[General Topics] Menneisyys:
Unfortunately, except for Sean O'Connor's PocketGeneral and Blitsoft’s Battle of the Generals (BoTG for short), there has been no Stratego clones for the Pocket PC. Fortunately, now, Inscenic, developers of well-known title Warring Nations and Creatonia has released a pretty cool implementation, Napoleonix.

Availability, compatibility

The official homepage is here; the ClickGamer download here. The game costs $9.95 and there is an, unfortunately, pretty restricted trial version.

The title is compatible with all WM2003+ devices and I had no problems in running it on my various test Pocket PC’s.

Visuals

Very good – it supports high-resolution VGA.

Music, sounds

Yes, this is an area where Inscenic's games have traditionally been weak. It has no music / sound effects at all. Hope the developer will fix this problem. (Note that the two alternatives don't have in-game music either - except for a short menu tune in Connor's game. BoTG only has in-game beeps and a drum menu tune.)

Some remarks on the alternatives

(Also see the Bible of All Pocket PC Games Part I for more info!)

Sean O'Connor's PocketGeneral is an old, but very good implementation of the game.

Blitsoft’s Battle of the Generals has recently beeen removed from the Net – from both the official homepage and that of all Pocket PC download sources (I’ve checked Handango, PocketGear and ClickGamer). I think this was done because the most recent version, 1.1 (released back in 2003; incidentally, it's the version that I've compared NapoleoniX to), doesn’t support WM5. I don’t know more about when it will be upgraded because the developer’s contact form and forum doesn’t work either. Also see this and this for reviews. Please also see the former on the rules of Stratego.

Note that according to sponge the developer of BoTG is out of business.

Multiplayer

The title also supports real multiplayer (not only plain hotseat - it's also supported here -, as was the case with Warring Nations!) capabilities, which is painfully missing from both BoTG and Connor's Pocket PC game (unlike his desktop Windows version).

The multiplayer uses the best approach, that is, full TCP/IP (see this screenshot) and not, say, LAN multicasting or native Bluetooth connections; that is, to be able to run it without an Internet connection you'll need either a Bluetooth PAN or a Wi-Fi P2P network to be run. Of course, it'll run over traditional Internet connections - as far as the server host isn't behind a firewall or a NAT'ed connection. That is, you'll be able to play even people on the other half of the planet.

Unfortunately, it has no in-game chatting, unlike many other multiplayer-enabled titles.

Note that the only problem in multiplayer mode is exiting on the other PPC when one party surrenders. Restarting the game, however, works in this case too.

Compared to the other two titles,

Pros

REAL TCP/IP MULTIPLAYER!!!!

Much more spectacular, particularly in (the otherwise pretty useless) 3D mode

Hi-Res on VGA devices

Costs the half of that of Connor’s game (Connor's games, while being pretty good, are rather overpriced.)

Shows possible move directions

Excellent built-in help, which can always be invoked. The game rules are explained very well.

Supports WM5, unlike BoTG 1.1

Has no speed problems on the Dell Axim x51v, unlike Sean O'Connor's game (the latter very slow on the A12 x51v; it seems it has no speed problems with other WM5 models)

As opposed to Sean O'Connor's PocketGeneral, automatically rotates the screen to Portrait when you start the game in Landscape mode (and it has built-in portrait/landscape switching, which works even on WM2003 devices). Connor’s game, then, is unplayable and must be exit.

It’s available for purchase / download, unlike BoTG

Cons

“Only” supports WM2003+ (BOTG supports all ARM CPU’s and Sean O'Connor's PocketGeneral also supports very old MIPS / SH3 Pocket PC 2000 devices)

Verdict

Highly recommended for both Stratego fans and people that have never played the game but would like to have a decent, flexible multiplayer game. Give it a try - you'll like it.