Blog > Archive for July, 2008

Pocket Gamer Reviews Pro Series Golf
“The game is quite far reaching, technically speaking, and taxes the N81 to within an inch of its battery life. The crisp, 3D graphics spare no pixels in recreating authentic fairways, and the game offers a seriously challenging and sincere golfing experience.”

N-Gation Reviews Brothers in Arms
The game receives a Silver Medal, with the author noting, “The game is a rather deep game for a mobile phone, think Call of Duty for mobile, deep rich levels with different levels of difficulty. ”

N-Gage TV Out
In a special feature, All About N-Gage presents a video of N-Gage games running through TV Out, and an editorial on what TV Out means for the future of N-Gage. Could it become much more than just a mobile gaming platform?

N-Gage on Consoles?
Nok-Nok reports the comments of a Nokia panelist at a recent conference, about “looking into” using N-Gage game assets on other platforms such as Xbox Live arcade.

Reset Generation First Impressions

• Pocket Gamer
• IGN
• Gamespy

Hi all, we’re thrilled at the participation in the N-Gage Feedback Forum so far and want to first of all thank everyone for their participation. It’s only been out there for a few days and we’re already learning a lot from it, and how passionate you can be about N-Gage. Needless to say it became apparent quickly that anonymous voting and the ability for people to have multiple accounts was, shall we say, encouraging a bit of “voting exuberance” which needless to say kind of undermines the whole concept of voting itself. To help solve this we have quickly changed some things in the back end so voting from multiple accounts will not work anymore, and we have also turned off anonymous voting so if you want to vote or add an idea you will have to register. We are also planning on removing anonymous votes that were received before we turned off the function so prepare to see the vote totals get a little more realistic.

I also want to reiterate how much we appreciate your feedback and let you know that the product management team is actively reading it, participating, and we have systems in place to bring good ideas that we can implement into the development process. Expect a significant update to the status of ideas in the forum on a monthly basis.

For those of you with premium accounts on FilePlanet, the file downloading service of IGN/Gamespy, you have a unique opportunity for the next seven days to be the first to play Reset Generation.

This is not the full game, but just the single player mode for the PC platform only. This version will be made available to non-subscribers on FilePlanet next Friday, and the full game, featuring cross-platform multiplayer gameplay, will be available for both N-Gage and PC “real soon now.”

In the mean time, we have a new Gamespy preview to enjoy, while Gamasutra has posted up a must-read interview with Executive Producer Scott Foe, with some fascinating insights into the behind the scenes development process, and how games get made at Nokia and in this industry.

And for those of you who can get a hold of Game Informer magazine, check out the August issue for even more Reset Generation love.

So when is the full game coming out? Earlier this week, Pocket Gamer had a report that Reset Generation will be released on August 4th. I checked with Scott Foe to see how accurate this was. His response: “I need more coffee.” So I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

For even more on Reset Generation, be sure to check out our series of interviews called Behind the Scenes of Reset Generation on the main N-Gage.com site.

Happy Friday, friends and neighbors, it’s your friendly neighborhood Ikona here, back from vacation and ready to rock and/or roll.

Sorry, no Top 5 Sales Story for you this week, since the data was unavailable.  However here are some nice links of interest…

Pro Series Golf Reviews

These may be old news to you but they are new to me, so bear with me. N-Gation and All About N-Gage both have posted reviews of Pro Series Golf.  N-Gation gives the game a Gold Medal, while AAN notes, “Is Pro Series Golf worth £8? Undoubtedly yes.”

Pro Series Golf Tutorial

Need help with Pro Series Golf? Long-time N-Gage veteran Shadowspan has put up a handy tutorial on his blog for all to enjoy.

Widsets for N-Gage Forums

N-Gage fan and blogger h0ax has gone ahead and created N-Gage widsets for many of the official N-Gage forums. What is a widset, you ask?

“With WidSets you can get your favorite web content straight to your mobile phone. Find news and information, stay in touch with email and blogs, play games, share pictures and more.” Ta-da! Basically it’s a shortcut on your mobile that lets your browse forums and other web content.

It’s not perfect, as h0ax notes, “You can only see the 1st Post for each topic, and not all topics but its still good for getting a quick update  and you cannot reply to threads either…” but it’s pretty neat anyway, especially for your Forum addicts.

Have fun, but remember these are not official N-Gage downloads and are not supported by Nokia.

To 3D or Not to 3D

All About N-Gage takes a look at an issue near and dear to the hearts of many users: support for 3D hardware on the N-Gage platform. After all, it’s the top issue burning up the charts on our new N-Gage Feedback Forum. (You have checked out our Feedback Forum, right?) .

Writer Tzer2 examines the different options, and concludes, “Ultimately, Nokia should go for whichever option lets them sell the most N-Gage games to the largest number of people.”

For what it’s worth, my understanding is that OpenGL support is still on the roadmap and will be introduced in a future version of the N-Gage SDK. This is something we talked about at GDC back in February, where a demo of ONE running on a 3D chip was shown.

Do you have a suggestion for Nokia regarding our N-Gage program? Do you have a good idea? Are you ready to evaluate the ideas of other N-Gage users in a group setting?

Then you’re in luck! We’ve just rolled out a new tool called the N-Gage Feedback Forum. It’s a social media tool where you can submit your suggestions and evaluate the suggestions of other users.

Give it a try and tell us what you think of this tool in the comments section here.

Hello all!

With Ikona on vacation, i’ve decided to claim the blog for a while (muwhahahah!) and make a post. Anyway, for those players who can’t get enough of Reset, I thought I would post links to a few new articles about my favorite new upcoming game, Reset Generation. At it again, is Master Foe promoting this awesome title out on the road.

 Check out these two articles for a closer look at Reset Generation and what Foe Nuff is up to now.

http://www.portfolio.com/views/blogs/the-tech-observer/2008/07/15/nokias-e3-surprise-no-ones-talking-about

AND

http://pc.ign.com/articles/888/888539p1.html

Also, if you’ve been living under a rock and still playing your Atari 2600, and have no clue what Reset Generation is all about, be sure to check out all the Behind the Scenes information about this legendary title at: http://www.n-gage.com/ngi/ngage/web/g0/en/community/news/news_and_articles.Detail.general-behindthescenes.0.html 

I look forward to defeating you all on the Reset Generation battlefield very soon. Until then, have an awesome week and I’ll see you in the games,

RR

P.S. - Have you seen the article comparing N-Gage to the Iphone? http://www.pocketgamer.co.uk/r/Various/iPhone/feature.asp?c=7687

What are your thoughts?

Ikona is on vacation. I will check in once in a while to approve comments, but if you want to have elaborate discussions please go to the Message Boards. Maybe redrum or xacto will post some blog posts if anything important comes up. Otherwise, sorry, I’m off for a bit!

Your friend,
Ikona

Pro Series Golf has been released in the Showroom on the N-Gage application and is now available for you to try. Navigate to the Showroom tab and select ‘Update Now’ and it should appear at the head of the list.

“Pro Series Golf is an addictive combination of accessible gameplay blended with the emotive rivalry of competitive golf. Going beneath the surface of typical golf simulations, it exposes the heart of this elite sport — deep-seated rivalry and the drive to be the best!”

UPDATE: The game is now also available on the Website game page.

Give it a try and tell us what you think!

Just put up the game page and four interviews for Reset Generation over on www.n-gage.com. Here’s a snippet from the interview with Executive Producer Scott Foe:

“I’ve been dreaming about a game about videogames since I was seventeen. I’ve always been a fan of the fractured fairy tale, but if I had to put darts in the board, I would name Sondheim’s Into the Woods and Tarantino’s Kill Bill as driving inspirations … sleek homages, where you need know nothing of the source material to enjoy, but if you do carry a deep adoration of the source material, you will find more to love each time you visit them.”

Not much more to say than that, so take a look!

NOTE: The link to www.resetgeneration.com on the Game Page does not work because that site is not up yet and won’t be until the game launches. That link should be pointing to www.fortheloveofgaming.com but because of technical limitations that link may not be refreshed for 24-48 hours.

Some quick hits while I finish up today’s content push on the Website…

• Best Selling Games for June 23-June 30
• Mysterious Nokia buzz site, by way of Nok-Nok 
• All About N-Gage Retro Gaming surveys