Comments 2

Re: The Nokia N-Gage May Have Sucked, But It Had Rollback Netcode In 2003

Furretium

@UK_Kev There's only a couple of games that are truly held back by not having horizontal display, mostly fast-pased 2D platformers and shooters. Ironically, N-Gage had Sonic N, a fast-pased platformer, which I agree, was sort of a pain. But arcades have had vertical displays for ages. Instead of having your shooter go left to right, you can have a shmup perspective. Pretty much all 3D games benefit from seeing slightly more ahead than to the sides.
Plus, by keeping the screen vertical they maintained compatibility with all other Symbian devices, meaning you could play other Java games (and other phones could play N-Gage games, don't remember if cracking the game was a requirement).

TL;DR: vertical screens can comfortably support variety of games.