Japanese Mobile Phone Culture - Mobile Gaming

Mobile Gaming

In the early 2000s, mobile games had gained mainstream popularity in Japan, years before the United States and Europe. By 2003, a wide variety of mobile games were available on Japanese phones, ranging from puzzle games and virtual pet titles that utilize camera phone technology to 3D games with PlayStation-quality graphics. Older arcade-style games became particularly popular on mobile phones, which were an ideal platform for arcade-style games designed for shorter play sessions.

The graphics were getting better as handsets were becoming more powerful, as demonstrated by the mobile version of Ridge Racer in 2003, though such titles cost twice as much as other mobile games. It was published by Namco, one of the most successful mobile game publishers at the time. That same year, Namco also released a fighting game that uses camera phone technology to create a player character based on the player's profile, and interprets the image to determine the character's speed and power; the character can then be sent to a friend's mobile to battle. Namco began making attempts to introduce mobile gaming culture to Europe in 2003.

Other mobile games released in 2003 included a Tamagotchi-like virtual pet game by Panasonic where the pet is fed by photos of foods taken with a camera phone. Another virtual pet game utilized a fingerprint scanner built into a handset to interact with a pet. Another mobile game that year was an educational game that utilized a mobile's microphone to help children with their pronunciation skills.