Over on All About N-Gage, we've just published a special in-depth article looking at the pros and cons of touchscreen phone gaming, and we ponder whether Nokia should start making touch-based N-Gage games. Is touchscreen gaming the mainstream future or just a niche market? And does it matter either way?
Although Hidden Expedition: Titanic didn't make Ewan's 'must buy' list, it certainly proves a well presented, well programmed interesting diversion, up to Astraware's high standards for S60 3rd Edition and UIQ 3 games. Here's the full review.
Over on All About N-Gage, we've just published a guide to S60 3rd Edition games, or "unofficial N-Gage games" as we like to call them. If you're new to S60 gaming, you might want to check out this article which goes through what S60 games are, where you can get them, how you install them and which games you should download or buy. It's written with owners of N-Gage-compatible phones in mind, but the article could equally apply to almost all S60 3rd Edition devices.
Gaming was also fairly high on the agenda at the S60 Summit. Ewan was in the room and taking copious notes - here's his report on Nokia's strategies and expectations for N-Gage for the next few years.
E90 owner Attila Katona has a problem. Since upgrading to the E90, he's found that most native S60 games don't make good use of the device's huge screen. With that in mind, here's a record of his mission to seek out games, from any source, that do use the E90's display more effectively.
The Doctor Who brand may conjure up a vision of a game that's rather different to the one reviewed here. Top Trumps Doctor Who is a new commercial game for mobiles and we couldn't resist setting our resident time lord expert onto it in order to evaluate..... evaluate... evaluate...
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...
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.
The ad-funded mobile games portal 123play.com just launched, with a decent selection of modern (though not quite top tier) Java games, I've been looking at half a dozen of these below the break, so read on. Anyone downloading a 123play.com game before June 17th also gets entered into a draw to win a Nokia N81 8GB, so there's double interest here.
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 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.