gameplay screenshot 2Gameplay screenshot 3

Here's a J2ME game I've not heard of before - Tom Clancy's The Sum of All Fears. Unlike other versions, this is not a shooter, but a monochrome graphical adventure where you choose between political decisions.

The Sum of All Fears (2002) title screen"You are Jack Ryan, Deputy Director of the Central <...>""1. See what the lie of the land is with Israel? 2. See what the <...>""Golovko says: Listen, Jack. I am here because I need some advice, and maybe some help from your <...>"

The J2ME game Who Wants to Be a Millionaire 2010 Part 2 is remarkable for having over 1700 preserved versions of the game, though all but 22 of those are "dead" trial versions from the now-defunct J2ME section of the freeware app site GetJar.

Title screen of WWTBAM 2010 Part 2Cutscene screenshot of a 3D rendered view of the game show hall"Fastest Finger: Earliest first, put these US presidents in order. A: Bill Clinton. B: Jimmy Carter. C: Gerald Ford. D: Ronald Reagan.""Bad Luck! You've scored 0 bonus points."

Some emulation news, a while ago asdf @oldphonepreserv.bsky.social dumped the previously-lost Puzzle Bobble for Sprint (J2ME) from a Samsung SPH-A900, and today Shinovon (author of KEmulator nnmod) pushed the fixes to make it playable on his emulator. Big props to everyone involved as usual. (1/2)

Gameplay screenshot of Puzzle Bobble for Sprint

The classic Micro Machines racing game series has a J2ME entry developed by Carbello (Sweden), which is a decent game for an early-ish release. 3 versions are preserved, but, as it sometimes happens, the best version is in Italian. The other 2 lose in performance or content. (1/2)

Title screen with the game's logoPortraits of four characters preparing to race. "Piloti pronti? Avviate i motori"Starting a tournament race on the school tableStarting a head-to-head race on the lunch table

Hi folks! I'd like to revive this account and try to post regularly about Western J2ME (Java ME) game preservation. There are various blogs on this website dedicated to the highly active scene of Japanese phone preservation, but interesting things happen in relation to Western games as well.

Sony Ericsson K800i, a phone famous at the time for its excellent Java game performance. (Pic: GSMArena)