Nokia's smartphones ran Symbian, and their games were far bigger than the little Java games of the same years. The N-Gage (2003) was a phone shaped like a console, with real games on cards, and Nokia brought the name back in 2008 as a shop for Symbian phones.
We have about 250 Symbian games and about 60 N-Gage games on My Abandonware.
The emulator
One emulator runs both: EKA2L1. It's free on Windows, Mac, Linux and Android, paid on iPhone and iPad, and it rebuilds Symbian itself rather than copying a whole phone.
EKA2L1 runs Symbian S60 phones and both N-Gage generations. It is under active work, and the well-known games run. Since October 2026 it is also on the App Store for iPhone and iPad, a very new version built by one of the project's contributors. Its quickstart guide walks through the setup, and a compatibility list tells you what to expect from a game.
Installing a device
Before any game, EKA2L1 needs a phone: the system files of a real Nokia. You pick one once, and every game of that family then installs on it.
For the original N-Gage, install an N-Gage system ROM, which acts like the BIOS of a console. For Symbian games and N-Gage 2.0, install a phone: the Nokia 5320 is the best supported for N-Gage 2.0. These files come from real phones, so see our page about BIOS files to find them. The quickstart guide shows both ways, from a ROM file or from a firmware file.
Symbian games
A Symbian game is an installer, a .sis or .sisx file. Install it in the emulator as you would on a phone, then start it from the list of applications.
In EKA2L1, choose File, then Install, then the package, and pick the .sis file of the game. Install it on the device you set up first, because the game asks the phone which screen and keys it has.
Our Symbian downloads are zips, most of them 500 KB to 20 MB. Unzip one, and you get the installer, sometimes in several versions for different phone screens: pick the one for a screen close to the phone you installed.
N-Gage card games
The first N-Gage sold its games on memory cards, not as installers. Our N-Gage downloads are those cards: a folder with a system folder inside.
Unzip the game, then in EKA2L1 choose File, then Install, then N-Gage card game, and select the unzipped folder, the one holding system. The game then appears with the others. These downloads are bigger, from 500 KB to 30 MB, because a card held the whole game.
The phone keys
These games were made for a numeric keypad and the soft keys of a phone. The emulator draws them on screen or maps them to your keyboard, and you can change the map.
The N-Gage had its own layout: the numbers around the screen, plus two side keys. Open the controls in EKA2L1 and set the keys you like before starting a game, because a wrong key often looks like a game that does not answer.
I need help!
We do not provide support for running abandonware games. EKA2L1 has good documentation and a busy Discord.
The EKA2L1 quickstart covers the setup step by step, and its wiki has a page on playing N-Gage games.
Checked in October 2026 against each emulator's own documentation and, where it exists, its source code. Game counts and file sizes come from our own catalogue. These guides were drafted with the help of an AI assistant and checked by hand before publishing. If something here is out of date, tell us.