Devil Crisis


(screenshots taken from ggemguide)

In recent years we have seen a uptick of games in the 'boomer shooter' genre. There has been a renewed interest in boomer shooters that has led to the success of such games as Doom Eternal, Dusk, UltraKill, Amid Evil and more. While the revivals exact origins are not the subject of this article is it nice to see them make a comeback. I much prefer them to the boring depressive shooters and competitive games like Call of Duty and Battlefield we have today.

Now, back in the flip-phone days boomer shooters weren't really that popular. Call of Duty was popping off and the PC market was flooded by these lucid FPS' that straddled a line between boring war game and boomer shooter. It was a strange era. Darkest of Days, BLACK, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, etc.

When it came to flip phones it's hard to see how well they would even translate. After all, Duke Nukem for the GBA was impressive but seriously underpowered. The technical limitations did not stop developers however and a few were made, including this one.

Unlike the other posts on Searchlight I actually found the game...kind of. I'll explain later.

This is Devil Crisis, an FPS for South Korean flip phones released back in 2005. It was developed by Wizcommunications, a South Korean company. It was released for the WIPI(?) system.

You play as Nigel [나이젤], a half-human, half-vampire fledgeling who has traveled to the continent of Guardra [가드라] to defeat the Demon Magician/Sorcercer [악마술사]. Nigel was ordered by the king to defeat this sorcercer who had been corrupting all the monsters on the continent. The game's exact tagline was this:

인간과 뱀파이어와의 사이에서 태어난 하프블러드 나이젤은 가드라 대륙의 악마술사를 처치해 달라는 국왕의 명령을 받고 악마술사의 성으로 향한다. 그곳으로 가는 길은 불길의 협곡과 카타콤의 미로를 지나쳐야 하는 험난한 길이다. 곳곳에는 악마술사의 흑마법으로 타락한 몬스터들이 나이젤의 길을 막아선다.
나이젤의 모험은 과연 성공할 수 있을지....
Just looking at the screenshots it almost looks like this game is fake, like it's either a mockup or I ripped it from some TV show. There's just something so 'artificial' about it. And it makes it all the more interesting for me.

Because of the grahpics I'm assuming this is a boomer-shooter. With no gameplay videos present I'm taking the liberty and assuming so. This could actually be an action RPG or exploration ala King's Field. Plus, being on a flip-phone it's highly likely it even ran faster enoguh to be considered a boomer shooter. I'd compare it to the Duke Nukem GBA port, good, but severly underpowered.

I first heard about this game from КнопкоЗавр / Блог о потерянных мобильных играх blog. It's a blog dedicated documenting various lost mobile games. Of course, I guess he didn't do as much digging as I did because I have the game! I'd like to get in contact with the blogger but the blog has gone down. I don't know why but I hope it's just temporary. Hopefully by some chance he sees this.

Wizcommunications seems to still be around, steadily releasing iOS apps. Their webpage is still up though the copyright says 2012 so I'm not really sure. Either way, Devil Crisis not for sale anywhere. Those storefronts have long since shut down and South Korean is currently dominated by Android. WIPI is just a distant memory.

Now, before I write about what this game was released on I need to write a bit about the operating system market in this era.

Pre-Android/iOS phones had a plethora of possible operating systems. In the west there was mostly PalmOS, J2ME and BREW. In Japan there was I-Mode, EZWeb, DoJa and more (I know it's not super comparable but bare with me). Well South Korea had a whole separate set of systems.

There were 5 distinct systems. SKT, GVM, GNEX, KTF and LGT. KTF was closely related to BREW but distinct enough that there is no cross-compatibility. SKT was basically J2ME but same deal, little compatibility. In South Korea the two most popular systems were SKT and KTF. It is KTF that this game was distributed on.

Now all of these, regardless of if BREW or J2ME-based all used something called WIPI (Wireless Internet Platform for Interoperability). This was a whole system that most South Korean phones used. And it was what the games were written in, regardless of SKT, KTF, etc.

As an aside the catagorization of flipphone-era games is a mess. I may just have to write an entire article disgambiguating them all.

WIPI was offered on J2ME-based and BREW-based systems, despite having nothing in common with each other. So basically you'll have BREW+WIPI and J2ME+WIPI. Devil Crisis a BREW+WIPI game.

The original blogpost I saw didn't specify what exact system this was for, nor did any other reference I found of the game.

Okay, so it's on WIPI. How is emulation for it?

WIPI emulation is in its infancy. Being based off of BREW one would think it should work with BREW emulators. There are two major BREW emulators right now. The first one is Melange, an android based emulator. I tried it on Melange (1.6) and it did't work. Not surprising since WIPI has a lot of key differences and WIPI support is not even currently planned for Melange. Infuse, another emulator is effectively someone's pet project and is currently not public. The dev has been making wonderful progress on his YouTube channel but I cannot comment on it more than that.

There is a WIPI emulator in development called WIE but it is still under heavy development like Infuse. Thing is, I have no idea if this emulator is for BREW or J2ME systems. The one SDK I tried (AROMA WIPI Emulator) was looking for a JAR file and I only have a BAR file (which is what BREW uses). So idk. It's all so confusing. Either way while I have the game I cannot play it unless I go and purchase a WIPI phone.

So where did I even find this game? During my original dive for this game (back in 2021-2022, can't recall) I found a blog that had links for plenty of old Korean mobile games. I downloaded Devil Crisis and had it sitting in a folder. Now that I get to writing this article I cannot, for the life of me find that blog. I don't appear to have it written down anywhere, nor is it mentioned in the games files.

All I can confirm is that I did not get this from the largest Korean mobile game site, Dubigame. The blog I found it on had vanilla colours for its title bar. That's all I can remember from it. If anyone has said blog on hand please let me know. I would like to add it to this page.

So with the games files not being compatible with any BREW emulator I cannot tell if this is even the right game or let alone the right dump. It's possible this game is still lost. It's one of the only games in this project that is simultaneously lost and found.

I've since ended my investigation as I do seem to have the game. If people are interested I will put a download link but for now I'm just going to leave it blank.

Notes

  • Title: Devil Crisis [데빌크라이시스]
  • Year: 2005
  • Platform(s): SKT + WIPI + BREW
  • Developer(s): Wizcommunications [위즈커뮤니케이션]
  • Publisher: Wizcommunications [위즈커뮤니케이션]
  • Playable-If-Recovered: not-currently

Evidence Dump