Nokia N-Gage Cracked

According to Mr. Belvedere over at CD Freaks, the Nokia N-Gage has been cracked. From the article: "The games that were designed for the N-Gage will of course only work with the Nokia device but not anymore. Now that the security on the N-Gage has been cracked the games can be played on other mobile phones as well such as the Siemens SX1." The article notes that Sonic N is the only game seen in public yet, but others are sure to follow soon. It'll be interesting to see how Nokia handles this.

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article text aleady /.'ed

[ed333]

Nokia's N-Gage mobile gaming device has been cracked
Posted by Dennis on 11 November 2003 - 14:50 - Source: SPOnG.com

Mr. Belvedere, our Club CD Freaks Moderator, used our news submit to tell us that Nokia's N-Gage device has been cracked according to this information. The Nokia N-Gage device is primarily a handheld gaming device but it can also be used as an MP3 player, wireless browser and last but not least as a telephone.

The games that were designed for the N-Gage will of course only work with the Nokia device but not anymore. Now that the security on the N-Gage has been cracked the games can be played on other mobile phones as well such as the Siemens SX1:

Nokia will today be licking its wounds and doing a fair amount of worrying, with the revelation that the N-Gage's security has been cracked like an egg, with other manufacturers' handsets able to play the machine's software.

Specifically, the Siemens SX1 is already capable of running N-Gage games, with Sonic N being the only game seen in public, though it's expected that the others won't be too far behind.

This is expected to be the start of a process that will see third-party hardware add-on sales of devices that will enable many phones to simply suck up the N-Gage content, then go on their merry way.

Nokia's reaction to this new, seemingly unforeseen problem, will be interesting to observe, to say the least.

Some screenshots and video's of the Siemens SX1 mobile phone running the Nokia N-Gage games can be found on Club-Siemens. More information on the hacked N-Gage can be read here and here.

Shouldn't this be true only for J2ME games?

[fuxoft]

I presume this only concerns the "simple" J2ME games. Certainly other mobile phones lack hardware to run "big" N-Gage games like Tomb Raider, Pandemonium or Tony Hawk...? (I don't know for sure, the article is already shlashdotted, but Headline like this seems to be misleading.)

Re:Strange

[PierceLabs]

Not true, most of the commercial games for mobile phones ARE coded with J2ME if we look at the ecosystem that the nGage lives in. There are games written in C/C++ as well and all of the games you buy at retail on carts are written in C, but the vast majority of content available is in J2ME.

WHAT PLAYS

[exhilaration]

Here's the list, from an unofficial source:

Siemens SX1 plays:
Sonic
Tomb Raider
Puyo Pop
Pandemonium
Tony Hawk

Nokia 6600 plays:
Pandemonium
Puyo Pop
Sonic
Tomb Raider
Tony Hawk
(Puzzle Bubble fails)

Nokia 3650 plays:
Sonic
Puyo Pop
(everything else fails due to insufficient RAM)