[General Topics] Menneisyys:
Games & emu news: SmartGear; Multiplayer CoD2 update; PDAMill: Corsair; Plasma Duel

It was just a few days ago that I published the last part of my Games & emulator news series. In the meantime, a lot has happened; therefore, I decided to publish the new part much earlier than I planned to.

(Note that all the reviewed / listed titles are Pocket PC-only, except for, of course, SmartGear, which also supports the MS Smartphone platform.)

First and foremost, I’ve finished publishing my article series on Emulators – the only REAL and up-to-date guides for emulating computers, calculators and gaming consoles on Windows Mobile, Pocket PC and MS Smartphone alike. I’m pretty sure I’ve fixed the, after the generic Games category (which was fixed last year with a heretic effort on my, Allen Gall’s and Hal Goldstein’s part) most problematic category of the Smartphone & Pocket PC Mag annual Awards of Best Software; that of emulators. You’ll soon see the results in both the Encyclopedia of Software & Accessories and the Best Software Awards 2007 public nomination lists as soon as I get all the emulator products into the database (which is quite a lot of work as all emulator authors need to be contacted, be made enter their products themselves and so on) and some of them nominated. I’m pretty sure we’ll no longer receive criticism like that of, for example, Rirath HERE and HERE. On the contrary - I'm pretty sure everybody will be VERY pleased with the results.

Now let’s move on and take a look at the new developments.

Brand new, 0.26 version of BEST Smartphone (and highly recommended Pocket PC) gaming console emulator SmartGear out!

It has fixed some of the sound issues (the sound of the emulator, as has also been pointed out in my articles, used to leave a lot to be desired); more sound fixes will follow.

PDAMill releases The Corsair, a Crosshair / Shooting Gallery game

There have been many Crosshair / Shooting Gallery (some may also call them Light-gun games, even without the actual usage of a light-gun) games. As is also explained in the Wiki, this genre, on arcade / home consoles and home computers, includes the Virtua Cop, the Time Crisis and House of the Dead series, Blood Bros., Cabal, Laser Invasion, NAM-1975 and Operation Wolf . While these just-listed titles don’t natively exist for the Pocket PC and you can rely on emulating these console / computer platforms (in which the Windows Mobile platform is pretty good at, except for emulating the Commodore Amiga), you won't really find the emulated versions any fun: unfortunately, as most gaming consoles didn’t ever have mouse support and, with home computers, mouse emulation is either mostly flaky (see the example of CastCE, the Atari ST emulator, where you need to “drag” the mouse pointer) or non-existing (see for example the totally lacking mouse emulation in C64 emulators, including the Neos mouse emulation to play Operation Wolf). That is, you will need to rely on using the D-pad to control these games, which is far from ideal.

The only two platforms that, generally, have emulators to offer flawless mouse pointer emulator, Commodore Amiga and MS-DOS, both have problems running Operation Wolf, as has also been explained in my related emulation articles. The Amiga emulator, PocketUAE, can’t swap the disks of this two-disk game (and the game, being released in 1988, still doesn’t handle multiple Amiga floppy drives or hard disks) and all MS-DOS emulators have major mouse control problems with OpWolf.

Some conversions / shooting gallery games do exist for the Pocket PC; for example, Pop Drop by Momentum Games, Shape Shifter by Astraware and Turbo Reaction 2 by MoreGames Entertainment. In my opinion, they aren’t as amusing as classic titles like Operation Wolf (the latter played with a mouse, of course).

If you’re a fan of these games, you will certainly welcome PDAMill’s new title, The Corsair, which is pretty much like the ones above. It has pretty great, professional, stereo (!) music, nice sound effects and (QVGA – don’t expect high-resolution VGA graphics) graphics. It’s pretty much like Operation Wolf in that you also need to shoot at flying targets like bombs while trying to avoid shooting down innocent girls (just like hostages / medical crew in OpWolf).

In general, I do recommend it if you’re looking for an entertaining and professionally written, albeit VERY shallow and a bit overpriced ($19.95 – I’m pretty sure there will be some rebates in the near future) game. If you look for a game with some substance (or just fnd the price too high), on the other hand, never ever consider this title – go for, say, Orions: Legend of Wizards instead. Also, if you dislike traditional Shooting Gallery games, stay away from the title – however much it has great graphics and sound, you’ll find it just too shallow. Otherwise, give it a try - you'll find it cool.

(News source & further discussion: PG.org)

Call of Duty 2 has received the long-awaited Multiplayer update!

I’ve been waiting for this for over 7 months and, now, it’s here! Hope I soon receive a review / trial code so that I can report on its multiplayer capabilities (see my Multiplayer Bible HERE), glitches, problems, tested on no less than four Pocket PC’s at the same time! Right now, not much is known, expect that it uses Wi-Fi P2P. No word on BT PAN or TCP/IP.

(News source & further discussion: PG.org)

Secretwood releases Plasma Duel for Windows Mobile

You may also want to check out this game, a cross between Arkanoid and Pong, particularly if you’re looking for a hotseat multiplayer game played at the same time, one player controlling its pod with the D-pad, the other with the stylus.

(a screenshot of setting it up)

It, unfortunately, has some bugs; for example, it lacks an icon (no associated icon is displayed by the operating system); there’s no way of exiting the game; after setting the buttons in Options, it’s not possible to exit the menu at all etc. Hope these bugs will be ironed out and, maybe, some kind of wireless multiplayer support introduced, making it possible to play the game on two connected Pocket PC’s to avoid having to using the same Pocket PC (and to avoid the party using the D-pad be in a worse position, pad controllability-wise, than the other.) I've tested the game on several Pocket PC's; these problems surfaced on all of them.

(News source: PPCT)

Notable reviews published in the meantime:

Al Harrington’s Astraware Solitaire review

Pocket PC Thoughts has collected the Mastersoft Brain School Reviews from Around the Web; the list is available HERE

JAMM has just published their The Arcade: A Monthly Roundup of Freeware Games, which is, as usual, worth checking out.