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The 2000s saw the rise of gaming on cellular phones. Many cell phones supported the "J2ME" (Java 2 Micro Edition) platform - which was fertile ground for creating gaming experiences that were portable friendly.

Many publishers/developers jumped onboard, creating thousands of J2ME games, from the early 2000s right into the early 2010s.

As expected, many "ports" of existing gaming franchises were created for J2ME. Many big console games of the time received J2ME versions for playing on the go. Where its gets interesting is how the games had to be "reinterpreted" for mobile format; a big game like Doom could never be effectively run on the low processing power of a J2ME device, so developers had to work to capture the "feel" of the game if not the core gameplay.

Additionally, some interesting choices were made for porting. Some obscure or long dormant franchises (like Argonaut's "Croc") received a mobile version, alongside the obvious "big name" franchises like Call of Duty.

In this video, we take a look at 70 such titles ported over to mobile! There's a great variety to the quality of the ports, and it's fascinating to look at what the developers did with the source material...