Lost Java-based Mobile Games

While there is this other thread highlighting the soon-to-be-lost (or in some cases, already lost) Japanese mobile games, there are many non-Japanese mobile games to speak of.

The entire North American Square Enix mobile library is nowhere to be found, despite the countless hours I've searched for them.

- Brave Shot
- Brave Shot 2
- Destiny's Child Groove
- Dirge of Cerberus: Lost Episode
- Final Fantasy VII Snowboarding
- HEXCITE Fusion
- Megatouch Mobile Arcade
- Megatouch Mobile Arcade II
- Musashi: Mobile Samurai​

Some mobile games were downloaded and played in parts. Kingdom Hearts for mobile (aka "Kingdom Hearts V CAST") was downloaded in four parts, with the cell phone only containing one part at a time. Part 1 was retrieved last year, but the rest of the game remains lost. Kingdom Hearts (2005) for mobile was published only by Disney, not by the Square Enix ergo why the game is absent from the list above.

My research indicates that Dirge of Cerberus: Lost Episode was downloaded in three parts, so any phone with the game on it will only contain one third of the game.

What other Java-based mobile games seem lost?
- Castlevania 3
- Dragon's Lair
- Dracula


One and the same mobile game could be released in a dozen different resolutions (to fit each phone type), with some builds being dramatically different from each other despite being marketed as the same game. For example here is Castlevania 1, high-end build versus low-end build:


In other words there are many cases where although one build might have been recovered, a dozen more builds are lost. This can most easily be inferred if one knows the phone types for which the game was available.


Lost builds

- Castlevania 1:

150x150 pixels builds
176x180​

- Castlevania 2:

150x150
176x180​

(all Castlevania 3 builds are missing)



There are likely many more Java-based mobile games that are lost but I just haven't brought my attention to them yet. Please be on the lookout for any old phones that might hold these games and/or contact people who might have them. Hopefully at least some of these games can be recovered.

 

Not trying to be negative, but there's just too many to list. I'm not even taking into account the shovelware, pack-in, casual, etc games either. Licenses handed out left and right, tons of games churned out with little to no publicity.

Konami offered some mobile games in Japan as early as 2002, these are of course long gone and it's hard to find much info on them.

Speaking of mobile games, what about other mobile platforms like for Blackberry (RIM), Danger (T-Mobile, etc), Windows Mobile based devices.

 

I trust you are correct in all this. Regardless, I'd like to at least raise some attention to these mobile games. =)

One challenge is getting in touch with people who wrote online about owning these games. Some people I just can't track down. Like Shinra Employee #080729, who played and reviewed Dirge of Cerberus: Lost Episode. Sending a message to their old e-mail address yields no reply and I suspect they no longer use their "Shinra Employee" mail. Despite knowing their age, birthday, past city of residence etc I have not been able to track down this person and ask if they still have the cell phone with Lost Episode on it. Shinra Employee #080729 may also hold some rare files for the Dirge of Cerberus Multiplayer, so that would also be of great interest to find.

Please send me a private message if any of you are able to find the current whereabouts of Shinra Employee #080729.

I am not familiar with these, but maybe I'll read up on them someday. My focus right now is on old Java-based mobile games.

 

I'd love to get my hands on a copy of Military Madness (AKA Nectaris). The iPhone/Android versions* are easy enough to come by, but I've never seen the J2ME one anywhere.

Spoiler: *

(and the Android package even has some leftover source code in it, if you're into that sort of thing)

 

There was another thread with a similar subject, I also touched upon the issue over there https://assemblergames.com/threads/lost-j2me-shadow-warrior-game.67506/#post-955712

I didn't go into nearly enough detail in that thread about how much has been lost, There just isn't a big enough dedicated fan base for mobile gaming. Understandable, considering how much was put out by companies, and how quietly. Most sites where files were available, you'd see frequent releases; lots of titles, in very large quantities of files for each (different screen size, handset, etc). Below each bulk release would be comments or forum replies like "thanks", "cool", etc. These games were nothing more than curiosities to most. Try and drop; there was no discussions or actual interest in the games.

Heck, even the current standard is suffering from this. A few years ago, I searched very exhaustively for the iOS version of The Red Star. There are at least 6 distinct builds; I recovered 0.

Those other platforms I mentioned were obviously nowhere near as popular as J2ME. But the versions of the same games that they featured were usually more advanced, had more features, more interesting, etc. As lacking as the J2ME scene was in a dedicated fan base, these others were practically dead and buried from the start in comparison.

Try the Wayback Machine on the mobile sites for companies like Konami, Capcom, Square, etc. You could probably get a list of titles, mostly all J2ME based.

 

There are a ton of flash and shockwave games out there as well. Armorgames, Newgrounds, and even NeoPets (Hannah and the Pirate/Ice caves was freaking awesome and I don't care what anybody says)

Scary to think how many gems might have just been lost over time.

 

Oh man...don't even get me started on old flash cartoon games from their official website. Cartoon Network had GREAT flash games powered by Adobe & Java sometimes. Nickelodeon had other good ones as well but i have great memories of playing the ones from CN

 

The biggest problem would be games made for BREW. They're pretty much gone from the face of the internet. Apparently, there's a version of doom rpg for brew which had better graphics and ran better. Shame that platform never took off

 

Speaking of windows mobile, it was kind've a mixed bag in terms of how many games survived, back then, there were groups of crackers for these platforms wherein they would bypass the serial key protection of these games/apps and release them to some obscure sites or forums. Unfortunately, most of these died in the early to mid 2000s taking their work with them. Most still survive thru russian forums but others, especially games made by obscure companies like Crimson Fire or ardi(?) Have their games vanish. Even if their games survive, good luck finding a copy which has its drm patched. To this day, I still haven't found a non-demo, registered version of lemmings for palmOS online.

 

Absolutely. Nevermind all the countless BREW-exclusive games (most of which were usually shovelware), if there was a game made for J2ME phones, it most likely had a BREW counterpart. Except it's usually the former that gets all of the publicity, if any. Another big problem I encountered is not finding any emulation support for this platform.

This. I found a few such forums loaded with releases in 2007-2008, but most were dead links as it was. Contra for Windows Mobile was cracked, but then came the issue of revisions. 1.0.0 was cracked, but none of the revisions that fixed a lot of the problems. I had/have the uncracked 1.0.1 trial; its package file should have the full game, so at least that may be salvageable. But none of the subsequent re-releases; just as lost are pretty much every other Konami Mobile title released for Windows Mobile.

 

And there aren't even really any decent phone emulators to play them on. I've got a standalone flashplayer debug program, and a shockwave installer for most mobile games, and memu is an awesome pre-rooted android emulator that works for apks and such but when it comes to playing jar files the best I have seen is "KEmulator" which is hit and miss to put it mildly with no development for multiple years now, and that is apparently the "best" option.

 

KEmulator, a special build of SJBoy, midp2exe, Java Wireless Toolkit and mpowerplayer were my go-to programs. Every game I downloaded would work with at least one of those 5. As shoddy as the emulation was with these programs, you'd come to appreciate being able to even play the games knowing how many other mobile platforms had 0 support.

 

I've never heard of sjboy before. On pc I use both kemulator and microemulator for j2mr and for android, I use either j2me runner or j2me loader. I've also owned a j2me capable phone years ago called the samsung jet. It's a cool phone with support for sdhc cards, an amoled touchscreen yet the j2me vm was a mixed bag.

 

You should really give memu a try for android emulation. By far the smoothest experience I've ever had with a cell phone emulator.

 

Is it like a new android emu? I'm kind've skeptical because i've had bad experiences with android emulation in the past. I'm using an android phone atm

 

Can't say as I've never used it but you should check it out on youtube and see if it looks good to you because I can say without a doubt it is by far the best phone emulator I've ever used.

 

There were actually quite a few more J2ME emulators, but they were all in their infancy and released on Chinese forums. SJBoy was the best of the bunch, and it held up really well compared to everything else until KEmulator.

BTW, Blackberry games are lost, Danger games are lost, Sprint Nextel games are lost.

 

I have one question that always bothered me. How to know that particular java game is "legit" (was avaliable from trusted sources) and not made by noname fans from nowhere or being heavy modifited from its vanilla state? For example, i have a bunch of incorrectly named uknown random .jar files. If i use winrar to unpack them i can read .jar/META-INF/MANIFEST.MF file:

Code:

MIDlet-Vendor: www.m3gworks.com
MIDlet-Version: 2.0.0
MicroEdition-Configuration: CLDC-1.1
MIDlet-1: Counter Attack,,com.m3gworks.engine.GameMIDlet
MIDlet-Icon: /res/image2d/icon.png
MIDlet-Info-URL: www.m3gworks.com
MIDlet-Name: Counter Attack

https://web.archive.org/web/20120318214540/http://www.m3gworks.com:80/counterAttack.html
so this one is definately has nothing to do with Valve or Sierra. Just a clone of popular PC game. But this game has a lot of modded versions with different names and content that brings a lot of confusion often. I mean if someone made a mod for "Gangstar 2: Kings of L.A." by Gameloft in 2009 - that modifies all the names and title screens from original to "GTA San Andreas" - how to know that this is still Gangstar and not GTA? (if i haven't played in gangstar before, if gangstar was unpopular game) Does java games have internal ID or something? Any database for refering to?

Also what about newer java games with touchscreen mechanics? How to emulate them or which non-android phones do i need to play them?

 

They work just fine in kemulator and MicroEmulator. Should work on others as well.

 

Another thing to factor in is that if a game released on multiple platforms the version each platform got can be largely or even entirely different. Sometimes this is because of the platform and mechanics not being possible to implement the same way but in some cases it is just because they could.