Slashdot Mirror
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.
Sweet! Cause I bet those games are worth playing on other phones!
so how long till a lawsuit is filed for violations of Digital Millennium Copyright Act?
30% Troll, 50% Underrated, 10% Interesting
Score:5, Troll
Is this really worth caring about? I mean anyone who takes the N-Gage seriously as a console has severe issues. Not to mention that only a handful of phones are going to be capable of running the games anyway. Also, it's not like Nokia can do anything about it; it'd cost more (considering the N-Gage is *already* failing financially) to fix than what they might actually lose to piracy.
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.
The standard Symbian package does not include OpenGL. Thus games for the NGage that make use if it will not run on anything else (for now). Even the Nokia 3650, wich is almost the same hardware will not run these apps.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
So let's see, this will let you add a total of, what, like 4 whole games to your library for your non-N-Gage phone?
Don't get me wrong, it's still neat in a way, but "Crappy game system with no games gets cracked so you can play those nonexistant games elsewhere" seems somewhat underwhelming.
Mechanik
not standard j2me system(heck, the resolutions differ from in different j2me devices enough to not make them unworkable in most phones, in most phones apart from s60 phones the j2me is very freakking limited when it comes to .jar size and heap size anyways).
it's a standard s60 system(as pointed out), and s60 has been available for a while and most software available for it can be found cracked on the net(yahoo groups, irc, the usual places where you would find warez). this shouldn't really surprise anyone.
as for playing on pc, i'm not so sure about that(but it shouldn't be overhelmingly difficult to find enough docs that would make it possible to do such an emulator that would run binaries compiled for them).
also theres slight differences in thos s60 phones, for example while the pad in ngage doesn't block itself(so that you can press both up and left at the same time) the pad in 3650 blocks itself(so that you can't press up and left at the same time). i'd just except them to come with up some better execution environment checks with the next range of games(after which the crackers find a way around them too).
anyways, this should give some indication how much nokia had to shell out for actually developing the ngage hardware(not much, as they had done it for other phones already). kind of how their first mp3 playing phone was basicly a quick hack too(though, now it seems they're unifying the hardware to be pretty same in most of their phones, the cheaper smaller phones have already mostly exactly same innards).
next week on slashdot: crackers crack securerom cd protection on pc! gp32 has copied games!
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.