Remember how absolutely awful the N-Gage advertising was?

[Version 3.0]

Honestly, I don't remember any of this. I was very successful at ignoring the N-Gage.

The only "advertising" I remember about it was at E3 2005, when my friend and I walked past the N-Gage booth, and the attractive young woman at the booth stopped us and asked us to try it. So we did, briefly. I recall being mildly impressed at the graphics.

Then we moved on to the next booth, which had several high-powered PCs running Crysis at an atrocious framerate.

Good times.

 

[Virtua Sanus]

I am not sure if anyone chronicled it unfortunately but there was this N-Gage ad that ALWAYS made me burst out into laughter.

It was some dude quietly playing in a waiting room then suddenly shouting "Get off me! GET OFF ME!! GET OFF ME!!" then he starts whining while holding back tears a bit then continues quietly playing.

Anyone remember that?

 

[Bomi-Chan]

This was easily the worst part. I don't know how a team of designers and engineers arrived at this and it was approved

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Sidekick was Danger/Flextronics and then Danger/Sharp. Nokia can't take credit for that awesome phone!

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fuck, i always thought the sidekick was nokias thing. i saw it on a girl i had a crush on back then and she also had that phone.
she had 'tude.

 

[Deleted member 12790]

Whoa, random, wonder when did that deal happen. Umm, Xbox port then? :D

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Microsoft bought Nokia back when they were on their windows phone kick.

 

[Deleted member 12790]

Friend of mine worked on Rifts for the ngage. Good times.

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By far my favorite ngage game, pass it along to your friend that I really enjoyed it.

 

[Deleted member 12790]

The N-Gage was the cool kids' GP32 change my mind.

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I'm cool as fuck and the gp32 was way better. The gp32 could link up to the dreamcast.

 

[IlGialloMondadori]

By far my favorite ngage game, pass it along to your friend that I really enjoyed it.

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Will do! Thanks for the nice comments!
He currently works on a very popular indie title that I dig a lot.

 

[Mobius 1]

The side talking meme was fun back then. I wonder if we could find the images, there were some genuinely funny ones.

 

[Daysean]

I'm afraid to ask but I legit don't understand the "Lara" ad
Talking about Tomb Raider? Because I remember that being advertised for the NGage
What's with the scenery of the bus stop(?) At night?
I feel like it's some fucked up innuendo based on other examples in the thread but I really don't get what it's trying to tell me

 

[Deleted member 12790]

I'm afraid to ask but I legit don't understand the "Lara" ad
Talking about Tomb Raider? Because I remember that being advertised for the NGage
What's with the scenery of the bus stop(?) At night?
I feel like it's some fucked up innuendo based on other examples in the thread but I really don't get what it's trying to tell me

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"get far" with someone refers to "bases" of sexual conquest. First base is typically kissing, second base making out, third base heavy petting, home run being sex. It's saying she is a bus stop whore and they had sex with her where she'd only let others do heavy petting or similar.

 

[angelgrievous]

 

[Noisepurge]

I'm afraid to ask but I legit don't understand the "Lara" ad
Talking about Tomb Raider? Because I remember that being advertised for the NGage
What's with the scenery of the bus stop(?) At night?
I feel like it's some fucked up innuendo based on other examples in the thread but I really don't get what it's trying to tell me

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"get far" with someone refers to "bases" of sexual conquest. First base is typically kissing, second base making out, third base heavy petting, home run being sex. It's saying she is a bus stop whore and they had sex with her where she'd only let others do heavy petting or similar.

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Yes, double entendre. Got far in Tomb Raider while waiting for the bus, or see above :D

 

[Daysean]

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Well now I feel foolish when it was that simple, the bus stop was really throwing me off, thanks

 

[DrHercouet]

I'm cool as fuck and the gp32 was way better. The gp32 could link up to the dreamcast.

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It was ❤️ I remember bringing it to high school (in France) at a time when video games were still seen as toys, even the GBA. Everyone was amazed at how you could watch movies and play MP3s on the go, that was 2002. That is also off-topic so : yeah, the N-Gage was trying really hard to be rad. Shame both of them were a miss...

 

[Deleted member 12790]

It was ❤ I remember bringing it to high school (in France) at a time when video games were still seen as toys, even the GBA. Everyone was amazed at how you could watch movies and play MP3s on the go, that was 2002. That is also off-topic so : yeah, the N-Gage was trying really hard to be rad. Shame both of them were a miss...

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The gp32 was my first mp3 player. I used it in college. No joke, the gp32 is my all time favorite portable system. I got it for my birthday from lik sang. The day I got it, my grandma got me a big SD card for it. I was going somewhere that evening with the folks and threw little John, an nes emulator on it, and loaded ninja Gaiden 2, one of my favorite nes games, and played it on the go. Absolutely mind blowing in 2002. I had a super early model with the old stick that wouldnt hit the corners right, so I had to whittle down the stick and sand down the well the stick went in. Later got a BLU when they upgraded, still have both gp32s. I have a lot of legit games for it too, including tomak and little wizard. It was the first time I ever bought a digital game too, before steam and direct2drive. I bought pinball dreams for it digitally on their online store. Later bought blue Angelo, one of the best games on the system. The port of doom was amazing.

I remember when the gp32 launched in Europe and they had a big os update that changed the look and feel of the entire system. Also remember buying gpcinema so I could watch movies on it.

I would do programming for the gp32 using sdl. Talked to Ryan Gordon about it once and he had never even heard of the system, was amazed that sdl had gone that far.

Amazing system. So, sooooo ahead of its time.

 

[Deleted member 12790]

People criticising ads as if 2002 was 2020.

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These ads were made fun of, for the exact same reasons, in 2002.

 

[Calvinien]

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SIDETALKING 4 LIFE.

 

[Pop-O-Matic]

The first half of the 2000s was basically just the 90s, but with desaturated colors, tribal tats and hair gel.

 

[Falchion]

The buildup to the Ngage was really weird for sure. I still remember being confused about why anyone would ever want one of those.

 

[fiendcode]

I forgot Microsoft bought Nokia. Time to add N-Gage to the BC program!

 

[Deleted member 12790]

Sorta bump, because I have gotten a bead on a supposed N-Gage software development variant, which blew my mind because I'd always heard N-Gage software was just developed on PCs using standard s60 hardware and an N-Gage emulator. Supposedly this N-Gage SDK has some sort of built in port to interface with a development PC.

I think I would very much like to take a stab at writing N-Gage homebrew lol.

 

[Empyrean Cocytus]

You could have just removed "advertising" from the title, OP.

 

[Deleted member 12790]

You could have just removed "advertising" from the title, OP.

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The later N-Gage software was pretty good, actually, and the QD was pretty alright.

 

[Marcus Aurelius]

I owned an N-Gage back in the day. It was the Christmas gift for a very naive 13 year old who was looking for his first ever mobile phone.....And happened to be a gamer who fell for this shit hard. I played the Tony Hawk game a fair bit but that was it. Everything about it was just a catastrophe of poor design choices, sleazy marketing and mostly shit games.

 

[Empyrean Cocytus]

The later N-Gage software was pretty good, actually, and the QD was pretty alright.

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Fair. I agree that the QD was decent, but it came out at a time when the DS and PSP were about to totally revamp handheld gaming.

That said, the advertising seemed to be something that pretty much every company that has challenged Nintendo in handhelds has done since the early 90's - position their device as the cool, hip, edgy, teen alternative to Nintendo's kiddy baby games.

 

[Doggg]

Sidetalking.com!!!!

The real N-Gage advertising

 

[Punished Dan]

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Of course Jeff has a box of N-Gage games at home.
Of course Jeff is still a threat.

 

[apathetic]

That said, the N-gage game cases themselves were actually cool as shit. They were plastic clamshells:

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Makes me want to read more about actually good things from otherwise terrible systems/products.

 

[Deleted member 12790]

Makes me want to read more about actually good things from otherwise terrible systems/products.

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no system is truly completely awful or terrible. There are usually some neat or cool things on literally every system I own worth checking out. It's usually the cost involved that makes them not worth investing into, though. Like, to get the good out of the n-gage, you have to spend a lot of money for the actually good games. way more than they're actually worth. But in isolation, ignoring cost? If they had been sold like normal titles? Lots of actually really good games on the system.

Even the tiger R-zone, I liked the panzer dragoon game. To a degree, of course.

 

[TheEchosOfTheCyborg]

I the N-Gage the console with ties to the Mafia and could begin melting due to how it was made or was that another console?

 

[Deleted member 12790]

I the N-Gage the console with ties to the Mafia and could begin melting due to how it was made or was that another console?

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That's the gizmondo

Even that had a few cool games.

 

[Deleted member 17210]

Makes me want to read more about actually good things from otherwise terrible systems/products.

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It wasn't terrible. Some game recommendations here:

Nokia N-Gage Appreciation Thread

That's right. I said appreciation and N-Gage in the same sentence. Launched in October 2003, the N-Gage was Nokia's attempt to merge the handheld gaming and cell phone markets into one machine. At the time it reminded me of the "multimedia" systems of the '90s trying to merge game consoles with...

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