Over at All About N-Gage, we've been reviewing Snakes - no, not the recently released N-Gage official 'Snakes Subsonic', but the existing N-Gage-compatible Snakes original, looked at in the light of the current N-Gage platform releases. In short, Snakes was just about the perfect game when Ewan reviewed it a while back and it still holds its own today, at every level. And sets the bar high for N-Gage games themselves.
If you run N-Gage games on a Nokia N95, its multimedia keys automatically turn into gaming keys equivalent to those on the N81 or N96. There still seem to be a lot of people unaware of this, or even claiming that we're mistaken, so we've done a very short video showing this feature in action. Click here to see it...
Jamba is a well known name in mobile games, and the strength of their distribution channel means that their in-house games development team, working under the Ojom banner, is no longer required to keep the flow of content in the stores (reports MoCoNews). This doesn't change affect any other in-house team, including their ring-tone creation business.
Nokia has just sent out a mailshot to gamers trumpeting Worms World Party and Pro Series Golf (plus MHP and Snakes Subsonic), so I'm guessing that these two new games will be appearing in the N-Gage download area imminently. Or else it's a Nokia marketing screw-up. Place your bets.
Have you had trouble installing N-Gage on your phone? Need some help with using the application? Want to know what other kinds of games your N-Gage-compatible phone can run? Perhaps you should check out a new site called the N-Gage School, which contains videos and step-by-step tutorials aimed at people of all skill levels, with more tutorials to be added on a regular basis. (Incidentally, to make things clear, the N-Gage School is written by yours truly, but it has no official connection to AAN or AAS.)
With a passion for Snakes and armed with N-Gage on his trusty Nokia N95, Ewan Spence was the logical choice of reviewer for the brand new Snakes Subsonic. Unfortunately, Ewan reckons that the three year old original is slicker and smoother in most departments and that the new Snakes implementation suffers from numerous design and performance issues. Here's the full review of Snakes Subsonic.
In AAS Insight 26, the latest All About Symbian podcast, covers opinion on new devices (HTC Touch Diamond, Apple iPhone 3G, Blackberry Bold), looks ahead to the S60 Summit, gives a first impression on the Nokia N78, the N-Gage games transfer issue and the launch of Nokia Maps 2.0.
In its latest hardware feature, All About N-Gage takes a brief look at the N95 as a games machine. It turns out to be actually rather good, due to N-Gage and S60 games working in horizontal mode, and being able to use the multimedia controls as N-Gage gaming buttons. Those new to the N95 should also see the links to AAS's review of it as a general phone, which are at the bottom of the page.
Nokia have responded with good news on the N-Gage Game transfer issue that AAN highlighted earlier this week. They say they 'have been working on a solution that would allow people to transfer purchased N-Gage games to a new Nokia device' and are working with Nokia Care Centers on an intermediate solution. It's excellent to see Nokia to respond in a positive and timely manner. Read on for the full statement.
Ferrari World Championship seems to have been a high profile game announcement that was followed by a very low profile release (e.g. it's not even in Nokia's Download! system) - but unnecessarily so, since it turns out to be great fun and one of the best Java games to yet appear. Cross-platform and running on just about any phone or smartphone, here's my full and illustrated Ferrari World Championship review. Highly recommended.
The eagerly-awaited next gen N-Gage game Snakes Subsonic is now available from the N-Gage application's showroom. However, one of us couldn't see it even after selecting "Update Now", click on the headline to find out how this problem was solved.
The N-Gage platform aims to usher in a new age of high quality connected phone gaming. However if you upgrade to a new phone, you cannot transfer any of your N-Gage games from the old phone. In a special feature article All About N-Gage looks at why this is such a damaging policy for N-Gage, what the unintended consequences are, and a number of potential solutions. Will Nokia change their minds on this issue? Update: Looks like Nokia has indeed now changed their minds, their official blog has announced a game transfer system is on the way! Read the Nokia blog's statement.
Konami and Nokia have announced that a number of Konami Mobile titles will be added to the N-Gage platform. The first game will be the award winning Metal Gear Solid Mobile, which a 3D tactical espionage action game that sees the player carrying out solitary infiltration. The game is being developed in conjunction with Ideaworks3D and using its Airplay 3.5 SDK.
In the spirit of better-late-than-never, we've finally done a brief summary of how the N81 / N81 8GB performs as a gaming phone for All About N-Gage's hardware section. This aspect of the N81 was missing from All About Symbian's original review of the phone as the N-Gage platform hadn't launched at the time, and we felt it was unfair to judge an N-Gage phone without N-Gage games.
How good were the good old days? Over on the ‘Obstacles can Kill’ blog, Eric has put away his N95 8GB and switched to his old N-Gage QD for 24 hours to see just how well it would compare to today’s feature packed phones. The result is mixed; while the gaming experience was still unsurpassed, the improvements in the S60 interface render the QD’s v1 interface lacking massive number of tricks and tweaks he has come to rely on.