Reviewing J2ME Games: 007

For a while I've been interested in J2ME games and their preservation in a world that has moved far away from the feature phones they were designed for. Their emulation is particularly interesting to me because it feels broken and weird in the way that a lot of older computer emulation feels. The graphics are often glitchy, the hardware you're using means that "button" interections can work strangely and have unexpected issues. Everything feels wrong without that beautiful, physical numpad we've long since discarded.

People, broadly, don't care about these games. Where the early era of iPhone games has a certain nostalgic aesthetic for some, these games have been largely cast into the dungeon of disrespect. It's mostly because they're bad games. Many of them have clunky controls, ugly visuals, and the sort of barebones gameplay that wouldn't intrigue an amoeba, let alone a human child. But this, of course, is part of their legacy, and sometimes - just sometimes - there's a hidden gem waiting to be found.

Now, I'm quite into stats and logs and things - Last.fm scrobbles, Letterboxd reviews, and the gamer records of Backloggd - but Java games are not included in the database Backloggd uses (the Internet Game Database, or IGDB), so Java games are ghosts floating over the great expanse of certified legit games. That means I can't review them on there. They simply don't exist in the system.

Here, though, I am allowed to write about these games, and so here is game number one for you: 007.

See?

Something that happens often in Java game emulation is this thing where the screen displays most of the game in the corner. It's because they're just little baby games. They need to sit in the corner. 007's text is in Chinese, so I can't really access the plot here, but you're a guy with a gun and you have to shoot other guys with guns. Cool.

This is fine, it's a simple platformer, but your movement keys are also the keys that change the direction of fire, so it's easy to mean to move your gun so that it hits a guy to the top right, but actually just jump over to him and die.

The music is relentless and upbeat. It doesn't match the game, but it does create a certain madness in the player. When you die, three glitched versions of your body may appear. 

Frightening.

It's a tough game and not much of a fun one to continue. You really feel like you've seen it all in the first five seconds. There's more guys to kill, but I don't think I want to. The most interesting part of this game is its use of Leon and Claire from Resident Evil 2 on its title screen.

Oh is that Leon? Is it Leon shooting these guys? Wonderful.