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Taco phones are on the menu tonight. A new emulator called EKA2L1 has released on the Google Play Store, and is designed to emulate Symbian devices, as well as the Nokia N-Gage, the latter of which was a "gaming phone" released in 2003. Though it began development around two years ago, last week marked the first release of a stable Android build. EKA2L1 works primarily on 64-bit devices, though it does have limited "experimental" support for devices that use 32-bit architecture. Right now, it can emulate three different forms of Symbian: S60v1, S60v3, and S60v5, with high compatibility for the fair few N-Gage games that exist, like Sonic N, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, Rayman 3, and others.

The emulator requires some setting up, meaning you'll need to acquire the right firmware files for your platform of choice, move them to your Android device, and into the right folder--fairly simple, if you know where to get them. EKA2L1 is also an open-source project, so if you're interested in seeing the finer details of the emulator, you can check it out on the project's GitHub page.

A EKA2 ROM (Symbian 8.2 or upper), is needed for this emulator to run game. You should see an access violation warning when launch an app/game without a ROM. EKA1 ROM can be loaded, but game can't be ran.

• Dumping EKA1 ROM
  
  • Compile SDumper or get a compiled copy on Discord, and using it to dump the ROM
• Dumping EKA2 ROM
  
  • Download ROMPatcher+.
  • Using Dump ROM option to dump the ROM.
• Dumping ROFS+ROM to RPKG
  
  • EKA2L1 requires a Z drive archive, which consists of ROFS+ROM, for performance and system critical booting. To do this, first, download Dumber and install it..
  • Launch Dumberdore app in the menu. Choose Options/Dump RPKG and choose location.

After getting both of the ROM and the RPKG, use the installer in EKA2L1 UI to install them.

Source

 

[raxadian]

How does Frozen Bubble work? It had a S60 version and even a big screen version for the S60.

 

[eriol33]

If I recall correctly there are a lot of games in nokia phones, but I think they were programmed using java. I wonder if they are preserved well these days. I really appreciated how those developers back then tried to overcome technical limitation and brought entertainment to mobile phones.

 

[rehevkor]

Sweet. Maybe time to re-visit the From Doom RPG series.

Seriously the id RPG games were great, if anyone is looking from for some games to try.
Orcs and Elves, Wolfenstein, Doom 1 & 2.

 

[MadMakuFuuma]

i like this news, because preservation is aways good. even in cases wen consoles are sh*t XD. never played any n-gage game, so i don't know if is good or not. my only memories are from adverts inside MTV programs, here in Brazil.

 

[Deleted User]

I believe Microsoft bought Nokia, so technically if they wanted to they could do a re-release or n-gage games on xbox/pc lmao not that they ever will.

 

[evlspcmk]

Ooh pathway to glory 1 & 2 here I come, I bought a n-gage QD just for these games back in the day, I remember I got it the same day as that tsunami with my Christmas money.

I remember buying a 1 or 2GB MMC card and pirating just about the whole library on it good times. Pathway to glory was the stand out series on that device but I remember asphalt was good, worms, tomb raider and sonic were the others I didn’t mind playing. You want to find the worst call of duty game ever made? Look no further than the one made or ngage now that was terrible.

 

[Reynardine]

Oooh, finally! I have a few N-Gage titles that I'd like to play again, but the D-Pad on that thing is truly atrocious.
Emulating them would be a lot more enjoyable.

Would be sweet if this could become part of Retroarch in the future.

 

[tfocosta]

This is amazing! I still have my N-Gage QD, that was fully restored few years ago and is still working perfectly. Just need to find a MMC adapter to use a microSD on it and expand its storage, if that's a thing.

 

[7ank0v1c]

I’m actually psyched about this. I been hoping for this for literally years. I used to love my ngage when I was a teenager. It was the first handheld console I had which was capable of emulating other systems. I have the game boy, game boy colour, nes, snes, and mega drive emulating my fav games on there. Plus I could play tomb raider an pandemonium on the go. I loved it.

I’m really hoping for an iOS port of this emulator. I’m sure it can’t be too hard right? It can then be installed through the AltStore?