Real World Golf, Wii

FYI - it's a Motorola M385.  If I can't get Baseball Heroes, I think I'm going to check out the Mafia game.  That looks pretty cool!

Hey, you should know I'm a displaced Bostonian -- I'm just living in California "temporarily". :-)
Seriously, I've been here almost 15 years now, but Boston will in most ways always be my home.

Also, Baseball Heroes features MLB Alumni players not current players...so the Boston team features many of the players of my youth, including Jim Rice, Fred Lynn, Louis Tiant, etc. plus many old-time legends like Johnny Pesky.  And same thing for the opponents -- It's tough when you have a righthander pitching against powerful lefties Roger Maris, Oscar Gamble, and Graig Nettles all in a row in the middle of the New York lineup!!   But there's nothing sweeter than getting them one-two-three with offspeed stuff from "The Spaceman", Bill Lee!!

For games purposes, the Motorola RAZR with AT&T as the carrier probably has the widest variety of game choices for a common handset.  It is not the most powerful phone game-processing-wise, and as such doesn't always have the very-best-looking versions of games, but it's pretty good and has a huge userbase, meaning that all games would typically be made and available for that handset.

A stronger handset (for better graphics and polish) with a good selection would be any Nokia series 60 phone (I am working on a 6630 for one of my current projects) also under AT&T.  Most of the Boost mobile Iden handsets are also very powerful, and Boost typically has some edgier, "cooler" product.  Verizon has some high-end handsets that support many 3-D games; these are not always the best gameplay experience, but they are more arcady and often appeal to console gamers.

Unfortunately regarding Baseball Heroes: It is Verizon only, and as far as I know only available for very old handsets...and only a few of those, as it was one of our first-ever products and we didn't support all handsets yet.  Worse, Verizon often takes old games out of their sales deck and that game was published in mid-2005.  So it's possible that even if you somehow got a handset that supported the game (like a VX6000 or T730), you might not be able to find it and purchase it from Verizon (and hence would have no way to get the game onto your phone!) :-(    If you are really interested in that particular game, you should  contact Verizon and ask them about the game and see if there's any way you could still get it, and if so, on what handsets.

Sorry about that, it's a really fun game.  The personal cell phone I carry is significantly outdated and broken down, but I keep it specifically to have and occasionally play that game!!  (32-16 with Boston currently in a 144 game season on All-Star difficulty!!)

Thanks for the interest!!  Mobile games on your phone are definitely worth checking out. 

Sorry in advance for the length -  I put a lot of info into the rest of this post.

How to get games: It differs on every carrier.  For Verizon, you have to choose "Get It Now" from your main menu, then (on my phone) choose a shopping cart to shop for new applications and games.  On most carriers though, once you've gotten to the shopping point, you have to navigate through lists of categories and games (which is not always too user-friendly).  The big problems are finding a game you want, and knowing something about it; most of these lists have a two-line description of the game at most, so it's buying blind most of the time.  Some carriers have a "Search" feature so if you know the name of a game, you can type it in and go right to that game.

Our sales guys have to sell the games individually to each of the carriers, so some games are available on some carriers but not others.  Additionally, not every game is made for every handset (we try to, but it doesn't always make sense).  Know that when I worked on High Heat 2004 we did 6 versions the last year and we thought it was hard -- XBox, PS2, Gamecube (never finished), PS1 (finished but never shipped), PC, and GBA.  For some of the Digital Chocolate games, we have to do more than 1000 versions to support nearly-all handsets worldwide!!! :-) :-) :-)   So you can only get games that your carrier has chosen to take, that also are made for your particular handset.

Quality: Varies TREMENDOUSLY from game to game.  Games tend to have less strenous arcade interaction than GBA (think about phone controls vs. GBA controls as the main reason), and quality of graphics/sound/presentation depends on what phone you have.  Graphic-style tends to be similar to GBA though, and cleverly-developed games can be quite good.  I have an old Gameboy and never use it, but I play mobile games a lot (outside of work) because of the convenience of firing up a game on your phone while I'm waiting in a restaurant, sitting in the airport, can't sleep in a hotel, etc.).

Also, mobile games tend to be way easier to pick-up-and-play, and often in less-hardcore-game categories, than even what you'd get on GBA.  And the best ones still have good replay value.

All that said, the quality of games is a very-mixed bag. Most licensed games are ridiculously poor and not fun at all.  Most games that are a modern video game license on the phone are also ridiculously poor and not fun.  Some older video games licenses (like Tetris or Frogger) are decent on the phone.  Most of the games developed by Digital Chocolate are honestly extremely fun-to-play, and typically well polished.  Gameloft is another company that generally puts out quality games.  But you have to know which games you're looking for before downloading, or else I'd say there's a 2/3 chance you'll be disappointed.

BTW, the prices tend to be super-low for these games (like $5 or so usually) so it's not like your taking a big risk by downloading a game or two.  Additionally, when you find a good, replayable mobile game, it clearly has way better value-for-dollar than almost all console games (I've played probably 400+ 10-minute games of Baseball Heroes on my own time over the last 4 years, for example...what value for $5!!).  On the other hand, the worst thing for us at Digital Chocolate is when someone downloads their first-ever mobile game, gets some licensed game that has terrible quality, and decides that all mobile games suck and never tries another game.

Carriers/Handsets: We have games on all US carriers (as well as many European and other carriers), and support most handsets, even the really low-end ones when we can.  I know, for example, that Nicktoons Mini-Golf is out on T-Mobile; not positive if we're available for the Blackberry or not.  

Here's a list of some good Digital Chocolate games to check out that should be currently available for most handsets/carriers:

Arcade-ish: Tower Bloxx, Johnny Crash, Tornado Mania, Roller Coaster Rush, Fantasy Warrior, Mafia Wars.  There's a Facebook version of Tower Bloxx out there as well if you're a Facebook user.

Sports: MLSN Sports Picks, Nicktoons Mini-Golf.  (Baseball Heroes and NCAA games I mentioned above are likely no longer available 'cause they're so old, but you can look...trust me, you'll have a lot of fun with them if you can find them)

Word: WordKing Spelltris, WordKing Poker (I worked on both of these titles, they're fun)

Other: Cafe series (Sudoku, Solitaire, etc.), Brain Juice,

The game I'm primarily working on now, which is really cool and unlike any other game I've ever seen, is called AvaPeeps: FlirtNation.  It's currently only available on Boost Mobile, but should be out on most other carriers fairly soon.  Keep your eyes open...

Lots more titles out there that DChoc did...our website is mostly outdated, but you can check DigitalChocolate.com for more info if you're interested.

Sorry again for rambling, hope at least a few of you find some unexpected pleasure with some of these games!! :-)

Forgive my ignorance, here, but since you're in the cell phone game business, how does it work, exactly?  I know I can call up games on my Verizon phone, and hook in to the network.  From here, I can make a purchase.  I haven't gone very far, but are all games available on all services?  Or, can I only download games that have some kind of contract with my provider?