N-Gage Games Roundup

The issues surrounding the swapping of the MMC cards (opening the unit, taking out the battery, etc) are now largely irrelevant since the games have all been hacked and can now be loaded onto a single MMC card. Half a dozen games will fit on a 64MB card, but if you’re wanting to carry around other stuff, go get a 128MB card or larger. I have a bunch of theories about why Nokia chose to lock games onto cards when the device has only one card slot, but none of them are especially complimentary so I’m probably missing part of the puzzle. Suffice to say, Nokia, if you’re reading this, just release .sis install files on an 8cm CD — they’ll fit in your cute little cases and probably sell a lot better.

The screen is too small

The screen is approximately the same height as the GBA screen, and a little more than half the width, but the pixels are smaller. Rather than resulting is a high definition image, it results in tiny details too small to see properly. Tomb Raider is the worst offender with significant eye strain after only about 20 minutes of play. SonicN in letterbox mode suffers the same fate. Nokia would have done well to find a way to make the screen simply larger. It’s doesn’t need more pixels, they just need to be bigger. Other than size, the screen quality is excellent.

The battery life is weird

There must be something wrong with the way the battery’s charge is reported because sometimes playing a game for 30 minutes will have no effect on the status of the battery, but sometimes the same amount of gameplay will result in in losing half the battery charge. Ignoring that it’s hard to tell what’s really going on, the commercial MMC games appear to drain the battery far faster than normal Series 60 games. Since there’s no extra video hardware in there, it’s probably something to do with RAM usage.

The packaging is cool

The cases that the games come in are exactly half the height of a DVD case but the same width and thickness. In many DVD storage units two N-Gage titles will fit in place of a single DVD. I’d love to get my hands on a batch of these cases for a project I’m working on.

The 3D quality is better than the GBA

Sorry Nintendo, but the N-Gage’s 3D abilities are better than the GBA’s. Both units do a great Super Monkey Ball Jr, and both are capable of playing Doom (though I haven’t been able to do a direct comparison), Judging by the GBA’s efforts on Crazy Taxi, it wouldn’t even be able to get close to Tomb Raider. Were I a games company with PSX assets, I’d be seriously considering porting my old games to the N-Gage. Where the GBA does a great job of SNES games, only the N-Gage offers a portable near-PSX experience. However…

I’d prefer some original titles

The initial batch of N-Gage games have all been available in some form before. I already owned GBA Super Monkey Ball Jr before I bought the N-Gage version and while it has different levels and mini-games I’m told Sonic N is a direct port of the GBA version. Tomb Raider is of course the original version. Pandemonium is an old game but I never got around to it back in the day, so that’s cool. Puzzle Bobble is an ancient franchise (I’ve got original GB versions of it) and even Puyo Pop came out on the GBA first. The next title I’m buying is Taito Memories, which is a collection of vintage games. Makes me want to write something original myself.

Wireless multiplayer is sweet, if you can find another N-Gage

I almost had a game of Puzzle Bobble through two walls and a floor, but that was a bit of a push. That’s the only time I’ve been within range of another N-Gage, other than a display model, in the month and a bit since I bought mine. I have different problem getting my multiplayer on with a GBA and that’s that you really need two copies of the game to be able to play multiplayer, despite the games with (limited) single-cart options. Ironically, the availability of pirated N-Gage games means I’m more likely to be able to enjoy the purchases of those games that support Bluetooth multiplayer (which strangely doesn’t include Super Monkey Ball Jr).

GPRS costs are too expensive to really enjoy the on-line functions

In Australia, even moderate use of mobile data services will add 30% onto my monthly bill. Like broadband, it isn’t worth it just for some limited network gaming options. Give me a good stand-alone game any time. If only I could connect to the Internet through my Bluetooth-enabled Laptop’s network connection. Anyway, the hacked copies that you can install onto your MMC data card specifically removed Arena play as a courtesy to Nokia.

Loading Times

Because of the nature of the MMC media and the fact that some of the games appear to be heavily compressed (Tomb Raider has been shoe-horned into 8Mbytes) there can be considerable level loading times. Tomb Raider and Pandemonium appear to be the worst offenders. It means that if you want a quick game of something, you’ll need to choose your title carefully.

So, in order, my recommendations are:

1. Pandemonium — though I might be enjoying it the most because I’ve never played it before
2. Super Monkey Ball Jr — loses out on first place because it just doesn’t have enough replay value and is lacking multiplayer support.
3. Sonic N — I’m enjoying it as much as I’ve enjoyed any of the 2D Sonic titles.
4. Tomb Raider — If you like the original, you’ll enjoy having Lara in your pocket.
5. Puzzle Bobble — I like the game, but it suffers from the small screen.
6. Puyo Pop — I’ve seen shareware games of better quality.