Blog entries about Games

 

 

"It's been awhile since we released our last new title, but for a very good reason. Our latest title, Jaybot's Catchy Cadence is an amazing game, and it's now ready to play!"

Many of you may already have heard of Another World (also known as Out of this World in the US and Outer World in Japan; Wiki page HERE; Abandonia page HERE), which was one of the best vector-graphic action-adventure games back in 1991-1992.

Compatibility

Nicky Boom was a nice platformer game released for the Commodore Amiga and MS DOS back in 1992 (Wiki page HERE).

In my latest Misc News collection, I’ve already recommended Towers Trap, a brand new game on two mobile (Windows Mobile and Symbian S60) and desktop Windows platforms. GameZoneProject’s official page is HERE. No matter what platform you have, I really-REALLY recommend giving the trial a try and play through the (initial) tutorial. (Again, you’ll have text rendering problems on VGA Windows Mobile devices).

Hardware

There’s a really interesting article comparing the built-in camera of the four most widely discussed new Windows Mobile phones: HTC Touch Diamond, HTC Touch Pro, Samsung Omnia, Sony Ericsson XPERIA X1. There is also a dedicated PPCT thread HERE, with some of my comments.

Games

Astraware Fireworks is a simple FREE application, showing sequences of fireworks flying and exploding into the air.

"After more waiting, more work, and more fighting with Ninjas, we've finally released 5 more of our fantastic titles for Windows Mobile 5.0 Smartphones and Windows Mobile 6 Standard devices!"

The following games are now available to play:

Arvale: Journey of Illusion

Arvale II: Ocean of Time

Arvale: Short Tales

Bowling for Burgers

GameBox Gems

They have also updated Plumbing Frenzy and Anthelion 2 to work in landscape mode, and added some features. Go check out all these great titles here...

There are several vertical scroller space shooter games but very few of them are free. Distant Galaxies, available for both Windows Mobile platforms (touchscreen- and touchscreen-less) is one of them. It’s available HERE for download and is recommended, albeit it has some problems.

Another GREAT piece of news for you emulator fans after the recent release of Pocket Commodore 64 3.0 (see review HERE): version 0.14 of FinalBurn, without doubt the BEST arcade emulator, has just been released with many optimizations (most importantly, the CPS-3 core has been rewritten) and compatibility enhancements.

I have never really considered myself a hardcore gamer, but I have to admit that I really enjoy the few games that I do have on my Smartphone right now. They are probably not the newest, shiniest or most intense games on the market, but they sure seem to entertain me well. Since we were asked to review our top three picks this month, I decided to share my own personal preferred "oldies but goodies."

Skyforce and Skyforce Reloaded

The new add-on, Orions: Deckmasters, for probably the best (native) Windows Mobile game of all times, Orions, has just been released. It not only adds 45 (!) brand new cards, but also implements most of the custom features I’ve asked for in my previous Orions articles.

 Boost your word-power with this undersea bubble-bursting brain teaser!

A brain training game for Windows Mobile devices.

Resco Brain Games is a collection of 36 mini-games aimed to give the brain a workout. Thanks to the well designed touch-controlled user interface, it is easy for anyone to pick up and play.

Favorites are always tough to decide upon because your likes and dis-likes change over time.  So when I was asked this question, I had to think about it for a bit then all of a sudden I said, this is easy.  Why?  Because on every new device I get, I always place three games on it and the reason is because I enjoy them so much ... all the time!

I have been a portable electronic gamer since the Mattel LED handheld system era, though the last handheld dedicated gaming device I owned was an Atari Lynx, having less interest to play on a tiny screen with the advent of rapidly evolving PC gaming titles.  However, that focus changed with the advent of the Windows Mobile platform, especially as I used the PC more for programming and network administration and less for pixel blasting.  This especially became a reality once Microsoft provided API's specifically designed for improving the Windows Mobile gaming experience. 

The games I end up playing the most are somewhat addictive. In addition, I find they have the following characteristics. I can:

There is a new game coming to town and if you are into bowling, I think you will find this game to be terrific.  Why?  Read on to find out!

1. Machines at War (see review of a previous version HERE), probably the best RTS (Real-Time Strategy) for Windows Mobile, has been updated to version 1.2, introducing even some new units. Well worth checking out. 2. the free and excellent (!) Doom clone, DoomGLES, has also been updated, now delivering far better GoForce performance. 3. if you still haven’t purchased Orions (the best turn-based strategy game for Windows Mobile) during the last, 40% rebate, now, you have a chance of getting it for free if you post a reply to THIS thread 4. PDAmill has released Pachinko Go!. The blurb is as follows: "What the heck is Pachinko? Gravity, Skill, and Luck! It's a unique game which is kind of a cross between a vertical pinball game and a slot machine which is extremely popular in Japan (and growing more popular worldwide every day). This simple, yet addicting game contains 3 unique Pachinko games in one package, including many unlockable extras to acquire, extending the gameplay even more!" 5. Still speaking of PDAmill, now, after a year of their completely stopping porting their games to the platform, they’ve made available all of their Palm titles for free (!). You can find them HERE. 6. SOTi’s Pocket Controller, which is without doubt the most powerful PDA remote controller solution (see THIS for more info & comparison to the alternatives), is offered for 10 euros (about $15), incl. VAT for EU residents, only till 05/11/2008. Go get it – it’s really a bargain for this price. 7. There’s a new, free platform game Greedy Penguins HERE for both Windows Mobile Pocket PC’s / Smartphones and Symbian S60 / UIQ3. 8. If you’ve read the latest updates to my iPAQ 210 review, you already know this, but it’s still worth devoting a separate bullet in here too: I’ve thoroughly benchmarked the brand new Marvell Xscale PXA310 platform and found out that, unlike even Samsung’s low-end CPU’s, it has the same (high) power consumption upon high CPU load. It’s certainly bad news. The good news is that it’s certainly faster than the PXA270, particularly at playing back AVC stuff now that CorePlayer 1.2.x has added WMMX optimizations. And, according to the CorePlayer folks, this is just the beginning – a lot more optimizations and performance enhancements will follow! (Also see my related, new chipset reports HERE and HERE) 9. The DivX folks have released a new (0.90) beta of their free (!) DivX / XviD player DivX Mobile Player for Windows Mobile and Symbian (note that while they state there’s no 0.90 for the latter, only 0.89, the internal version number does state it’s too 0.90). Note that you’ll need to register yourself in order to be able to access the app; after this, click the URL that comes in the e-mail, change your password and, then, go HERE to directly access the downloads. Back in the pre-1.2.0 CorePlayer times, several Symbian people used to state (see for example THIS, THIS, THIS, THIS and THIS) CorePlayer was definitely inferior to this application. This is why I was extremely interested in the results of my tests. CorePlayer 1.2+ (on all the three test devices) has beaten DivX Mobile Player in every respect. I’ve quickly tested it on several real-world (high-resolution; mostly 576- and 640-wide) DivX- and XviD-encoded videos. It delivered acceptable results on both the two Windows Mobile handsets (HP iPAQ 210 and HTC Universal running Ranyu’s 7.6 of WM6.1) and Symbian (Nokia N95 with firmware version v21) when playing back most DivX videos. There were rarely dropped frames (albeit the playback wasn’t as smooth as under CorePlayer). Playing back my XviD-encoded test video, however, was painfully stuttering under Windows Mobile and a little stuttering under Symbian. (I REALLY recommend THIS video; pay special attention to the camera moving in the second sketch with the office dialog). The same videos played back flawlessly under the latest versions (1.2.3 for WinMo and 1.2.0 for Symbian) of CorePlayer. It isn’t able to play back standard ASP videos created in Nero Recode (after renaming them to .AVI’s so that the player finds them); it complains about being incompatible. (The same videos, of course, play back OK under CorePlayer, as has also been explained in my H.264 Bible.) Of course it won’t play back the much more advanced AVC (H.264) videos either. All in all, you may want to give it a try if you prefer free stuff – but don’t forget: CorePlayer is still much better, more compatible and more efficient. The only drawback of the latter is not being free. 10. New hardware-wise, there is a plethora of new information. See for example THIS (a generic overview), THIS and THIS (HTC Diamond) etc. Of course, these threads / articles will be outdated today with HTC’s official announcements, which will be reported on by many portals; see for example MoDaCo’s related thread HERE and MsMobiles’ HERE). 11. There’s a nice hands-on review of the DVB-T receiving capabilities of the Gigabyte gSmart t600 HERE at MsMobiles. Before I finally publish my Digital TV Bible, it gives you a clear picture of what you can expect of DVB-T-capable handsets, reception capabilities- and battery life-wise. 12. The Xperia X1 will be released in mid-September; see THIS and THIS. According to one of my sources, who received it for beta testing, it does have 3D hardware acceleration, which is certainly very good news. It, however, has a rather bad thumbboard – much worse than those of the HTC Universal or the HTC Kaiser / AT&T Tilt. Now, I only wish it had a digital TV (DVB-T and -H at least for us Europeans; MediaFLO / DVB-H for Americans, T-DMB for Koreans etc.) receiver.... Too bad S-E’s engineers didn’t bother including one or don’t plan to offer a version (even with slightly bigger size) with one.

1. One of the best Pocket PC games of all time, Orions: Legend of Wizards (along with its expansion pack Orions: The Second Age) is sold with a 40% rebate HERE. Definitely worth purchasing it if you already haven’t done so. See my two Orions Strategy Guides for more info (Pocket PC only).