All N-Gage compatible phones can have third party S60 3rd Edition applications installed on them, including emulators of older games systems. iNES lets you turn your Next Gen N-Gage phone into a NES / Famicom console from the 1980s, and some models (Nokia N93, N93i, N95, N95 8GB) even let you play the games through a television set. iNES also supports multiplayer networked play.
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The next N-Gage is "a doorway back to the 1980s, when games were generally simpler, but perhaps more addictive and easier to pick up and play." And thus only require a directional pad and 2 buttons. 😉 Which I guess is why you used the NES and not the SNES as emu example.
Seriously, I'm holding my old NES in honor but let's face it, SNES is where the fun's at. 2 buttons vs. SNES on the other hand is gonna kill the fun UNLESS the additional buttons on the N81 can be reprogrammed and are in a useful position.
(Yes I KNOW, the N81 is not THE n-gage ... and yet as it's the only handset with clear and functional gaming layout (until the N95 proves to be useable similarly) of [pad]screen[buttons] it basically IS the next n-gage.)
Btw. why didn't any of the many symbian bloggers ask Nokia what's up with just 2 buttons? I mean, input-wise the next n-gage is gonna be "gaming like it's 1989". So much for innovation.
"Which I guess is why you used the NES and not the SNES as emu example."
I didn't use SNES because there's no reliable continuously-updated source of SNES emus on S60. iNES gets constant updates, the developer welcomes feedback, and he fixes problems quickly.
"Seriously, I'm holding my old NES in honor but let's face it, SNES is where the fun's at."
So all those people who still play NES games and even pay for NES games on ebay and Virtual Console are just masochists then?
NES games are great fun, look at how well the NES Classics series sold on the GBA.
"Btw. why didn't any of the many symbian bloggers ask Nokia what's up with just 2 buttons? I mean, input-wise the next n-gage is gonna be "gaming like it's 1989". So much for innovation."
Firstly, all the N-gage phones have at least seven buttons in horizontal mode. There are the 2 buttons on the right... and the two soft keys, red key, green key, menu key and (on some phones) own key and multimedia keys. On the N93 there's the entire keypad too. That means all the phones have from 7 to 20 buttons, plus the d-pad.
Secondly, if you think more complex controls = better, then you probably work at the marketing department for the Playstation 3.
Most people nowadays are tending towards games that are simpler to control, with fewer or no buttons required. The whole success of Nintendo's recent consoles and games is based on this stripped-down philosophy where low-tech simplicity is more important than high-tech complexity.
The hugely-popular Warioware on the GBA is possibly the best portable game ever made, and most of it only uses one button.
Java games on phones are enormously popular, they sell in huge quantities, and they generally only use two buttons and the d-pad, many of them just use the d-pad.
The DS is by far the most popular portable console, and many of its biggest hits don't use any buttons at all.
The Wii is by far the most popular home console, and it too barely uses any buttons in many of its biggest hits.
As for lack of innovation, the N-Gage launch game Hooked On is going to let you cast the line by waving the phone, because the phone's camera will act as a motion detector. Isn't that pretty innovative for a mobile game?
A previous game we've included on the Next Gen Hors D'oeuvre series is The Journey, which lets you move in the game world by moving in the real world. Again, isn't that quite an interesting idea?
And Nokia's just announced that S60 models next year will have touchscreens and accelerometers, so, given time for that to become widely adopted, that could allow both DS and Wii style games on the N-Gage platform.
Not been in touch with S60 for 2 years. Is vsun from vampent outdated? Worked great on the old n-gage.
I don't say NES games aint fun, I just say many SNES games are much better. Been playing games for more than 20 years now, own(ed) many systems, yet I'd say SNES games still rank among the best ever produced.
More than 2 buttons for input aint bad. Whoever states that must be in complete denial of the success of all the consoles that came after the NES / Sega MS. Even the DS, which you say has great input, comes with 4 buttons.
Of course some of it's games can be played button-less, but therefore it's got a touchscreen, something the N81 obviously hasn't. Obviously, handling more than 2 buttons is not too difficult for the majority of games. But it does allow for more indepth gameplay.
So, why 4 (or just more-than-2) buttons you probably wonder? Let's see:
Racing - Accelerate, brake, handbrake, nitro, map, shift, rearview, camera change ...
Battle racing - same as above plus weapon select, fire (and jump - if it's Super Mario / Crash Bandicoot cart racing)
Fighting - hard kick, quick kick, hard punch, quick punch
Platform - jump, switch weapon, fire, alt. fire
...
The original n-gage had more buttons and I don't remember any game being too difficult to master input-wise. So why devolve?
Remember those N-Gage 2 concept shots from a year or so back? They had it all done right there with a slide revealing 4 gaming buttons. They could've just done that with the N81: Slide up get's you 4 buttons, slide down the number pad. It's basically all there already in the N95, so why not adapt it for gaming instead of multimedia?
Even if next-next-n-gages will have touchscreen and all, the buyers of N81 et al won't. Course that'll be good someday but as for now, it's not a valid argument in favor of the platform.
The accelerometer gaming from the Wii is - apart from some very few niche games - pretty much useless for mobiles since the input device also holds the screen. Kinda hard swinging your tennis racket if you don't see the ball, right?
Besides, personally, I not a fan of the Wii input anyway. Novelty for sure, but for "serious" gaming ... I'll prefer a PS joypad any day.
The journey (which btw. is hellishly boring imo) isn't from Nokia and while the input method is original, it's not exactly useful for standard gaming (unless you want to run around the bus/tram/train during rush hour, jumping on seats in order to play a jump and run e.g.) . The camera-as-steering input was done some 3(?) years ago for the first time, also not by Nokia and while yet another fun novelty, proved another input useful just for niche games (like fishing).
While other phones (like the super expensive, heavy and way too big brick called N93i) may offer more than just 2 usable buttons, I'm realy curious to see how/if it works with the N81. I don't realy see how it's two soft keys, red key, green key, menu key are useful. For one pushing them means not using the pad at the same time (what makes em useless for action packed games) and for two, I guess they'll be used for standard functions just as they were on the original n-gage.
But don't get me wrong. I'm actualy looking forward to getting my hands on an N81. I realy need another gaming phone. I just don't understand the downgrade in input options (and since no one from Nokia's been interviewd on it, at least not on any of the blogs I visit, I'm still at wonder). I'm also an emu fan and having just 2 buttons will/would realy cripple that part.
I think you misunderstand the point of the Next Gen N-Gage platform.
Nokia aren't setting out to create a gaming machine, this is not an N-Gage 2. They've actually said that exact phrase many many times.
Nokia are setting out to create a gaming platform that will work on the widest possible range of S60 phones, in order to get the widest possible userbase. It's meant to be a next generation replacement for Java games, and that's the context you should judge it in.
The question you should be asking isn't whether Next Gen N-Gage is better than console games, but whether Next Gen N-Gage is better than Java games.
That's why the Next Gen N-Gage games are so cheap, 6 to 10 euros is the price you'd pay for Java games. Console games cost five times more than that. Next Gen N-Gage games are impulse buys which you can download straight onto the phone and charge to your phone bill. There's a minimal barrier between having the game and not having it.
The more gaming-oriented controls you add, the more difficult it is to integrate into a wide range of phone models, and the smaller the userbase that the platform has. That's totally the opposite to how Java has become successful, Java has done well precisely because it's on such a vast number of phones and works on almost any phone layout.
The N-Gage failed partly because it was too phone-like for console users, and too console-like for phone users. Nokia's now decisively going down the phone route rather than getting stuck in the middle.
If you want a gaming-oriented device, get a DS or PSP or GP2X, you'll be far happier with them because they are actually gaming-oriented devices. The GP2X in particular is brilliant for emulation, and like the N93 and N95 it has a TV Out so you can play emulated games on a big screen just as they were originally intended.
The Next Gen N-Gage platform is not a console, it never will be. It's a phone gaming platform like Java, and Java games tend to have very simple controls. Java games also outsell console games, which is why Nokia would want to go down the phone route. Phones sell over 1000 million units a year, consoles sell maybe 30 million a year. Even if only 1 in 10 people use their phone for gaming, that still makes phone gaming three times more popular than console gaming.
My first and most-loved gaming system was the Sinclair ZX Spectrum computer from the 1980s which had an entire keyboard of buttons. By your input-oriented standard, consoles themselves were a huge step backwards for gaming.
The whole original point of consoles was that they were simplified and easy to use. The complexity came later, and judging from the sales of the Wii it seems the complexity was generally a mistake which held consoles back from reaching a wider audience.
And, just to repeat things: ALL N-GAGE COMPATIBLE PHONES HAVE FROM 7 to 20 BUTTONS IN HORIZONTAL MODE, AND ALL OF THEM HAVE 20 BUTTONS IN VERTICAL MODE.
Thank you.
😊
PS: You don't need to get on a bus to complete "The Journey", you just need to walk round your neighbourhood. That might be too strenuous for the average console gamer, but many people do actually enjoy games which involve moving about (athletics, football, tennis, cricket etc etc), and even many gadget-fans have gotten into physical activites such as geocaching. The best thing a new gaming idea can do is widen a gaming platform's audience.
PPS: Yes, the camera movement thing has been done before, but the same was true of the Wii controller and the DS touchscreen, which had appeared on PCs and PDAs many many years previously. Sometimes it takes repeated and more refined attempts before a new gaming concept catches and people start getting into it.
PPPS: Emulation isn't "crippled" if you use the phone in vertical mode, which still gives you a much higher resolution than the original N-Gage ever had. Emulation is even less crippled if you use the N95 or N93 TV Out feature along with a Bluetooth keyboard, which lets you play computer games EXACTLY as they were intended to be played, on a television with a full size keyboard.
PPPPS: You can't directly compare Wii home console accelerometer games with portable accelerometer games, they're designed for two totally different uses. The Nokia 5500's built-in Groove Labyrinth game uses the built-in accelerometer to let you steer a marble through a maze by tilting the phone while looking at the screen. It is possible to use accelerometers with portable games systems, and I wouldn't be surprised if Nintendo includes an accelerometer in the sequel to the DS.