Although notorious for the frequent bugs and crashes experienced during the Europe-wide live finals, the games were very popular.
The very first Nokia Game was only open to residents in the Netherlands, and centred round a young boy called Sisu, who is taken to hospital after a serious snowboarding accident.
It was a true Alternate Reality Game, with hidden clues in phone calls, magazines and TV adverts.
Once conscious again, the player has to piece together what happened from clues left behind at the scene, eyewitnesses and a mysterious young boy called Mika, who claims to know a lot about Sisu and his past.
This explained the story so far: a strange blue light ("The Tone") has embedded itself in the bodies of a group of skateboarders, who have been found and captured by an unknown organisation.
What followed was mainly a series of Internet-based Flash games, which tested abilities such as memorisation, note-making, decision-making, skill and research.
Unfortunately for players who did not complete the Snake mini-game within the allotted 15 minutes, the sheer number of requests to the game's server meant the entire site crashed and remained offline for half an hour before emergency SMSs were sent to all players instructing them to log in again and resume the game with an extended time limit.
This was then turned into an in-joke at the end of the game, when players who just fell short of the required number of points to win were jokingly told "You... should have tried... a little bit harder", mimicking the song's lyrics.
This was also the first game that actively tried to get players to co-operate, with PC and mobile chat programs, and live leaderboards.
The downloadable application for phones also had an artificial intelligence program that enabled the player to chat to and extrapolate clues from the main character, Flo.
Each week featured two challenges: a snowboarding track to be completed in the least amount of time possible (the tracks were identical on the mobile phone version, allowing players to practice anywhere), and a "show-down" against one of the members of the AnyOne organisation, responsible for stealing Flo's phone at the start of the story.
While still exciting, many players were by now starting to feel that the Nokia Game was sacrificing ingenuity and innovation for commercial success.
Many players were disappointed when Nokia confirmed there would be no game in 2004, stating that they were "taking a break" in order to make bigger plans.
This was offset by the sheer amount of time needed to play and win the game during its 3-4 week period.