#java games

Unfortunately, it seems of the handful of mobile Tron games that were supposed to be released in the early 2000s, “Tron 2.0 3D” is the only survivor. No sign anywhere of Lavastorm Engineering’s Tron 2.0: Light Cycles and Tron 2.0: Discs of Tron. Shame.

There are three, well, four mobile Java games made by id software released the past decade, back when flip phones were the standard. Three of them are based on their franchises DOOM and Wolfenstein, and the last one was fantasy-themed and used the engine of the Wolfenstein/DOOM 2 RPG one. There’s no Commander Keen one, sorry.

Contrary to the PC games, the RPG games are turn-based RPGs, all combat and movement is turn-based and you and your enemies move space by space.

The first one is DOOM RPG and was released in October of 2005, it follows a story where you arrive at a UAC facility in Mars (not located in Phobos or Deimos, but in actual Mars), where you must help them from the attacks of  demons. As you progress you will start unveiling what really is happening in the UAC facility, but it’s so funny because the story is so predictable and tongue-in-cheek that there’s no need for you to think that hard about what’s really going on.

There’s also a lot of humor. The DOOM mobile games are probably the funniest entries in the franchise. You get to read various chat logs between UAC scientists where you learn the most ridiculous shit.

The first password for a locked door that you enter in the game is literally 1234 because the guy in charge was too lazy to come up with a good one.

The computer where you type the second password asks you the year when DOOM was released (1993)

You get another password after reading an e-mail and learning that you must open the automap and read the number the map spells (which is 1337)

At one point of the game you must type a super secret pass for a locked room that you can only access in that map, that number being the first 7 digits of the Fibonacci sequence.

You can also control unique weapons such as the Axe (your chainsaw equivalent/replacement) that you can also use to open stuck doors, and even a Fire Extinguisher that can extinguish fires (there are plenty in the game) and can also deal huge amounts of damage to fire-based monster families like the Lost Soul and the Archvile. Oh yes, there are also demon classes: Lesser, Normal and Strong types, basically all of them are recolors of the original sprites.

You also get to fight diabolical dogs (they’re actually sprites borrowed from Wolf3D’s dogs), and you can even tame and carry one of them with a red collar to make him fight for you.

The Wolfenstein one is called Wolfenstein RPG and was released in September 2008. It features a different engine, but the same style of gameplay. Think of it as a mixture of the post-2000s Wolfenstein games and Wolfenstein 3-D. You don’t get to fight Hitler in this one, but you get to fight a literal demon from Hell called “Harbinger of Doom” (I know, keep reading) that was summoned by the Nazis. This is of huge importance for what’s coming next.

Blazkowicz fights the Harbinger while using the mythical Spear of Destiny (so far the only Wolfenstein game where you actually get to use it), and badly injures the Harbinger by butchering a leg and an arm and maiming its stomach. The demon escapes back to Hell not before swearing to fight a descendant of B.J. in the future.

The second DOOM game is DOOM 2 RPG and was released around the same time as the Wolfenstein one while using the same engine.

The story is that a spaceship arrives at a UAC facility in space in order to attend an emergency, loaded with three people: a scientist, a Major (a woman) and a Sargeant, that sargeant being Doomguy - Stan Blazkowicz, which is of course a long, distant descendant of B.J. Blazkowicz. You can choose from those three but the “canon” option is of course Doomguy.

You get to fight a lot of different and very unique demons, one of them is an Imp variant with a chainsaw, another one is a slug that spits pinkies and is called the Pinkynator, and the final boss is a demonic AI called VIOS (which stands for Virtual Icon Of Sin). And in case you’re wondering, yes, you do get to fight a Cyberdemon that is arguably the very same demon that B.J. Blazkowicz fought many centuries ago.

The humor is not absent from this game, too. There’s a weapon called the Holy Water Pistol that works exactly like the Fire Extinguisher from the first mobile game, and it can deal huge damage to fire based enemies (Lost Souls and Archviles) and can stun and scare most of the demons. Since it’s water-based, you need to refill it every now and then, and the only source of water in the UAC bases are basins and toilets. There’s also treadmills that you can use, and you can actually die by going too fast and falling from them.

These games are pretty fun and are excellent time-killers. Unfortunately like I mentioned before, these are Java-based, and you can only play them in a decent manner on phones that can run Java games. Not to mention that none of these games are being sold anymore, so your only option if you really want to try them is to download them from the internet.

I don’t know a single person who has played the mobile RPG games and doesn’t want them to be adapted for the PC version. Needless to say, I'm also a huuuuge fan of the first DOOM RPG.

There have been small inclusions of some of the elements and weapons from the mobile games in various mods such as MetaDoom made by @kinsie (if I recall correctly, he included the Holy Water Pistol, the Fire Extinguisher, the Axe and the Sawcubus).