Postal Babes (J2ME)

Postal Babes
Developer: HeroCraft Publisher: HeroCraft Platform: J2ME Released in US: February 13, 2009 This game has revisional differences.

Oh dear, I do believe I have the vapors. This page contains content that is not safe for work or other locations with the potential for personal embarrassment. Such as: Boobs.

Postal Babes is an officially licensed beat ’em up/hack ‘n’ slash game that was released for old Java-based mobile phones. It was even named the best mobile game at the 2008 Russian Mobile VAS Awards! Whatever of an achievement that was at the time.

Version Differences

Overview

As it sometimes happened with J2ME games, this game has over 150 versions archived (thanks in part to there being a full dump of the now-closed J2ME section of the freeware website GetJar), and there could be more since the J2ME release is still sold as of this writing on the Bemobi Apps Club subscription services. These can be divided into the following:

• Versions 1.4.0 (EFIGS paid release) - 6 versions (2009-03)
• Versions 1.4.0 (Russian paid release) - 17 versions (2009-03)
• Versions 1.6.0 (EFIGS paid release) - 13 versions (2009-11)
• Versions 1.6.0 (Russian paid release) - 13 versions (2009-11)
• Versions 1.6.0 (EFIGS unlockable demo versions from the freeware website GetJar) - 53 versions (2009-12)
  • These versions (alongside potentially some of the miscellaneous versions) include the nudity SMS microtransaction.
  • These versions also import superfluous libraries that aren't present on J2ME phones.
• Versions 1.11.0 (ad-supported release from the carrier Aircel) - 13 versions (2013-04)
  • These versions start up with a wrapper that requests internet connection to a now-dead server, and since no circumvention exists for this wrapper as of now, there's not really any way to play these versions anymore.
• Version 1.11.0 (EFIGS ad-supported release from the Nokia Ovi Store) - at least 1 version (2013-05)
• Versions 1.11.0 (EFIGS ad-supported release from the freeware website GetJar) - 51 versions (2013-06)
• Miscellaneous versions (1.0.0, 1.2.0, etc.)

Nudity SMS Microtransaction

As mentioned above, certain releases of the game, such as the unlockable demo versions 1.6.0 distributed by GetJar, included a main menu option called "SMS-BONUS". Selecting this option brings up a message asking the player whether they want to send a premium SMS (the short number and the displayed cost are determined by the region of player's phone number that the game requests from the phone). Successfully sending the SMS undresses the character on the title screen and in-game, as can be seen on the sprite sheets below. While this option is not available outside of certain versions of the game, the graphics and text for it are present in other, more widely-known versions, leading to the common misconception that the option was scrapped entirely.

Import Oversights

In addition, due to an error on the developers' part, various Java classes in the 1.6.0 GetJar versions include imports for APIs that aren't even present on any J2ME MIDP phone, and instead are specific to Android and BlackBerry phones. These are:

android/app/Activity
android/content/DialogInterface
android/os/Bundle
dalvik/system/DexClassLoader
net/rim/device/api/ui/Keypad

The game still functions fine despite those being missing from the target phones.

(Source: KeshaFilm (discovery of versions with SMS-Bonus), TwoSpacesSG (further preliminary version research))