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The N-Gage booth was really empty most of the time, with most reps just standing around in a circle, talking to each other. But there were some interesting properties coming to the thing, so I had a closer look.
King of Fighters: KOF wasn’t playable, but there was a video on loop at the booth. Unfortunately, this one seems to be a port of KOF EX for GBA, universally recognized as the worst original KOF ever. Rather an unfortunate choice. Hudson is doing the port, so it should hopefully be faithful-ish, but…faithful to a game that’s already quite poor.
Bomberman: this was playable. Bomberman is a fantastic idea for wireless multiplayer…assuming you do it right. So far, Hudson didn’t. The animation is really jerky, to the point of being distracting. 2D really doesn’t seem to work well on the N-Gage, which is really curious. I suppose it’s possible that these are just series 60 games pushed onto the platform, but even then it seems as though they should run smoother.
Xanadu Next: Falcom’s N-Gage offering. I believe I heard that this was being developed exclusively for the Nokia console, which is interesting. The game itself is 3D, unlike the previous mobile game in the series. It’s pretty early, so there’s not a whole lot there yet. But the graphics look fine and the combat is decent. It’s basically a room-by-room dungeon crawler with ARPG tendencies. Could be pretty solid.
What Nokia needs is somebody like Capybara Games (they’re our old pals from OkayFun) that already knows how to make compelling 2D action games for mobile devices. Then start porting Japanese cellphone games like Gradius, megaman and Ys…and there they’d be.
Till then, the skeptics will remain skeptics.
brandon sheffield would still take a free QD though
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