Gamertell

Title: Star Wars: The force Unleashed Mobile
Price: $13.49 (N-gage pricing: 1 Day for $2.99, 7 Days for $6.99, Full Version for $13.49)
System(s): Mobile (includes *N-Gage, iPhone, iPod Touch)
Release Date: September 16, 2008
Publisher (Developer): THQ Wireless (Universomo)
ESRB Rating: Not Rated
Pros: Really nice graphics, classic Star Wars sound effects and innovative CellWeaver control scheme.
Cons: Physical design of device’s buttons truly effects the enjoyment and playability. Unskipable cutscenes, Midi soundtrack is instead of MP3. No lightsaber slashing action. Very short.
Overall Score: One thumb up, one thumb down; 78/100; C+; * * 1/2 out of five.

For the Mobile version of this much-publicized Star Wars game, the developers took a cue from the DS release and created a unique control scheme based on the physical nature of the system. All the smartphone incarnations of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed Mobile rely on the phone’s number pad to tap out patterns to activate various Force powers. On the iPhone and iPod Touch, you use the touchscreen to draw similar patterns.

It’s innovative and sometimes fun but not quite the action-filled, lightsaber slashing game you’d expect from the Star Wars franchise.

Click through for the full review…

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Check out the gallery: Star Wars: The Force Unleashed Mobile screen shots

Title: Mile High Pinball
Price: $9.49 ($2.99 for 1 day, $6.99 for 7 days)
System(s): N-Gage
Release Date: May 5, 2008
Publisher (Developer): Nokia (Ideaworks3D)
ESRB Rating: “Everyone”
Pros: Nearly endless pinball action. Great sound effects and pretty decent bumper action. Good pinball-on-the-go game.
Cons: Some boards feel too congested while others have too few but annoying features. Ranked game only as good as your wireless connection.
Overall Score: One thumb up, one thumb sideways; 84/100; B; * * * out of five.

Developed by Ideaworks3D, Mile High Pinball takes that idea to a new extreme offering a tall stack of boards for wannabe wizards to conquer with their thumbs and often, but not always, overcoming the obstacles of a cell phone screen.

Click through for the full review…

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Check out the gallery: Mile High Pinball for N-Gage screen shots

The Escapist has announced that it will be holding the 2008 GamerLympics this August. There will be over 20 events taking place over a two week period from August 8-22, 2008. Some of the highlights include Kongregate.com Game matchups taking place each day of the competition, contests, and a “King of the Hill” Reset Generation Nokia N-Gage event.

The first 2008 GamerLympic events begin on August 8, 2008, with a photo contest, a gamer trivia game and Kongregate Game 1. Events will then resume on August 11 and run until the 15, with more Kongregate Games, movie trivia, a haiku contest, a comic contest and voting on the photo contest entries. The last stretch starts August 18 and ends on the 22nd, with comic contest voting, haiku contest voting, Kongregate Games, Reset Gen event and TV trivia all taking place the final week.

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While the ill-fated N-Gage phone/handheld gaming device quietly disappeared into the night, Nokia has brought back the name as a mobile gaming service. While gamers have every right to be skeptical, it looks as though the service will have at least one big name title behind it.

N-Gage will be home to Japanese publisher Konami’s mobile titles including the upcoming Metal Gear Solid Mobile. The game takes place between the first two Metal Gear Solid titles, and features some surprisingly good 3D visuals and what look like classic…

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Nokia has rolled out the final version of the N-Gage service available on the N-Gage website. It can be downloaded using a PC or straight onto a compatible Nokia cellphone.

The handsets that are currently compatible with the N-Gage application include Nokia N81, Nokia N81 8GB, Nokia N82, Nokia N95, and Nokia N95 8GB. Nokia will continue to add more handsets to the list.

The N-Gage interface is…

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Nokia’s new N-Gage service has been marred by several delays and, in December 2007, the company formally pushed the launch of the service to the first half of 2008. Now with a pre-launch version, N-Gage First Access, being made available to N81 users through the official N-Gage website, the full version can’t be far off. And just before the launch of the service, the ongoing Game Developers Conference proved to be a great platform for the cellphone maker to shed more light on N-Gage’s new avatar as a standard gaming service for Nokia cellphone which will allow users to download and…

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The rebirth of the N-Gage seems to be marred with delays. It was earlier expected in November 2007, but then Nokia announced that the service would be delayed until December. Last week (Thursday, December 13, 2007), an official announcement had it releasing this week. But now there is another twist in the N-Gage tale, with a fresh entry on the official N-Gage blog announcing that the service is going to be delayed further.

All you Nokia phone owners with a passion for video games should forget the N-Gage First Access game service until 2008. According to the post on the blog, the N-Gage service and games are all working smoothly but there is a glitch that will need some fixing. This glitch was unraveled courtesy rigorous testing by the 1000 global testers of the new service.

Nokia hasn’t put a date on the release of the mobile gaming service but expects to fix the issues by the end of this year. There is also a possibility that not all of the big games, expected to be part of the launch line-up, are ready yet.

Read [N-Gage] via [Next-Gen]

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The Nokia N-Gage, the dedicated gaming mobile phone, is lost to history and most see it as a failed wedding of a phone and a gaming device. Meanwhile, Nokia has moved on and is set to launch a new mobile gaming platform with the same name, N-Gage. Before this came about, there were rumors of an N-Gage 2 gaming phone, but then it appeared that the cellphone company had learnt its lessons and decided to focus only on creating a comprehensive game distribution platform for its mobiles.

However, in a fresh development, Nokia has filed a new patent application titled “Handheld Electronic Device.” This new device is described in the application as a “computer game console” which can be used to make phone calls and click photos. Here is an excerpt from Unwired - the patent application that has evoked a lot of interest:

“…is a computer gaming console, input elements 121, 122 being provided for user input by the left hand of a user and input elements 123, 124 being provided for input by the right hand of user. The games are displayed on the display 110, but in other embodiments, the games can additionally or alternatively be provided for display on another electronic device associated with the device. In the present case, the device 100 also allows the user to make radiotelephone calls (e.g. using cellular telephone functionality), take pictures (camera on reverse of device 100 is not shown), and play recorded/streamed audio (e.g. music/speech etc).”

The device looks very sleek and the control options are pretty similar to the PSP (see picture). If this device ever sees the light of the day, then the control options better be good and comfortable, as this has been one major issue with many handheld devices in the past. It is hard to tell at this point whether Nokia has any concrete plans of launching another dedicated gaming device, after the disaster that was the first N-Gage.

Read [Unwired] via [Gizmodo]

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If you weren’t already confused by Nokia’s repruposing of the N-Gage name, get this. Nokia has also announced that it is launching a new web service, Ovi, that combines both the N-Gage service and the Nokia Music Store.

For now the home page has one of those long Flash videos that tries to make the site look cool in lieu of anything useful. Once through the annoy-imation, the links are active, though most of the pages are barebones PR info that makes it sound like Nokia wants in on the social networking game as well.

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To go along with newly reimagined Nokia N-gage platform/service, Vivendi Games Mobile is releasing another game in the Crash Bandicoot franchise.

VU previously released a port of Crash Nitro Kart as an N-Gage cart in 2003. The details for the new Bandicoot game were pretty sparse, only indicating that it will follow “the original storyline where the crazy marsupial must save the world” and be filled with the usual antics and humor found in earlier games. No word on release date, exact game title or pricing.

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