Over the years, video game companies have often produced mobile phone tie-ins as a way to generate interest in their bigger-budget games. These titles are usually tied to outdated and difficult-to-emulate devices, and as such it's easy for even diehard fans of a particular series to be none-the-wiser that they even exist.
One of the more interesting cases of this is a 3D mobile game that Capcom released in order to promote Devil May Cry 4 internationally between 2007-2008. The game used enemies and characters from Devil May Cry 3 and featured combat similar to its console counterparts.
The game recently came to our attention after spotting this fascinating post from the leader of the Rockman/MegaMan feature phone preservation project RockmanCosmo on Twitter.
In the tweet, they showcased some new footage of the 3D game's combat off a SH906iTV and remarked on how little video was already available of it online. From what we were able to find, this new video is some of the only footage of the 3D mobile running on real hardware, with other gameplay mostly recorded from emulators that typically struggle to support its "mascot capsule 3D" engine.
Interestingly, RockmanCosmo also claims the game that they have in their possession is a DoJa (DoCoMo Java) version for Brew phones, as opposed to the more common one released for Sony Ericsson devices. This version features 50 missions, as opposed to 36, and also apparently has higher-quality textures than those seen on other feature phones. When asked if they were going to dump the game, they replied that they would first need to "find a way to dump [the phone's] firmware to get access to the filesystem" and linked to a longer HitSave article on Feature Phone Preservation.
Something worth noting is this isn't the only mobile game based on Devil May Cry that Capcom published around this time, with the Japanese developer also producing a 2D sidescrolling beat 'em up. That game, however, seems to be much easier to emulate and arguably has a much larger presence online as a result.