Dial T for Tetris

By Anita Hamilton

ADMIT IT: unless you get cornered by a grizzly bear on your summer vacation or go into labor while trekking across the Mojave Desert, there are few times in life when you really need a cell phone. More often than not, you're just chatting with a friend while stuck in rush-hour traffic or asking your wife what flavor ice cream she wants you to pick up at the grocery store. As handy as cell phones can be, for many consumers they're just a fun way to pass the time.

Now phonemakers want to make their wares even more entertaining by having them double as gaming machines. That may seem like a stretch, considering the screens are smaller than a pack of matches and the keys are about as large as Tic Tacs. But for some, these stripped-down games are the perfect way to kill time while waiting for the bus or standing in line at the supermarket. Every Nokia phone sold today comes with four or five games built in. This summer Ericsson will offer phones with mini versions of Tetris and Solitaire. And at an annual gaming convention two weeks ago in Los Angeles, Nokia announced a developers' program that will bring to cell phones everything from chess to quiz games to action-adventures by next year. Don Mattrick, president of worldwide development for gamemaker Electronic Arts, believes such games on the run could account for as much as 10% of the company's revenue by 2005.

If you find popular fascination with phone games hard to imagine, you're not alone. Peter Skarzynski, vice president of sales and marketing for Samsung's wireless division, dismisses them as "a gimmick" and plans to focus instead on putting MP3 players, TVs and digital cameras into his phones. "That's what I call true entertainment," he says.

I was a skeptic until I tested what's already here. It doesn't look like much, but a game called Snake, which is on most Nokia phones, is highly addictive. In a kind of virtual scavenger hunt, players collect pieces of "food" scattered onscreen. The more food you collect, the longer your onscreen "snake" grows, and the more points you get. To maneuver, you press the 2 key to move up, the 8 key to go down and so on. I was even more impressed by the upcoming version of Tetris that Ericsson managed to squeeze into its T28 world phone. Even though the screen is no bigger than a piece of Trident gum, I had as much fun playing my favorite video game as I ever did on a computer.

There's plenty more to come. Next year cell-phone service providers will begin offering an array of games you can play over their networks. Users will pay for them just as they do for a regular cell-phone call. In return, they'll get such options as playing poker with a friend in Fresno or entering the lottery on the fly. Nokia has even shown a text-based detective game. Rather than clicking on a picture as you would in Myst, say, you read a bit of the storyline, then choose what to do next from a list of options. Activision plans to adapt favorites like Asteroids and Space Invaders for cell phones as well as create new games like interactive sweepstakes with cash prizes.

As for me, I just hope the games don't make using a cell phone any more expensive than it already is. With rates averaging $50 a month, it's hard to justify spending any more for unlimited games of Snake. Then again, I just might be persuaded by a multiuser version of Tetris.

E-mail Anita at hamilton@time.com