The short answer is yes. Yesterday, mobile phone behemoth Nokia announced that it was entering the games industry, and from what we can tell, it’s going about it the right way.
Following a presentation from Nokia’s Finnish board of directors, and a question and answer session in which the firm refused to commit to hardware pricing, software pricing, release dates, or anything else for that matter, attendees were led to private, champagne filled capsules on the London Eye in order to play some of the machine’s operable software.
First up was Sonic N, which presumably stands for Nokia. It’s a rework of Sonic Advance, we think, and moved along nicely. It did chug a bit at times, with the action dropping to around 15 frames per second, but overall, it looked really good and well coloured. Although the frame rate did drop at times, this seemingly wasn’t due to the frenetic pace of the game. Indeed, when moving at top super sonic spin speed, all was well.
Our only gripe is that the game had that Java feel, although it’s not a Java game. That slightly detached feeling that mobile phone and PDA gaming imparts was present in Sonic and throughout the N-Gage’s portfolio, but more on that later.
The real revelation was Eidos’ Tomb Raider which was presented in full 3D, a great surprise to all. Nokia’s senior marketing manager, Christian From, told us that it was built from the original PlayStation code, an intriguing fact in itself. If the N-Gage can adequately handle ported PSone software, the possibilities are astounding. Someone made a joke that the lighting and texturing on display was better than some seen in Super Mario Sunshine. What was really funny was that it was true.
We also played Super Monkey Ball, again a port of the Game Boy Advance code. It looked flaky, but played well. SMB suffered a hereditary problem, namely that it was spawned from GBA seed. We were told in confidence that a new build, sadly too bugged to play, was already in existence which ran at over double the resolution of the one presented.
We also played Taito’s Puzzle Bobble VS over Bluetooth, between two handsets. Unfortunately, it seemed to be a remake of the Java version available for Vodafone Live and suffered the same detached, slow feeling. But it still worked, and worked well.
A full list of the games announced:
Pandemonium
Tomb Raider
Bounce
Kart Racing
Virtually Board Snowboarding II
Puyo Puyo
Sega Rally
Sonic N
Super Monkey Ball
Virtua Tennis
Puzzle Bobble VS
Space Invaders
Taito Memories
Capcom’s involvement in the project, which had been confirmed by Nokia several weeks ago, was denied, as presumably the deal had fallen through.
Overall, it’s too soon to build a solid picture of what the N-Gage will mean, when it launched at the end of Q2 next year. It has a lot of things right, such as the ability to take screen grabs of your progress, and MMS them to your friends. You can play multiplayer, online and over Bluetooth. You can either download games, or buy data cards with them pre-installed. There’s no regional lock-out. It’s smaller, lighter and more powerful than Game Boy Advance.
Check out the spec:
Features:
Large colour screen with backlight, 176x208 pixels with up to 4096 colours
Series 60 platform and Symbian Operating System (OS)
Bluetooth wireless technology for gaming
An eight-way directional controller "Rocker" for game play
Multimedia messaging (MMS)
Triple band GSM (900/1800/1900), GPRS mobile phone
Digital Music player (AAC/MP3) and Stereo FM radio
Nokia Audio Manager PC SW for managing own music files
Comprehensive range of applications; e-mail and personal information management
XHTML browsing
Java application support
Connectivity: calendar synchronisation with PC, USB for music file and application download.
Usage times:
Games up to 3 - 6 h (depending on game type). Talk up to 2 - 4 h
Standby up to 150 - 200 h
Music up to 8 h
Radio up to 20 h
Size:
Volume 139cc
Dimensions (L x W x D) 133.7 x 69.7 x 20.2 mm
Weight 137g
It’s all good, to the extent that we couldn’t really find anything wrong with it. If Nokia can shake that detached mobile gaming feel, and it looks like it will, then the N-Gage, if it’s reasonably priced, is a serious contender. The support the machine has, at developer level, seemingly confirms this.
Following a presentation from Nokia’s Finnish board of directors, and a question and answer session in which the firm refused to commit to hardware pricing, software pricing, release dates, or anything else for that matter, attendees were led to private, champagne filled capsules on the London Eye in order to play some of the machine’s operable software.
First up was Sonic N, which presumably stands for Nokia. It’s a rework of Sonic Advance, we think, and moved along nicely. It did chug a bit at times, with the action dropping to around 15 frames per second, but overall, it looked really good and well coloured. Although the frame rate did drop at times, this seemingly wasn’t due to the frenetic pace of the game. Indeed, when moving at top super sonic spin speed, all was well.
Our only gripe is that the game had that Java feel, although it’s not a Java game. That slightly detached feeling that mobile phone and PDA gaming imparts was present in Sonic and throughout the N-Gage’s portfolio, but more on that later.
The real revelation was Eidos’ Tomb Raider which was presented in full 3D, a great surprise to all. Nokia’s senior marketing manager, Christian From, told us that it was built from the original PlayStation code, an intriguing fact in itself. If the N-Gage can adequately handle ported PSone software, the possibilities are astounding. Someone made a joke that the lighting and texturing on display was better than some seen in Super Mario Sunshine. What was really funny was that it was true.
We also played Super Monkey Ball, again a port of the Game Boy Advance code. It looked flaky, but played well. SMB suffered a hereditary problem, namely that it was spawned from GBA seed. We were told in confidence that a new build, sadly too bugged to play, was already in existence which ran at over double the resolution of the one presented.
We also played Taito’s Puzzle Bobble VS over Bluetooth, between two handsets. Unfortunately, it seemed to be a remake of the Java version available for Vodafone Live and suffered the same detached, slow feeling. But it still worked, and worked well.
A full list of the games announced:
Pandemonium
Tomb Raider
Bounce
Kart Racing
Virtually Board Snowboarding II
Puyo Puyo
Sega Rally
Sonic N
Super Monkey Ball
Virtua Tennis
Puzzle Bobble VS
Space Invaders
Taito Memories
Capcom’s involvement in the project, which had been confirmed by Nokia several weeks ago, was denied, as presumably the deal had fallen through.
Overall, it’s too soon to build a solid picture of what the N-Gage will mean, when it launched at the end of Q2 next year. It has a lot of things right, such as the ability to take screen grabs of your progress, and MMS them to your friends. You can play multiplayer, online and over Bluetooth. You can either download games, or buy data cards with them pre-installed. There’s no regional lock-out. It’s smaller, lighter and more powerful than Game Boy Advance.
Check out the spec:
Features:
Large colour screen with backlight, 176x208 pixels with up to 4096 colours
Series 60 platform and Symbian Operating System (OS)
Bluetooth wireless technology for gaming
An eight-way directional controller "Rocker" for game play
Multimedia messaging (MMS)
Triple band GSM (900/1800/1900), GPRS mobile phone
Digital Music player (AAC/MP3) and Stereo FM radio
Nokia Audio Manager PC SW for managing own music files
Comprehensive range of applications; e-mail and personal information management
XHTML browsing
Java application support
Connectivity: calendar synchronisation with PC, USB for music file and application download.
Usage times:
Games up to 3 - 6 h (depending on game type). Talk up to 2 - 4 h
Standby up to 150 - 200 h
Music up to 8 h
Radio up to 20 h
Size:
Volume 139cc
Dimensions (L x W x D) 133.7 x 69.7 x 20.2 mm
Weight 137g
It’s all good, to the extent that we couldn’t really find anything wrong with it. If Nokia can shake that detached mobile gaming feel, and it looks like it will, then the N-Gage, if it’s reasonably priced, is a serious contender. The support the machine has, at developer level, seemingly confirms this.
Companies:
Nokia
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