N-Gage Soft Mod?

[Friend of Sonic]

Hey everyone,

I found an archive of every N-Gage game there was, and I was thinking of loading up my N-Gage QD. I tried searching on Google, but I could not find very much discussion on enabling playing these games. Is a soft mod required or could I just pop the MMC in? I read the N-Gage reads a max of 1GB-- is that true?

Thanks in advance

EDIT: Now I'm reading multiple people using 2 and 4GB cards, so now I don't know. They also advise overclocking it to combat slow speeds

 

[Foxi4]

You can just pop them onto an MMC card, they'll work just fine. I'm also reading about "experiments" with 2-4GB cards, but I don't see a reason why you'd want this much space on the system. It's hardly a viable MP3 or media player in this day and age, so you'll practically only use it for games and applications which are relatively small. Not only that, the N-Gage appears to have some issues with indexing when the card has a large number of files.

As for overclocking, I've never done it myself back in the day, but from what I've seen it does improve performance, so it's worth considering if used in moderation.

 

[Friend of Sonic]

Further reading indicates OCing isn't possible on the QD. XD

That's good to know it's that easy to put them on there. I read that there's an alternative file explorer that is better than stock, so I'll look for that. As for why I'd want 2GB, the complete library of N-Gage games is just slightly over 1GB in size (although there's some obvious stuff I could cut out that is just garbage) and, also, I might mess around with some of the Symbian games.

My only gripe-- MMC cards are incredibly expensive. 2GB for almost 30 bucks... yeesh. Makes me want to try the Chinese cards, but that'd probably be a foolish idea.

 

[Foxi4]

It's pretty obvious why they're pricy - it's deprecated hardware. If someone wants a high-capacity MMC card, it means that someone really needs it, so you might as well gip him. 2GB should work perfectly fine, it's well-within the limits of FAT16, I believe that's the file system used by the N-Gage.

 

[Friend of Sonic]

Awesome. I'm seeing a lot of posts too where people reporting that 2GB work fine-- music player doesn't support it, but not looking to mess around with that. Thanks Foxi4.

 

[ov3rkill]

Try checking out BLZPDA or Blizzard Ngage Installer. I'm not sure if it'll be compatible or what. Quick google will result in those things.

 

[Friend of Sonic]

Well, I think there might be a little more than just copying the files over. I did so, and followed the instructions for copying the "apps" and "libs" folder from the game folder into my system folder on the MMC card, and it makes an icon appear in my app list. Playing it makes an error appear though, "Please insert Game MMC" Any ideas?

 

[Jayro]

Since SD cards are basically MMC cards with a read/write switch, can't you just use a cheap $4 2GB SD?

 

[Friend of Sonic]

Since SD cards are basically MMC cards with a read/write switch, can't you just use a cheap $4 2GB SD?

No, the pinouts are different from MMC I think, unless someone wants to correct me.

 

[Deleted-236924]

MMCs can be used in a standard SD card reader, but the opposite cannot be done.

 

[Friend of Sonic]

Yep yep!

(Sorry for the cheesy bump but I'm really at a loss on how to get this to work properly)

 

[Count Duckula]

I have an old original ngage around somewhere, havnt touched it in years. From memory it's not anything you need to mod in the OS but how the games are patched.
I recall that some games i downloaded would give and error similar to the one you're getting but others would launch fine (a different copy of the same game).Have you tried dumps of games from another source?
If you're really desperate i can find the thing, it likely still has some games on its memory card.

*Nightmares of playing sonic on a portrait-oriented screen are coming back*

 

[Friend of Sonic]

Oooh yes, that port should not exist.

I tried two romsets and both copies of Ashen and Asphalt didn't work. There's all of this maneuvering of the folders you have to do for each game and I'm thinking I'm just doing something wrong.

 

[cearp]

the blizzard installer was really nice, it even let you install the .blz games on other phones that weren't officially supported to run the games
i was happy with my 256mb mmc card at the time, i thought it was huge haha!

 

[Friend of Sonic]

I'm guessing then I need to find the installers? I had trouble locating anything but random download pages that didn't really have an explanation on how the installer worked, or the benefit of using them (the guides I've read about installing games on the N-gage don't mention the installer but maybe I need it?)

 

[Friend of Sonic]

Any information anyone else can provide? Still having issues.

 

[Count Duckula]

Any information anyone else can provide? Still having issues.

Still no luck eh? That sucks. No games at all work?
Do they not run, run with an error, not show up in the apps menu of the phone or something else?

Managed to find my old original Ngage. Battery was nicely puffed up and didn't want to charge, luckily also managed to track down a box of other old phones and one of them had a nokia 5c battery. Hurrah for hoarding

I'm probably not the best person to get info from, I honestly havnt touched the thing in a many many years, cant find any of the files on my PC. Last I used it was likely 3 or more PCs ago.
The MMC in the phone does have about 20 games and a few emulators on it however including asphalt which works.

The MMC has a lot of folders in X:\system\apps, many with random names such as 6R29.
I googled a few of them along with 'ngage' and 6R29 appears to be asphalt. Some games may need more than 1 folder in there to work, I'm not sure.


Edit: Just found my old Ngage game folder (along with one full of nokia 6300 games, hurrah for digital hoarding), 68 games, 951MB. I do remember that some (perhaps many) didnt work. Pretty sure all the ones still on the phone (about 20) do.
From the dates on save games it looks like I last played it in 2005

Looks like many games need folders and files in x:\system\libs and sometimes x:\system\programs as well as the one in x:\system\apps. Does your copy of asphalt have the 'libs' folder as well as the 'apps' one?

I never used an installer app, you should only need to:

• Extract the zip/rar of the game you downloaded to somewhere on your PC
• Browse into the folder you just extracted, find the 'system' folder (eg c:\<folder you extracted to>\<Game Name>\system)
• Copy the contents of that 'system' folder to the 'SYSTEM' folder on the MMC. Say yes to overwrite.
• Play game

 

[Friend of Sonic]

I reformatted the card so I could start fresh, and followed your instructions. Copied over the game's system folder and merged it with the SYSTEM folder on the MMC. Tried playing the game, which appeared as an app in the menu, but it said invalid game card.

EDIT: To answer your question, yes my copy of Asphalt has libs and apps in it.

 

[Count Duckula]

I reformatted the card so I could start fresh, and followed your instructions. Copied over the game's system folder and merged it with the SYSTEM folder on the MMC. Tried playing the game, which appeared as an app in the menu, but it said invalid game card.

EDIT: To answer your question, yes my copy of Asphalt has libs and apps in it.

OK. I just:

• Took the MMC out of the phone
• Formatted to FAT (not FAT32) via windows (the format option on the phone itself was seriously slow, likely doing a full format not a quick one)
• created a 'SYSTEM' folder on the root of the card
• Copied the contents of the 'system' folder from a few games (asphalt 1, bomberman, crash nitro kart) to the SYSTEM folder
• Did the normal safely remove process for removable storage in windows
• Went to the menu on the ngage, waited a few seconds for it to refresh and show the games

They all worked fine. I did notice that if I copied asphalt 2 then asphalt 1 no longer showed up. Not sure if this is to do with many games overwriting the files in x:\system\libs with different versions or something else.
Either way there's no reason why asphalt, on the card by itself, shouldn't work.

Not sure what else I can suggest other than to find a different source for the ROMS or try other games. Im not aware of any additional restrictions on the QD beyond those on my original Ngage.


Edit: http://pastebin.com/9yZNYza0
That's the folder structure of my MMC when it has Asphalt 1, Bomberman and Crash Nitro Kart on it.

 

[Friend of Sonic]

It must be my ROMs. I followed your list exactly, and no go. Thank you for messing around with this to help out-- hopefully when I get a different ROMset, it'll work.

EDIT: The only other thing is the error I get upon booting the phone "Sim Registration has failed"

EDIT: Also, I read something to the effect that higher capacity cards run into these errors. That has me wondering now. Count, are you using a small capacity card?