a very n-gaging thread

rootfifthoctave

treefroggy in fairness to those guys on youtube, it sounded like they’d done a pretty good job on Frank & Kelsey’s podcast, and i also understand that there’s a youtubeyness that it’s in their interest to play into, but it’s not my cup of tea.

how mad is pinobee on gba? that soundtrack is one of the worst things to hit the human ear, it was shockingly recently that i heard the ps1 soundtrack for the first time!

you can kind of hear the elements of the original music in the GBA versions. i’m pretty sure someone just lifted the original MIDI files onto some sample sounds the GBA could handle, did precisely zero other work on it and went home for the day.

hellomrkearns

linking to the video since it is really good.

Everything about that system was odd. Like @exodus said, very European. Here’s some commercials I ripped off their old website ages ago. Gives a real flavour of the time.

exodus

hellomrkearns they didn’t have any sex jokes to make about sonic, I see.

@◉◉maru yes, he did manage to talk them into letting him keep his sim card, as I recall! I forgot the second half of the story where the N-Gage is given back though. In a way, this is the N-Gage’s greatest triumph. The phone you can keep even when someone wants to steal something from you.

◉◉maru

“I was there” too yet I remember less the N-Gage itself than the sidetalking meme and website that the N-Gage made possible. I am not sure who is luckier that sidetalking predated Youtube and Twitter by just a few years. Nokia themselves? Or the people who participated in the meme?

I have one N-Gage anecdote. A friend of mine in Paris (that @exodus knows well too) had a brief moment in his life around ²⁰⁰⁴₂₀₀₅ when he kept getting into trouble in the streets, especially at night. One of those times, he got mugged off his phone. Can’t remember the details but I think he managed to convince the thugs to spare his SIM card or something? So now he needs a new phone for his SIM, and asks around. One of his acquaintances, a tech journalist, had been given a first generation N-Gage, which he never used obviously. So that guy lends/gives my friend his abandoned N-Gage. My friend can now phone and message his many Swedish girlfriends again, and we can make fun of him whenever he uses his phone. Everybody wins.

Fast forward a few weeks later and, once again, my friend turns around the wrong corner at night and gets mugged by three guys. So the thugs’ leader “asks” for his phone. And my friend gives him the N-Gage. And the thug goes something like “WTF is that!?”. And my stressed friend is suddenly forced to answer many embarrassing questions on behalf of Nokia, explaining what’s an N-Gage, and how it works, and where the speaker and mic are located, and why it has a weird screen in between keyboards and buttons, yada yada. And after two minutes of the worst possible sales pitch, the thugs give up and give him the phone back.

So yeah, I guess that’s one positive thing about the N-Gage? Not worth mugging for, apparently.

rootfifthoctave

“the n-gage - not even worth stealing”

treefroggy

This thread was epicly n-gaging and I n-gathered lots of info, I feel we’ve all been rather n-trigued by all of this,
n-dubitably

coughsoda

exodus One of the PR people was named Gerard Wiener and he was built like a tank.

incredible sentence. also man, from knuckles chaotix to an n-gage exclusive – not a whole lot of luck in that guy’s career, i’d reckon… (though i bought chaotix when it came out, it was the only play my 32x ever got, and i loved it at the time)

rootfifthoctave

i visited my parents last week and did find an n-gage in a drawer. i would not want to try to charge that battery, though i imagine it still works if you can replace it. the form factor of the thing is very good i think, compared to the slick and hefty OG psp. it was kind of grimy, that kind of sticky dust that covers things left in drawers for years. i’ll try to see if i can source a replacement battery and charger next time i’m down that way, clean it up and see if it works.

Toothball

I won my N-Gage. There was a gaming exhibition touring the UK at the time, might have been Game On or something of that ilk. Nokia had an N-Gage stand, and were offering an N-Gage to whoever set the best time at some motocycle GP game each day. I decided that it was going to be me that day, so started hanging around the stand and asking for another go whenever someone posted a better time.

It was looking good until about five minutes before close, when suddenly there was a time better than mine. I rushed back over and asked enthusiatically for another go before they closed! The staff then revealed that they were just teasing me and had made up the faster time. A few weeks later and I had my N-Gage! Mostly ended using it as an FM radio. Did play a bunch of the built in skateboarding game though.

◉◉maru

Toothball The staff then revealed that they were just teasing me and had made up the faster time.

That’s kinda adorable. I am surprised I’ve never seen that plot in one of the twenty eight thousand teen-oriented “coming of age” movies, sitcoms and animated series I consumed in the late ‘80s and ‘90s.

rootfifthoctave

proof that we were (and, i suppose, are) an n-gage family

exodus

rootfifthoctave YES. and the mold around the rim of the QD is very authentic.

穴

rootfifthoctave an n-gage family

I’m visualizing this as a bumper sticker in a minivan

Syzygy

In this house, we n-gage.

rootfifthoctave

this looks hype as hell until you remember that the psp was less than a year away (in japan at least) and you have sense to notice that crash team racing is running very poorly

exodus

rootfifthoctave I loved the n-gage promotion cycle, it was obvious to absolutely everyone that it wasn’t going to do well, but they were dumping money into things like this, “cool” hip hop dancers, etc, but nobody on the team knew what cool was, and everyone was remarkably Finnish so everything was a bit off anyway. It was a delightful time but nobody ever thought it was gonna work. It was an industry joke but I wish there were more industry jokes that were actually funny and kind of wholesome, vs, say, the amico.

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