A free exhibition is currently running at the London Design Museum (28 Shad Thames, London SE1), entitled, 'People Made - Nokia products that changed the world' and tells the 'inside story of Nokia - past, present and future'. The exhibition is free to enter, but is only running from October 28th to November 2nd, leaving you three days to go along and take a look.
This will either be a complete blast from the past or a glimpse into a world you never knew existed, but.... Nokia had a complete multimedia-accelerated game scene going on back in the early 2000s under the name N-Gage (no, not the software re-invention, we're talking plug-in MMC games on dedicated S60 hardware) and Martin from Retro Game Tech has been putting up occasional videos showing this growing collection of N-Gage's illustrious past. The latest is shown below. Thanks to Jay for the heads-up.
Please excuse the original story on this address, I was going by item numbers in Ovi Store URLs - it turns out that there isn't a strict one to-one correspondance between URL numbers and actual content items. The store simply now has over 100,000 allocated item IDs, many of which never materialised into content. Watch this space for some fuller Ovi Store statistics.
The Angry Birds “expansion” application, Angry Birds Seasons, has received an update in time for Valentines Day. Joining the Halloween and Christmas levels are another 18 collections of hiding pigs, flying cupids, smashable blocks and bonus cakes all wrapped up in some fiendish physics.
One of the more interesting comparison videos I’ve seen comes via Daily Mobile and Macintosh Morrison. It’s the Google Nexus Sand the Nokia N8, strapped together and playing Need for Speed Shift. The point? Well it’s a direct match up of the game to compare speed, control and fluidity. Who do you think will come out on top?
There's an interesting article over on The Wall Street Journal trying to explain why Angry Birds has been such an amazing hit in the gaming world. Their thesis looks at the idea that we humans are hard wired to enjoy solving parabolas, the trajectories made by something propelled against the influence of gravity. Video games have long exploited our bias for ballistics; for example, look back at the hit series of PC games, "Worms". Read on for quotes and comments.
Nokia are proud of the Ovi Store, it’s gaining traction, there are more downloads every day, and I don’t begrudge them the right to shout about any success whenever they want. So the list of “Top Ovi Store Games” on the Conversations Blog is exactly what I’d expect. And hopefully Nokia are fully aware that we're going to look at this post and ask the question “nice list, but how about some context?”
Mashable has pointed out the latest AT&T campaign about the dangers of texting while driving. With the busiest day for text messaging almost upon us (Hogmanay), it’s a reminder that texting whist driving is dangerous, and if it is that urgent to reply or even read a text message, you should pull over and stop the car first.
New(ish) in Nokia's Ovi Store are a number of interesting free and commercial 'casual'/'traditional' games from Offscreen Technologies, available for both S60 5th Edition and new Symbian^3 phones from Nokia, including Freecell, (peg) Solitaire, Video Poker and Checkers. See below for screens, mini-reviews and links. And yes, full reviews of some of the big blockbuster 'HD' games are progressing in parallel, to be published over the next couple of weeks!
The Ovi Blog has posted the news today that a large swathe of Nokia's self-published game titles in the Ovi Store are now available free of charge. Some of these titles were already free, but its a nice reminder and there are some fun titles in the mix, including one of my favourites, Big Roll in Paradise.
Botond.FM's 'instant' games have a definite appeal for quick gaming sessions. This is the latest incarnation of MicroPinball Casino, for S60 5th Edition phones, now with 'multitouch' even on resistive-screened devices - no, really. Here's my review of MicroPinball, tested on both the Nokia 5530 and the Samsung i8910, over on our Ovi Gaming site. Also posted this morning is my review of the free Color Master, which you'll know better under its classic board game title of 'Mastermind'. Hey, there goes your afternoon's productivity!
Here on AAS's Ovi Gaming site, Ewan reviews a fresh revamp of an old classic - Minesweeper - that gets turned completely on its head and given a fresh lick of stone age paint into the bargain. An unholy attempt? More a modern classic and it's got Ewan impressed. Here's his review of Dino Detective.
Another calendar quarter, another golf game, another chance for Steve to wallow in handheld golf nostalgia? Or maybe not, this time - let's keep this one a straight Ovi Gaming review. Let's Golf! has been well received on other platforms, notably on the iPhone and iPad, and here we have a Java version optimised for Symbian-powered touchscreens. How much of the experience has been compromised in the port to Java and is Let's Golf! (in the Ovi Store) actually any good?
In our latest (and shortest?) Ovi Gaming review, Ewan looks at MotionSpeed, perhaps a modern equivalent to Whack-a-mole. The title comes across well, though it's best played using a device with capacitive screen, which in the Ovi Store world means just the Nokia X6 at the moment. Read on...
As part on our on-going series of games reviews Ewan takes a look at BoxIt2 from inner Acctive. It's a Sokobahn style game, where the aim is solve the box pushing puzzle, over multiple levels. From the game play to the graphics, Ewan finds a well executed implementation of this classic puzzle game, which earns BoxIt2 a thumbs up and a recommended rating.