Bounce, by Nokia. I play it when i'm bored, usually during bus rides. It's fun and it ctually got me hooked. I beat it in a week. I wish nokia could make downloadable levels...

Also, Anderatti Racing (sp?) which was a decent F1 game. (it sucked)

I hate mobile games. Every time I hear about mobile games I cringe.

I play mobile games as a very last resort.

i will admit, I play them. Much easier than sneaking my ds into the crapper at work.

LG phones are garbage.

The only good mobile phone game other then Tetris is Doom RPG, but my hands ache after 5 mins of play time :(

I think the iPhone has the potential to break phone gaming to the next level, but that's largely due to the fact that this phone is basically a small computer loaded with OSX. Code your game for OSX and you're done, I'm guessing. Doubt it's that simple.

I can't wait till these companies realize that this fabled mobile phone games market they think exists is a figment of their imaginations.

NO ONE [u]WANTS[/u] TO PLAY GAMES ON THEIR PHONE!

Just because this market seems viable in Asian territories doesn't mean the America's (and possibly Europe, but really I have no idea what they want) want anything to do with it!

Okay, so underline bbcode doesn't work :)

I played em when I was in school to make the time pass. It's fun for when you're trying to kill time like at an airport or something. I just wouldn't play anything on my phone other than at times like that. It hurts my fingers after a while. Plus I ran up my bill pretty bad once by playing some family feud game. Damn it's addicting.

I love video games as much as the next person, but playing them on my phone just doesn't interest me. If I want to go mobile, I'll use something that was designed for games, such as the DS.

I think games on cell phones is an absolute waste of time. There is a gigantic market for mobile games, look at the fucking Nintendo DS. they sell shit tons of those things. And that is what people want. If anybody actually plays games, they are going to get a DS if they want to play anything outside of Tetris on the bus. That is just how it is, plain and simple. the cell phone will absolutely never have the same controls or processing power as a stand alone device.

I have argued similar points before. Companies just need to make cell phones a really good phone. I would fucking love it if my cell phone had a really nice speaker and microphone. That would be amazing if i could actually talk to people on a cell phone. But they are focusing way too much time on cell phones games and other shit.

I think any developer that is putting effort into cell phone games is a fucking tool and should be slapped. Cell phones are not of any significance in the game market. they need to spend their time working on DS titles or something else.

I use my phone for phone things. Like, you know, making phone calls.

Prove it Toneman.

You hear your phone ringing bhive? That's me, answer it.



HA! Fooled you! It wasn't me!

It's so funny to me that they tout those three games as the top sellers when those are the ones that come pre-installed on every fucking phone on the market. All those numbers show are how many phones were sold that year. :P

Damn it was a telemarketer. You win Toneman.

There is a gigantic market for things like the DS, but those numbers are tiny compared to the accessability of cell phones. They've sold like, what, 50 million DS and PSP units combined so far? Compare that to the one-billion-plus phones out there on the market, most of which can at least run Tetris, Bejeweled and Pac-Man.

The more processor-intensive mobile games can only run on a fraction of handsets anyway (ngage anyone?), and I think that's why Tetris, Bejeweled, and Pac-man always end up on top.

I think for mobile games to get better, someone has to step in and really have a solid platform for developers. It looks like Nokia's trying to do that by incorporating n-gage into all of its phones:

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=12993

Apple's starting to do it too on their iPods and of course, the iPhone, but until there's some kind of real standard, we're just going to see more Tetris and Bejeweled.

Ratchet and Clank: Going Mobile is pretty good for a phone game...

mobile gaming will take off once they come up with a better input mechanism that the shitty directions or numpad on your phone.

super happy fun fun is the only company to really move outside of that realm, and i'm honestly dissapointed 3d tilt a world isn't available on verizon.

cell gaming will never replace the console experience, but with increased storage, higher resolution screens, and more effort put in to graphic processing in every generation of phones, there's no reason the cell phone can't replace your handheld.

Playing games on phones always feels so slow and tedious. It's like playing a new game on a crappy computer - It's just not fun anymore.

While I for one don't play games on my cellphone (I mean, why bother when you have a DS. Psh.) I think its important to consider that the demographic these guys are aiming for are most likely the hordes of 'casual' gamers that have sprouted up with the dawning of the multi-functional mobile phone unit.

When I'm on the train, subway, or in the airport waiting for my plane, I notice a significant amount of business gurus meddling their stodgy fingers all over their cellphone key pad, playing (guess what) Tetris, Bejeweled, or Pacman. I doubt the developers of mobile games are actually aiming for 'hardcore gamers'. I can only assume they're looking to attract the bored chumps who would much rather play a mindless game on their cellphone than, oh, i don't know, read a book. These are most likely the same folks that make 'classic hits' like Solitaire and Mindsweeper continually show up as default games on computers. These 7 million people, naturally, cannot be addressed as 'gamers' by any means.

Anyway...just a thought.

OMFG IT'S COLETTE

Heard you talking about this article :P

i'm fuckin tight 8)

Cell phones are not made for gaming. And the phones that are made for gaming (N-gage) are crap. Why spend time on a half assed game when I have much better and elaborate games on my DS?

It's like when the psp said "HEY DOODS, I PLAY SWEET TUNES AND YOU CAN LOOK AT YOUR AWESOME PICTURES!!!" In reality though, we all know the psp is best at games. cell phones are good at calling people and tip calculators... not much more.

Couple notes: The guys making the phones are completely different from the guys making the games. While the guys making the phones may want you to do sweet jumps on them, they're not going to put in the third cupholder that the guys making the games would like.

Also, its a booming market by shear numbers, as people have said. Mobile games industry isn't thinking about the hardcore gamer, and probably wont, since they have to realize they all have handhelds.

Plus, there are some good *ideas* on cell phone. Like the multiplayer Pirates game that came out and like 5 people played. Cool idea (pickup and play multiplayer shootout on boats), but not supported by the current technology (many networks just aren't fast enough to handle that much data?). Its a mater of getting them to work right.

And even, on top of that, mobile gaming media is a joke. When IGN is the best source for mobile gaming reviews, thats a sign that your industry is failing to garner a hardcore fanbase. not that its important or anything.

But also, no one's come in and really made the experience legit. Like Nintendo. If Nintendo dedicated time into a cell phone game, hyped it approrpiately, and made it work nice on any platform, then we'd have ourselves a viable "console" in mobile gaming.

And finally, Tetris works, Pacman and Bejeweled work on the crappiest phones, with the crappiest screensize, and the crappiest sound. From a design standpoint, they win. To make a confusing profound statement, Mobile Gaming doesn't have its Tetris yet.

It's a fine platform for casual gaming, but the vast differences between the devices and lack of a decent control scheme will always keep it niche.

Mobile games?
Didn't they die with the N-Gage?

Geeez, mobile games suck just for the fact that cellphones have no dedicated joypads....

You want to know why Tetris, Pacman and Bejeweled are the top games still after 3 years? Because the industry was so small when it started, and it's growing in leaps in bounds. Growing so fast that all these new people are signing up and buying games each month, and these top three games are the most recognizable ones they buy first. The mobile content has practically doubled from 1-2% of ARPU 3 years ago, to 2-4% 2 years ago, to 4-8% last year, and now nearly double that. But put that into perspective. Downloadable mobile content is still only about 10% of overall wireless carrier revenue.

So yes, I still ask the question who plays these games, apparently only about 10-15% of the people out there do. But is growing darn fast.

I guarantee you that once the industry gets big, you'll see some new games up in the top 10. Even some console games gone mobile.