J2ME Horror is an extremely underrated genre. With such small screens, technical limitations of J2ME, storage constraints (that hadn’t been seen since the Famicom days) and lack of controls developers had to put in a lot of effort and plan out how best convey scary elements. Wolf Moon, Nowhere, Darkest Fear and more all had successfully pulled off a horror concept on a flip phone.
They each also have a certain charm to them. Wolf Moon has fascinating mechanics, Nowhere, despite the screen size has gorgeous graphics and Darkest Fear has unique puzzles and atmosphere.
And, while I love J2ME horror a lot the so-called first ever J2ME horror game remains elusive. It is known as ‘Alone: The Horror Begins’ and is the subject of today’s Searchlight Post.
Alone: The Horror Begins is allegedly (more on that later) a J2ME game developed by Centrescore, a company I can barely find any information about. This company is hard to track down. After scouring their old website I still can’t figure out where they were even located. I guess somewhere in the U.S.A. but even then all the info I have is circumstantial. In their lifetime none of the games they made were that popular. They never quite made it out of obscurity. A cursory search indicates their most successful game being “Surviving High School ‘07”, a coming of age group of minigames. Alone was their only foray into horror games before their disappearance. It appears that in 2006, Vivendi Games purchased Centrescore, eventually bringing all their IPs under that Vivendi hood. Under the Vivendi hood they were dissolved and all of their games forgotten. Makes you wonder why Vivendi even wasted the money aquiring them.
This game was apparently released in November 2005 to various digital storefronts. Some claim it unreleased but there’s at least one link that proves it was public and for sale. It was, at some point available for sale on EasyEdge, a now discontinued mobile phone service.
During the search for this game a lot of inconsistencies came up.
This game is known as a J2ME game, a simple web search will back me up. But looking at that EasyEdge page one can see none of the phones listed were actually J2ME phones. They all ran BREW, a whole separate system. For comparison it’s like saying a games was made for the SNES but it was really a Genesis game. BREW was on some whole other thing.
Combing through Reddit posts there is a belief that game was never publicly released. Course the link above disproves that, but it could also mean the game was pulled shortly after launch. That would certainly explain the lack of preservation around it.
Back then, a lot of companies tended to offer both J2ME and BREW versions. With that knowledge plus the various J2ME whispers I wouldn’t completely rule out a J2ME port existing. One of the surviving videos of the game makes claim that Alone could have had a J2ME-port. I acknowledge that it’s also possible the uploader doesn’t even know the difference. Most don’t even know that BREW was a thing and plenty can’t even tell the difference. Another example of misinfo are the comments I’ve seen claiming this game came out in 2003, 2007 and 2005. But despite all the misinformation nobody has a copy. It is undeniable to acknowledge the roll pirates had in early J2ME preservation. But unfortunately, despite efforts Centrescore was never popular enough to garner their attention.
Hell with all the people looking for it, the game is far more popular now than it was when it actually released back in 2005.
Alone sees you playing as your own self-insert. To quote the games tagline…
A plane crash in the dark of night leads to an unexpected and horrifying mystery. Evil lurks around every corner, thirsting for the blood of the innocent. What is this strange place? What’s causing this terrible nightmare? Frightened and alone you wander deeper into the unknown armed only with a flashlight and an old cattle prod. Will you survive long enough to find the answers you so desperately need? Will you survive long enough to escape the night?
Gameplay is a bit similar to Nowhere, though not as psychological. From a top-down view you walk around as you uncover whatever the hell is going on in this dark forest. Centrescore also makes the claim that Alone is the first ever J2ME Horror game. No idea how true that is.
The game is currently survived by a few documents.
NeXtGroup, an old forum dedicated to preserving mobile game trailers has the sole gameplay video of this on the internet. It is still available for the time being on YouTube. I haven’t been able to find any indication they preserved the game on their forum just that they claimed they got it from a pack of games. (and users on 4pda have poured through all those packs and haven’t found it). Interestingly, NeXt claims Alone to be a J2ME game, in contradiction to EasyEdge. It could have been a port. They could also not even known.
IGN has a slideshow of a video, GameSpot has a review, there’s another review over on WGWorld and plenty of references that it existed on various game databases. Weird too. Most of the reviews and ratings were positive so it’s a little surprising the game still vanished as it did.
How was it lost? It simply fell through the cracks. The game never saw widespread attention, Centrescore wasn’t popular enough for people to priate, dumping BREW games are harder than J2ME, it just fell through the cracks. I’m still not convinced this game wasn’t released. If proven true it would explain why it’s so rare.
There have been efforts to locate it, however. The search goes back years. I have found YouTube comments from 2012 of people trying to find it. All videos of the game are met with comments of people trying to find it.
Kahvibreak, the largest J2ME discord server has several members looking as well as Alone listed on an entry on Kahvibreak’s Wanted List. No luck in that server. That’s where I first heard of this game too.
About a year ago I contacted who I thought to be the developer. Whether or not they are still remains unknown. They never actually replied to my e-mail. And yes, I checked spam too.
I don’t know if anyone has contacted the Gamespot reviewer or tried to track down the WGWorld writer. Nobody has come forward claiming so.
4pda, the largest public forum dedicated to J2ME-era phone discussion ALSO has their own investigation going. Someone there claimed to have a phone with the game on it. But, reading through the forum thread it appears nothing came out of that. The user leading that search, MrHeralt gave up in 2022. He claimed that with BREW being such a locked down platform that extracting the game would be impossible. I disagree and a look at the plenty of dumped BREW games indicates that false. Regardless, if he is still trying to crack the game or looking privately, he has not made any newer announcements I can find.
Looking at the screenshots and videos of this game I believe it is something worth finding. And, if this is the first J2ME horror game then it’s an important piece in mobile gaming history. I know if found I will drop everything and play it. It looks like a good game. Compared to some of the other games on my lists I think this can be found. I’m sure someone’s got it stashed somewhere.
Do you happen to know this game? Did you happen to purchase it back then? By some chance do you still have that phone? Get in contact with me asap if so. Let’s get that game preserved!
- Title: Alone: The Horror Begins
- Year: 2005
- Platform(s): J2ME, BREW
- Developer(s): Centrescore
- Publisher: [unknown], possibly Vivendi
- Playable-If-Recovered: mixed-bag (J2ME emulation is perfect with J2ME-Loader, BREW emulation is still in very early stages)
