Okay so the situation regarding mobile phone documentation on the internet is... unfortunate. There are plenty of sites that will happily tell you a phone exists, and what its specifications are, but I'm discovering this isn't enough to determine if it's a "platform" we need to care about. And I think this is just because of how internet was back 2005 - we reported the news, but it was rarely dissected - people just took things at face value and posted drivel. Which means we have situations like this: https://www.phonescoop.com/phones/phone.php?p=591 The Motorola V551 aka V330 aka V547 aka V555 aka V557. They're all different, but they're all the same... apparently. And we collectively can't decide why so many variants exist - different carriers? Regions? Cameras? Storage space? Bluetooth? The V557 has a news ticker - is that really enough to sell a new phone? Wikipedia isn't clear, clearly nobody did side-by-side comparisons back in the day, and as 15-year-old entry or mid-range level devices, nobody much cares about them. I know I don't - I'm just turning red links blue on Sega Retro, and it's a challenge to stay awake. Even the hipsters downgrading to feature phones to prove some kind of point wouldn't touch these, because they're cheap looing, dull, and Motorola isn't an exotic brand. Point is, once TwoSpaces compiles this big archive of Sega games together, the next task will be to determine which versions of games we actually have, and by extension, which versions we don't have (so we can make the call for people to seek out their old devices and fill in the blanks). I've been at this a week and I'm still not sure how many platforms there are. That's insane.
Found a few more; https://web.archive.org/web/2009062...my/gu/index.jsp?sessionExpired=sessionExpired Crazy Taxi Crazy Taxi puts gamers into the driver seat as a fearless cabbie with serious attitude. Racing against the clock, mobile drivers must rack up mega-bucks before their shift ends by picking up passengers. https://web.archive.org/web/20081229194620/http://lifestyle.maxis.com.my:80/games/jsp/default.jsp Golden Axe In GOLDEN AXE, its up to you to exact revenge and rid the world of one of the most vile and heinous beings to ever walk the planet. Sega Sonic Jump The world is in danger again by the Dr. Eggman^s evil plot. Your mission as Sonic is to stop his diabolic fantasy. Keep jumping up from platform to platform and chase Dr. Eggman to the end! https://web.archive.org/web/2010012...my/gu/index.jsp?sessionExpired=sessionExpired Sega Initial D The thrilling and extreme car racing is ready to roll again! After a long silence since the blockbuster manga movie Super Monkey Ball Tip 'n Tilt 2 Guide the monkey to the exit by tilting platforms while negotiating obstacles and puzzles through three exciting environments. You'll need fast reflexes to beat the clock. Go bananas with Super Monkey Ball Tip 'n Tilt! https://web.archive.org/web/20070401023828/http://lifestyle.maxis.com.my:80/games/jsp/default.jsp OutRun Go for the goal with the rythmical music! I'm obviously incorrect there as several of those got published in Malaysia as Sega games, so they probably did retain the rights to those and it's just the US Sega Mobile side which decided to stop publishing them.
So here's a weird one - reviews of Virtua Tennis Mobile claim it's 3D. Uh.. Are you sure? A good chunk of the dumps online are 2D versions. Fairly high resolution 2D in some cases too, so it's not just the rubbish phones getting the short straw. There is a 3D version though (which in this case doesn't render properly at 240x320 for whatever reason, even though that's clearly the target). Glu Mobile published both versions but their old website makes no mention of a 2D version.
I did a follow-up on this and found some footage - it appears to be the same version distributed as part of Sonic Cafe, as opposed to the Part 1/Part 2 verison that came later. aka Sonic the Hedgehog (2005 DoJa, BREW), which we have down on Sega Retro as Sonic the Hedgehog (2005 Sonic Cafe). I'll unify the titles at some point. It looks as if this iteration of Sonic debuted on the Panasonic VS3 before Sonic Cafe (and the BREW version may not have landed until 2006), so I'm thinking the title should be "Sonic the Hedgehog (mobile; 2005)". Though if the J2ME and BREW versions are radically different, maybe a split is due - dunno, not enough dumps yet. Also fun fact: The box scans are within scope. This version also seems to be the basis for re-release by EA Mobile I mentioned above... though again, I'm not super confident they're identical because we don't have all the dumps. You would, after all, expect all ports of Sonic 1 to look and play broadly similar. Though speaking of one that doesn't - the thought process goes that Sonic Genesis on the GBA originated on mobile phones, but this seems to only be partially true - I think some graphics were borrowed, but the GBA engine is much much worse, and given other quirks like the sunflowers being green (as opposed to purple on mobile), it was probably built from the ground up using whatever assets they could find. Also claiming this was a port from mobile would be an insult to mobile.
Missed one; https://web.archive.org/web/20071204000959/http://www.gamesunlimited.com.my:80/jsp/default.jsp Golden Compass Step into the world of The Golden Compass! SEGA and New Line Cinema have worked together to ensure locations, key characters and plot details are perfectly matched in both film and game, bringing Philip Pullman's universe to life as never before. I then downloaded the whole archive in order to search locally, the following was in the javascript, although it doesn't display when viewing the webpage; SEGA Dragon Crystal Explore the mysterious dungeon and find the hidden holy grail which is located in deepest level of the dungeon.Auto map generation system allows user to play the game million times. SEGA The House Of The Dead The game system totally optimized in this mobile version, now Zombies are coming at you from all around “360”, so you have no time to get scared but shoot!Can you get hold and survive from this nightmare? SEGA Medeival Total War The Game is based on famous PC franchise "Total War". Control your Medieval European armies with tactics and wisdom to conquer the opponents. The game can be enjoyed by not only Total War fan but also the all time strategy game fan. SEGA Mr Racoons Tightrope Act You are the only one who is able to seal up the bad racoon.Dont lose your balance not to fall off from the rope and collect 5 Wonder Balls to root out the bad racoon! SEGA Puyo Pop Fever Puyo combos pop. You can go it alone with three crazy courses and a brand new Story Mode, or let a friend jump in at any time for total mayhem. Puyo Puyo 2 Here comes the sequel to PuyoPuyo! Can you climb to the top of the tower? Go for big scoring chains and chains, and watch the gobs of puyos disappear. Its the kind of frenetic puzzle action game! Do not forget remarkable characters neither!! SEGA Rally Get behind the wheel of a real rally car and race the world in arctic, tropical and canyon settings. Jump straight into the arcade action with an instant quick race or go for gold in the legendary SEGA Rally championship. Shadow Shoot Best rival of SONIC, SHADOW the HEDGEHOG will show up in your mobile! His mission is bringing back Chaos emeralds which were snatched by Dr.Eggman. Shinobi English Shinobi debuted in 1987, in the arcade title Shinobi, and has since featured in eleven other official Shinobi titles and one spin-off game. Nightshade Kunoichi in Japan is currently the last game in line. SEGA Tower Smashers Hit a tower with a hammer, line up 3 or more of the same color pieces and erase them. There are 2 types of games.Collect treasures and Battle against Rivals. SEGA Vancouver 2010 Embrace the spirit of competition and go for gold with the Vancouver 2010™ — Official Mobile Game. Become the ultimate winner in this thrilling sports challenge packed with superior features! House of the Dead description uses the word "nightmare", so it's not clear whether or not this is the first or second game. I can search for specific games if anyone wants, although I've already searched for all of the US ones and the ones mentioned by TwoSpaces here.
The internet lied to me - the first game was called Borkov not "Borakov". And I have a precise date for its relase: 8th April 2001, where it shipped with the Motorola i85s (so yes, a monochrome game) Searching Borkov brought me to... myself, posting about Motorola Java things years ago (this happens more often than you'd think), but it also led me to another one: https://archive.org/details/hhcmag/HHCMag_June_2002/page/8/mode/2up?q="Borkov"+"sega" Apparently Sega made some demos for Palm OS in 2002. Someone found them - all it needs is a write-up.
Were there any more House of the Dead games on J2ME than Nightmare? I don't remember seeing any. Okay, you've officially cornered me now, this is the first time I see this version. It says "Java" on startup, so it's either something like Sonic 1 Contest Version on the DoJa (which would be the simple and clear outcome), or they made a J2ME conversion of the DoJa (Sonic Cafe) game for J2ME on Panasonic, and then iFone did that for other devices?? I sure hope not. This is spitballing level 1000, but if you look closely in the video, the game's title in the menu scrolls, and right when the person selects the game, and the phone says "please wait" in Russian, the name scrolls far enough to reveal what appears to be the letter "C". Do you think it might be Sonic 1 Contest Version? EDIT: Nevermind, I rewatched the video, and the title actually scrolls back, and I think it's the piece of "O" in "HEDGEHOG". I don't know then. I told a bunch of people about this, so I hope it gets extracted soon from whatever firmware files there are. The BREW versions from EA Mobile and Sega are dumped, and the emulators exist (Melange v1.0.8 runs these games with issues and without audio). Sonic 1 and 2 play very similarly to the J2ME versions as opposed to the Genesis originals, I can execute a speedrun of Green Hill 1 with muscle memory from Part 1, though the faster loads are off-putting: I don't know as much about the other Sega games on BREW. I think the reasons the J2ME (MIDP) pages were decided to be separate from DoJa and BREW ones is because those the former are in 2 parts, while the latter are in 1 part. I don't have a strong opinion.
Wayback machine is down again, so I can't find everything now, but in 2006 on Sega Mobile's site the featured game was "The House of the Dead" with this description; https://web.archive.org/web/2006052...D=&PHPSESSID=954c6d5292d3c98deb4337eadd7fbc65 But searching now it seems that maybe this didn't get released. http://www.thewebsiteofthedead.com/?tag=the-house-of-the-dead-mobile-cell-phone-game Unfortunately this site is down now too (it was working recently), but Google's snippet has this; So I guess it was just Nightmare that got released, I wonder if it was based off of the supposedly cancelled version.
Not including Japanese, Chinese, and Korean releases (I'll come back to the latter two in the future) I'm at nearly 120 releases (not splitting versions, ie 2D/3D, low-end/high-end etc). This is mainly from old listings etc, so there's probably more to add from dumps, and some which may not have got released. Any obvious ones that I've missed? Edit: Forgot to remove House of the Dead. Edit 2: And Monkey Ball listed twice
Very nice. Is Penguin Luv the same thing as (Sega) Penguin Land? I've not found any dumps of the latter so I've got no idea. Your list seems to imply that you've found evidence it is. I would like to have that spreadsheet for the sake of archive preparation, even the WIP version. I will likely get back to it soon, right now priority is on finishing up some No-Intro corrections on existing stuff, projects on the side like speedrunning Sonic mobile games, and not getting burnt out on things in the midst of it. Also, update on Panasonic VSx Sonic 1 preinstalled game: it turns out that none of the firmwares of the Panasonic phones with Sonic 1 are dumped still, the only thing that me and some buddies have been able to find is a VS3 service manual that seems to reveal that these phones use an Infineon "S-Gold" chip, but it's not clear where to find a flashing/dumping program tool for Panasonic anymore (which is mentioned in the service manual). biggestsonicfan owns a VS7, and I hope it comes in handy someday when this situation is more clear. Edit: @Pirate Dragon I think you meant Puyo Pop Fever DX, not just Puyo Pop Fever.
@TwoSpaces Good catch, I thought Penguin Luv was the US port of the i-mode Doki Doki Penguin Land, but now I look it seems to be a different, more basic version. I'll separate it out. I wasn't sure what to do with Puyo Pop Fever. I saw you mentioned there's a dump of Puyo Pop Fever DX, but the Malaysian operator calls it just "Puyo Pop Fever", whilst the Hong Kong operator has "PuyoPuyo Fever Mini (Wide screen version)". I think they're probably all the same game, but not 100% sure. I'll tidy up the spreadsheet and share it.
Puyo Puyo Fever and Puyo Puyo Fever DX are two separate releases on the i-Mode. China had releases of both, and Puyo Pop Fever DX had English versions, probably for Southeast Asia. Notice the title change. As for the original Puyo Pop Fever in Malaysia, it could be an undumped release, or they could've just put the title in wrong. I have no idea what's "PuyoPuyo Fever Mini (Wide screen version)". Edit: This is random, but I'm looking at the screenshot list again, and I have to point out that the MIDlet-Name (the title that is displayed in the phone's app picker) for the dumped Bullet King - Tama-Oh is actually "BulletKing -rebenoj" (modified by the "rebenoj" guy who dumped it). "Bullet King - Tama-Oh" is the name on the title screen, but it's likely that the English language title is just supposed to be "Bullet King". It's like Burger King, but Bullet King.
The Japanese had three different releases: "mini", "regular" and "DX" - they're all the same in that they're all ports of Puyo Puyo Fever, but the later ports are more accurate than the earlier ones. Sega were classing them as separate "things" (or at least, the DX release was treated separately) so we probably want to do the same. They got a bit obsessive with Fever - there are weird versions and spin-offs and the main page is loaded with versions.
About half of the handsets that have been named by games so far now have pages on Sega Retro. I think I'm going to stop with this specific task for now - all the popular models are done, and we're getting into misleading territory because the internet doesn't care enough. You can judge popularity by using Special:WantedTemplates - missing icon templates likely means there's no phone page too. The problem is that the internet isn't very good at highlighting related models of phone, so we might already have coverage. case in point The Sony Ericsson K550 apparently shares the same hardware as the W610 - it's just the pre-installed software that differs (and that the W is Walkman-branded and therefore orange and cooler). The internet isn't quick to tell you this. I only found out because people have flashed the former with the software of the latter. And that only happened because Sony is a well respected brand - old-timey LGs or Samsungs or Siemens don't have that pulling power. also many of the remaining devices are uninspired grey blocks no support for the wacky Nokia 7280, sadly.
https://web.archive.org/web/20100115204834/http://www.sonicteam.com/cafe/puyo_fever/index.html Google translated; The description from the Malaysian operator; So it sounds like it's the DX version, but maybe it was like in Japan where it depended on your phone model which version got downloaded, which would explain them just calling it Puyo Pop Fever. There is a Chinese version of Fever dumped besides the DX version, so I'll presume an English version exists and include all three. I wonder if the Hong Kong "Puyo Puyo Fever Mini" is localised into English as it still uses the Japanese name, although it's not as if they were ever consistent with naming. I also found another Malaysian release, a second one in the Touch de Uno! series; SEGA Touch de UNOH Sort Right Are you good at memorizing?You should memorize letters and pictures and put them into the right order. Let's train and evalua
It appears there are two different games called "Virtua Fighter Mobile" - the Japanese one (for i-Mode) is based on Virtua Fighter 2 (with some VF5 menu design thrown in - looky), the Western one (developed by Swedish developer Southend Interactive) is based on the original game. Both released in 2008 just to confuse us. Also some of the lower end Southend versions are 2D. Or a kind-of weird 2.5D - they modeled the floor in 3D but the camera is fixed on one axis. Dunno, bit weird.
Hi, just dropping by to mention that I've been provided a dump of a single firmware of the Panasonic EB-VS3 (China) phone, courtesy of AlexLato who downloaded it from a Chinese forum. Sonic 1 is absolutely in there, alongside Soccer and some other thing (IDK, didn't pay attention). I reuploaded it here for now. While the JAD file for the game is also there and specifies the file size of 515813 bytes, I couldn't pinpoint a specific location the JAR file is located at in the binary file. I'm not sure, but it seems as if the file is split across multiple pieces across the firmware. Sadly, Binwalk 2.4.1 was not of big help. I'm far from a digital forensics expert, but my buddies weren't able to help me either on this task. It is a MIDP game, by the way. On an unrelated note: Is it like the floor effect from Toy Story 1 on the Genesis (and SNES)? Quite a few games on J2ME that didn't make use of any 3D APIs used this fake-3D effect.
No it looks like a proper 3D model for the floor, with 2D character sprites It could be 2D trickery, but if they've got this far, they'd be basically doing 3D rendering in software. Though fair play, it looks more like Virtua Fighter than the Mega Drive version of VF2.
This took some effort, but finally found the Sega site for Thai operator AIS. Updated until late 2008 / early 2009. Quite a few games with archived pages and compatible handsets, which seem to be grouped by version! Although that needs some research to confirm. Also a few new games. The games list abbreviates the names, so some are cut off short. https://web.archive.org/web/20090123200510/http://gmsq1-th.segamobi.com:80/home.php [9300001] AiAi's Fun House [9300002] Butt Brawl in Animal Land [9300003] Columns [9300004] Depth Charge [9300005] Head On [9300006] [9300007] Mah Jong Haopai2 [9300008] Mobile Samurai [9300009] Monkey Ball [9300010] Mosquito Attack [9300011] Mr.Raccon's Tigh [9300012] Pengo [9300013] Penguin land [9300014] Puyo Pop Fever [9300015] Sonic Racing Kart [9300016] [9300017] [9300018] [9300019] Galaxy Patrol [9300020] Blades Of Glory [9300021] Out Run [9300022] Psychic Fantasy [9300023] Sonic Golf [9300024] Speed DX [9300025] Bullet King [9300026] Sonic The Hedgehog [9300027] Sonic Minesweeper [9300028] Sonic Putter [9300029] Charlotte 's Web [9300030] Baku Baku [9300031] Sonic Hopping [9300032] Sonic Racing Shift Up [9300033] After Burner II [9300034] Sonic Bowling [9300035] Sonic Jump [9300036] Sonic Fishing [9300037] Puyo Puyo [9300038] Real Billiards [9300039] Lady Commando [9300040] Monkey Ball TNT [9300041] Sonic the Hedgehog 1 Part 2 [9300042] Virtua Tennis 2D / 3D [9300043] Monkey Ball Mini Golf [9300044] Wonder Boy [9300045] Puyo Puyo 2 [9300046] Columns Jr [9300047] Sonic Darts [9300048] Golden Axe [9300049] Golden Compass [9300050] Fireworks Rumble [9300051] Flicky [9300052] Touch de UNOH So [9300053] Sonic Tennis [9300054] Wonder Boy Monst [9300055] Beijing 2008 Olympic Games [9300056] Sonic at the Olympic Games [9300057] Woody Pop [9300058] Pedal Racer [9300059] Touch de UNOH Gu [9300060] Shadow Shoot [9300061] The Club [9300062] Space Rescue [9300063] Joggy Doggy [9300064] Touch de UNOH He [9300065] Dragon Crystal [9300066] Foot Ball Manage [9300067] Home Run King2 [9300068] Sonic Panel Puzz [9300069] Total War [9300070] Air Hockey [9300071] Athletic Golf [9300072] Sexy Ninja Fox [9300073] Bonanza Bros [9300074] Touch de UNOH Mi [9300075] Sonic the Hedgeh [9300076] Puzzle Pack [9300077] Chu Chu Rocket [9300078] Mini Tennis [9300079] Pyramid Magic [9300080] Snowboarding
Oh yeah that reminds me there's some mobile After Burner II audio recordings present in the 20th anniversary box There's also recordings of mobile Cotton (which is a mix of Fantastic Night Dreams and 100%) in the Cotton Original Soundtrack album
