Playing mobile Java games on my XP machine

August 7, 2006 11:40 AM

How do I run Mobile phone games (Java jar files) on my Windows XP machine? I doubleclick a file - say 2fast2furious.jar and it says that it failed to load Main-Class manifest attribute...any ideas? I have got Java installed on my machine.
posted by mooreeasyvibe to computers & internet (5 comments total)

You need to install this. Java games are based on J2ME rather than the full Java implementation, so Java alone is not enough.
posted by cillit bang at 12:00 PM on August 7, 2006

cillit bang is correct that you need to install the wireless toolkit to run J2ME applications (java applications for mobile phones.) The link is however for an really old version. Download one of the latest releases instead (Sun Java Wireless Toolkit 2.2 or 2.5 beta). When installed, you can open the .jad-file by running "Run MIDP Application" from the start menu. The application will then run in a phone emulator.
posted by rpn at 12:22 PM on August 7, 2006

Hi thanks for the replies.

I downloaded and installed the latest version (2.2) and ran the MIDP Application. However it will only let me view .jad files not .jar files which is what I am trying to run....any ideas?

Thanks

Chris
posted by mooreeasyvibe at 12:53 PM on August 7, 2006

I've had some limited success in the past using this jadmaker utility.
posted by Freon at 2:44 PM on August 7, 2006

I'm surprised you were able to find the raw .jar file - phones will ONLY accept .jad files which point to specific .jar files. If you can't find the original jad, it's going to take some playing on your part, because the .jad specifies which class from the .jar to load. It should auto-detect the available classes so you can choose, but it might not be obvious. There are also sometimes (often?) other things on the .jad file that the .jar could depend on, like configuration information. The .jad can operate like the registry if you want it too, and some developers rely on that.

Also, the generic Sun emulator might not work. You might need to get specific manufacturers emulators, because sometimes developers rely on custom APIs that aren't available on the generic phone emulator.
posted by heresiarch at 7:13 AM on August 8, 2006