Mobile games on i-mode phone devices were initiated in early 1999. The global expansion and development of mobile games in Mobile phones are pioneered by i-Mode games. DoCoMo introduced globally the use of Java into mobile phones. Among countries, Japan was the first to launch color screens and 3D graphics for mobile phones, which became imperative for the extension of the mobile game market.

A Multiplayer mobile game is single player mobile game that can be functional through:

Infrared

Bluetooth

WiFi

GPRS

Video formatted games are played on a cell phone device by means of localization technology namely GPS, also called location-based games. Mobile games can be played irrespective of the users� location. Only the player's coordinate and movement are main elements in a Location-based game. Example, the treasure hunt game Geocaching played on a cell phone that has integrated or external GPS receiver.

Mobile Phone Games

Mobile Phone Games are video games played on a mobile phone, smartphone and PDAs.

Mobile games can be played using the communications technologies present in the device, like the text message (SMS), multimedia message (MMS) or GPRS location identification. Games in cell phones can also be downloaded from internet or other servers and played using a set of game technologies on the device.

Mobile games are mostly downloaded through the mobile operator's radio network. In some cases, games in mobile phones are automatically uploaded into the handsets when purchased, or via infrared connection, Bluetooth or memory card.

Mobile games are designed using platforms and sophisticated technologies like the Windows Mobile, Palm OS, DoCoMo's DoJa, Sun's J2ME or Java ME", Macromedia's Flash Lite, Qualcomm's BREW , Symbian OS, WIPI or Infusio's ExEn. Java is an essential feature to accommodate a game feature in the mobile set. However it has been lately discovered that the performance limitations turned into the adoption of various native binary formats.

Mobile Phones