Tetris in the context of "Floppy disk"

A mobile game is a video game that is typically played on a mobile device. The term also refers to all games that are played on any portable device, including from mobile phone (feature phone or smartphone), tablet, PDA to handheld game console, portable media player or graphing calculator, with and without network availability.The earliest known game on a mobile phone was a Tetris variant on the Hagenuk MT-2000 device from 1994.

In 1997, Nokia launched Snake. Snake, which was pre-installed in most mobile devices manufactured by Nokia for a couple of years, has since become one of the most played games, at one point found on more than 350 million devices worldwide. Mobile devices became more computationally advanced allowing for downloading of games, though these were initially limited to phone carriers' own stores. Mobile gaming grew greatly with the development of app stores in 2008, such as the iOS App Store from Apple. As the first mobile content marketplace operated directly by a mobile-platform holder, the App Store significantly changed the consumer behaviour and quickly broadened the market for mobile games, as almost every smartphone owner started to download mobile apps.

Hagenuk MT-2000 was a mobile phone device launched in 1994. The device was designed and manufactured by Hagenuk's development centre in Støvring, Denmark.The phone was, together with its predecessor Hagenuk MT-900 from 1992, some of the first mobile phones in the industry using Soft keys. Finally, the MT-2000 was the first in the industry to have a built-in antenna, instead of the traditional extension antennas.It was believed until recently that it was the first smartphone to have installed a video game but then it turned out that it was the third one – the first two were Siemens S1 (hidden Tetris – called "Klotz" here) and the IBM Simon (Scramble) – both built in 1993 and released in 1994.There were two variants of the phone produced – with and without dedicated physical buttons for volume up and down and power on/off.

Snake (Finnish: Matopeli) is a 1998 mobile video game created by Taneli Armanto as one of the three games included in the Nokia 6110 cellular phone. In the game, the player controls a snake in a playing field, collecting orbs which give the player points and make the snake grow in size while avoiding the walls and the snake's own longer body.

The game was developed by Armanto after the marketing team at Nokia wanted to include more custom options on their new phone. After initially trying to develop a Tetris-like game, Armanto began developing a game in the snake video game genre, which he was familiar with from older computer games.

The 1980s was the second decade in the industry's history. It was a decade of highs and lows for video games. The decade began amidst a boom in the arcade video game business with the golden age of arcade video games, the Atari 2600's dominance of the home console market during the second generation of video game consoles, and the rising influence of home computers. However, an oversatuation of low quality games led to an implosion of the video game market that nearly destroyed the industry in North America. Most investors believed video games to be a fad that had since passed, up until Nintendo's success with its Nintendo Entertainment System (NES, Famicom) revived interest in game consoles and led to a recovery of the home video game industry. In the remaining years of the decade, Sega ignites a console war with Nintendo, developers that had been affected by the crash experimented with PC games, and Nintendo released the Game Boy, which would become the best-selling handheld gaming device for the next two decades. Other consoles released in the decade included the Intellivision, ColecoVision, TurboGrafx-16 (PC Engine) and Sega Genesis (Mega Drive).

Notable games of the 1980s included Pac-Man, Ms. Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros. 3, Mario Bros., Duck Hunt, Tetris, The Legend of Zelda, Metroid, Castlevania, Mega Man, Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, Double Dragon, Punch-Out!!, Contra, Mega Man 2, SimCity, Prince of Persia, Gauntlet, Gradius, Out Run, Defender, Missile Command, Frogger, Q*bert, Dig Dug, Pitfall!, Elite, and Maniac Mansion.