Don't feel bad for Justin Davis. He actually likes his job. Really. He's not just saying that.

For the past two years, Davis has run a gaming Web site — a job that initially sounds pretty cool when he mentions it at parties. But then Davis has to tell people what kind of Web site he runs, exactly. "I say, 'Oh, I review cell-phone games for a living,' " he confessed to GameFile during an interview last week. "And they say, 'I feel sorry for you.' "

Davis is the editor in chief and sole salaried employee of Modojo.com, one of the few sites that actually covers cell-phone games. That makes him the equivalent of a soccer reporter working for Sports Illustrated. The stuff he writes about is, in theory, really popular — but it doesn't often make for the sexiest headlines. And who raves about a cell-phone game when it's time to pick the best games of the year? Nevertheless, Davis is on a campaign of sorts: He's trying to turn the world into a place where cell-phone gaming gets respect, one gamer at a time.

"I kind of consider myself mobile gaming's ambassador to the hard-core gaming community," Davis said. Maybe mobile missionary would be a better title. He prowls gaming sites looking for converts. "I try to get more message-board posters to be enlightened," he said. "Join my flock of the enlightened."

At those aforementioned parties, Davis has been known to flick on his cell phone, load a game and hand it to a mobile-gaming virgin. "Sometimes they try to get out of it and they say, 'No, I've got to go do this or I got to do that. Who's this pushy guy trying to make me do this?' "

Davis wasn't really looking to become the cell-phone-gaming guy when he started Modojo. He'd written for gaming sites while in high school; was wrapping up college in Cedar Rapids, Iowa; and was considering the prospect of joining with some gaming-industry friends to start a site on portable gaming. At the time, Sony's PlayStation Portable was close to release and the executives behind it were promising to raise portable play from the "handheld-gaming ghetto." Nintendo had concocted a two-screen portable, the DS, to become the company's "third pillar" alongside the GameCube and its long-dominant portable, Game Boy.

Davis was up for covering that horse race. The fact that Modojo should also cover cell-phone gaming? "It was almost kind of seen as a necessary evil," he said. He was nervous. Suddenly he had to be an authority about a type of game he never had much desire to play. "Only by being forced to play these games I realized it's not that bad."

Two years later, he's ready to argue with anyone who thinks cell-phone games can't be great games. However, asked what the cell-phone gaming classics are, he did try to stall a bit. "It's kind of funny to call them classics, because the games are so young," he said. "Time is what makes something classic."

And as far as cell-phone gaming goes, time has been flying by, forcing the technology to change as fast as the games can be developed. "One thing that's difficult about reviewing mobile games is there aren't clear platforms," Davis said. "Cell phones are always gradually and subtly improving. Our review scale constantly slides. What would have been a four- or five-star review in 2005 would be panned now." Well, almost.

Davis mulled that classics question for a bit, and several days after the interview he consented to offer three nominees for "great" cell-phone games. These aren't necessarily the greatest, he said — he wasn't ready to crown the top one of all time — though it's safe to assume this is what he would show at a party:

"Ms. Pac-Man": "Quite possibly the perfect mobile game," Davis said. "It's fun for five minutes — or 55. It's instantly clear how to play, it shrinks down to the small screen well and its controls are adapted perfectly to one-thumb play."

"Super K.O. Boxing": "It doesn't break a lot of cartoon-boxer ground — but it's been 12 years since Nintendo last gave us a punch-out sequel, so that's OK," Davis said. "Lots of over-the-top opponents and great, fluid boxing action."

"Tower Bloxx": "Digital Chocolate has a way of making games that don't really sound super-fun on paper but in practice are addicting as hell," Davis said. " 'Tower Bloxx' can lull even the most jaded gamer in a state of Zen-like tower-building. Very, very addicting."

Davis would be surprised if people had heard of the last two games. He said one of the biggest problems with games is that people don't know much about them. Mobile-gaming executives give entire speeches about how hard it is for people to even find the games-shopping section on their cell phones.

"I do this for a living and it's confusing to me to figure out where games are," Davis said. And when people do find the games, they often can't glean much about them. "You're given about 16 characters to describe your game," he said. Cell-phone companies allow game publishers to include the name of the game and often only a single sentence to describe it. It's easy for buyers to beware so much that they only download "Pac-Man" to their cell phone — or nothing at all.

"Not to be completely self-serving, but there's a lot of really bad mobile games. If somebody wants to know about mobile gaming, they need to read Modojo," Davis said. He acknowledged his colleagues as well, not that there are many. GameSpot stopped reviewing cell-phone games last February. IGN is still at it, having just posted a review of the typical cell-phone gaming oddity: a "Sopranos" game based on managing that TV series' Bada Bing strip club. On Modojo, recent cell-phone reviews include write-ups on a cell-phone version of "Centipede" and one of the major Xbox 360 titles "Lost Planet."

Modojo recently started a business newsletter in an attempt to branch out. But Davis' main hope, when it comes to cell-phone gaming, is to continue to preach and see that flock grow. "I'm sort of a mobile-gaming success story," he said. "I'm someone who owns a 360 and the other next-gen systems and still chooses to play mobile gaming." It can be worthwhile. Surely, he insists, he's not the only one.

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