Okay, you're going to want to sit down for this.
Are you sitting? Good.
People used to make games for cellphones before iPhones existed!
Is your mind blown?
Because thinking about how I used to make video games for devices that had a one inch square screen and couldn't be larger than 128k makes me go slightly mad. Especially when I remember having to support in upwards of 50 SKUs for each game.
No, I'm not crying. There's just something in my eye.
Alas, there is very little historical record of these amazing feats of game development, so I only have my honor and my word to prove that these products existed.
Braver men than I have tried to find these lost relics of a bygone era and have never returned. If you've got the courage, a death wish, or just too much time on your hands, you might be able to track down at least some videos of these projects. Here is a list for your personal edification:
— Friends: The One with All the Trivia - The first game I worked on in a professional capacity. I was the acting QA Lead for the project and even did a little bit of coding.
— Yosemite Sam's Cannonball Follies - The second game I worked on. More testing, see above for details.
— Taz Dance - Game number three. Ditto.
— Happy Feet - Aha! Now we get to the fun stuff. I worked as the producer with Capybara on this particular project. It's a hell of a good game. I'm not joking. The first time I played an early build I knew that this was a studio to look out for.
— Get Smart - I don't remember the external developer on this one, and I would bet real money that they don't exist anymore. I was the producer on the project and also wrote a "gags" design document that focused on easy to implement events to make the game a little sillier with the intent of bringing it in line with the property. If you get me really drunk one of these days I'll tell you about how we almost had to cut one of the characters out of the game because the actor representing the character in the film didn't know how to open Powerpoint presentations.
— Nip/Tuck - I. Love. This. Game. And not because the whole thing was basically my idea. The elevator pitch: Cooking Mama (a video game) meets all the gross surgery stuff from the show. I remember pitching this during the initial kick off meeting for the project and you could see lights going off above people's heads. It was mostly because someone showed up late for the meeting and turned the lights on in the conference room, but the impact was the same. Again, I think the developer has long since gone out of business, but the guys who worked on it completely understood the idea, and we had a great time coming up with mini-games that would gross as many people out as possible. While you've got me drunk from before, ask me about how we almost had to use only first names for all of the characters for "legal" reasons.