N-Gage was not exactly the success that Nokia wanted at the time of its appearance, but it proved to be an influential phone, which somehow predicted the mobile gaming revolution that would take place later. Unfortunately, the fact that its games were limited to the Symbian platform made it difficult to access them later, after the platform disappeared from the market. Fortunately, there is now an emulator for gamers who want to play those Nokia N-Gage titles again on more modern phones.
The EKA2L1 emulator allows you to run N-Gage games and Symbian applications
The emulator is called EKA2L1 and is more of a simulator of the Symbian platform, than one made especially for the N-Gage phone. It supports three versions of Symbian S60 and can run games and applications developed for this platform. EKA2L1 was already available on other platforms and even on Android for manual installation, but only now it is available on the Google Play Store.
Those who remember the Symbian platform probably remember it with nostalgia, as it was the easiest to use smartphone platform, which also had very good support from developers, before the advent of iOS and Android. This was probably the reason why Nokia could not keep up with the competition from Apple and Google, refusing to give it up until the partnership and possible acquisition from Microsoft, which imposed the Windows operating system.
However, setting up EKA2L1 is a bit more complicated than an older console emulator. Some files from the Symbian operating system are needed, which the project developers cannot legally distribute, which is why users will have to “manage” to find them on the internet. Also, N-Gage games were delivered on MMC cards, so they cannot be inserted directly into modern smartphones. Thus, a solution is needed at the discretion of users and to obtain these games. Probably none of them are very legal.
However, at least now there is a relatively affordable method to play games on Nokia’s first gaming smartphone, some of which are developed specifically for N-Gage, which are not released on other platforms.
