On October 7, 2003, Nokia launched the N-Gage, arguably the most audacious misfire in mobile gaming history. Shaped like a plastic taco and requiring users to hold its thin edge against their cheek to make a phone call, the hybrid device was relentlessly mocked. To swap a game cartridge, players notoriously had to peel off the back cover and pop out the battery. Yet behind its ergonomic blunders lay astonishing prescience. Years before the App Store turned every smartphone into an arcade, Nokia saw that pocket-sized telephony and digital play were on an inevitable collision course. The N-Gage failed against Nintendo's dominant Game Boy Advance not because its vision was flawed, but because hardware engineering had not yet caught up to its ambition. It died as a punchline, but survived as a blueprint.