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Remember the Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge series on the home computers of the late 80's / early 90’s? Ever wanted a game similar to them on the Pocket PC? Now, you can!

Apart from Kart games (please see this roundup of them), there have been very few “light”, "arcade" racing games on the Pocket PC. The new, reviewed title, therefore, really welcome – despite its problems on VGA devices and lack of 2700G support.

Availability

The game is available here for all popular handheld platforms (MS Pocket PC and Smartphone; Palm; S60 and UIQ).

Note that the official homepage of the developer (still) doesn’t have a trial version online; ClickGamer (see link above) does. That is, visit the latter for the trial version.

Compatibility

It’s compatible with all my WM2003+ (no PPC2k2 support, sorry) devices. I’ve tested it on the following devices without problems: WM5 VGA Dell Axim x51v (A12), WM2003SE VGA Pocket Loox 720, WM5 VGA iPAQ hx4700 (2.01; bad controls - D-Pad is not gaming-friendly!), WM5 QVGA HTC Wizard (clocked at the default 195 MHz), WM2003 QVGA iPAQ h2210.

Differences between Palm and Pocket PC versions

I’ve also tested the game on my Palm Tungsten T3 to find out the differences between the different mobile platform implementations (in this case, Pocket PC and Palm). It runs great on it too, even in HiRes+ (320*480 mode) (with, of course, high car / track rendering resolution). To get the best speed, you’ll want to run it in plain HiRes (320*320) mode though. Unfortunately, on Palm OS HiRes+ devices, it doesn’t support Landscape mode mode at all, unlike on Pocket PC's.

The most important difference between Palm and Pocket PC is the lower sound / music sampling frequency on the latter. On Palms, the in-game music / sounds sound considerably better than on the Pocket PC. This should also be fixed in a subsequent PPC version.

Controls

D-Pad only; there is no way to (fine) control the car with the stylus, as opposed to, say, GeoRally EX (review here, in the second part of ALL 2700G-enabled games and demos) and like Stuntcar Extreme (review of the 2700G version here and the multiplayer capabilities of the title in the Pocket PC Multiplayer Bible). This, on one hand, understandable (after all, stylus control can greatly decrease the speed of the game on some devices – for example, see the example of Skyforce Reloaded on the iPAQ h2210 and the HTC Wizard. This, unfortunately, also means it’s pretty unplayable on devices with non-gaming-friendly controls (most importantly, the HP iPAQ hx4700).

The landscape mode is available only via OS-level and not in-game switching. This is bad news for WM2003 users – in WM2003, there are no OS-level landscape switching capabilities.

Note that you must use left-handed (NOT the default right-handed one!) landscape mode in order to be able to have the D-pad in a non-inversed mode!

Visuals

Pretty good, particularly considering it doesn’t use any kind of hardware acceleration.

On VGA devices, it’s a bit slow (but still tolerable) and you can’t switch back to QVGA resolution. The latter is a big problem. Note that it runs with approximately the same speed on all the three VGA devices I’ve tested it on (hx4700, x51v and PL720).

Sounds

The sounds aren’t bad, albeit they are all in mono, as opposed to, say, Michael Schumacher Racing World Kart (see Mario Kart games on the Pocket PC). The in-game and the menu music repetitive but pretty good – just like what a “light” racing game should have.

Summary

Pros

Very fast on QVGA devices, even on older (for example the iPAQ h2210) and “slow” (see for example the non-overclocked HTC Wizard) devices and even in landscape mode

Hi-Res track / car (but NOT ambient buildings / trees!) resolution on VGA (and on Palm OS) devices

Cons

Considerably slower on VGA devices than on QVGA ones

No 2700G support (bad news for Dell Axim x50v/x51v users)

Lack of Landscape support for WM2003 devices

Inconsistent menu exit/enter button over different PPC models if you don’t have dedicated (or assigned) WM5 softkey buttons. For example, on some devices (for example, the PL720), it’s Today / Action ; on other devices different (for example, on the iPAQ 2210, iTask / Calendar)

No stereo in-game sound / music

Lower sound / music sampling frequency on Pocket PC than on the Palm

No multiplayer capabilities (unlike MicroQuad – see Mario Kart games on the Pocket PC), Stuntcar Extreme and the “original” Lotus series

Verdict

Recommended. Go get it if you’re a fan of “light” racer games, you’d like to have a Lotus-like game on your Pocket PC and you happen to have any QVGA device. If you have a VGA device, you can also give it a try to see whether you can live with the considerably lower frame rate.

Recommended links

Mario Kart games on the Pocket PC

The Games category in the Smartphone & Pocket PC Magazine Expert blogs