Color LCD cell phone games. Any good?

[Zaxxon]

Has anyone here played any of these Sprint Vision or Motorola color cell phone games? How are they and how do they compare to GBA or Atari Lynx games. I've seen Super Monkey Ball in a TV ad. Is development on these platforms closed to everyone but the cell phone companies?

[zektor]

I saw a friend of mine playing one game on it. Space Invaders. It looked and sounded really good. The thing is, the games have to be paid for and downloaded. He only downloaded the one so far.

[Raccoon Lad]

I've worked on a couple Cell Phone games: Night Stalker, and touched up the art on Jamdat Bowling.
Most of the cell phones run strictly in Java, and that's what you have to program the games in. Nightstalker, a 4K intellivision game, ended up at around 50K when ported to a java based cell phone. The real problem with making games for the phones is that the processors aren't very powerfull, and to make things difficult, the high level progamming language slows them down quite a bit.

[Anonymous]

all the Vision phones come with a demo of Super Monkey Ball. I haven't downloaded any games yet, but they seem to be akin to the kind of e-greeting card java games you get in your inbox from time to time. The Super Monkey Ball one is pretty cool, it has all the same look and style but is overhead and tailored into a puzzle style game which has you pushing blocks and getting through mazes as often as you are avoiding holes and collecting bananas. good game just make sure you get a phone with a good d pad.

[Zaxxon]

Do you have to pay to download these games every time you want to play them or do you just pay once and you own it like a ringtone?

[Anonymous]

On a whim I decided to buy pac man for my phone (Hitachi p300 on sprint). The way it works is: You can choose from a list of games on sprint's website (there are other websites that have ringers/images/games, but aren't "official". I'll get back to that). There were some original games (generic stuff), one or two based on licenses but original content (super monkey ball), and one Intellivision emulated game (astrosmash).

I guess the way it works is with most games, you buy a license (pac man was one of the most expensive ones at 4.99 for unlimited use), which gives you the right to download the game, and once you download it, you can choose it and play it whenever you want regardless of whether you are online. The vault idea (storing games in a secure place to download whenever you want) is a great idea since storage on the phones is limited (naturally), and you keep the game even if you fry your phone or switch models. and the sprint vision plan is unlimited, so there's no worry about using minutes downloading the game (not that it matters, these suckers are 2-3 times faster than 56k and will eventually be faster than DSL).

As far as gameplay goes, all the Sprint phones have in their design spec a 4 way digital pad, so you have your dpad on the phone. the model I bought has a joystick type pad (similar to the eraserhead mouse controllers on older laptops), and works pretty darn well. The pac man game is a java emulated game, and plays as well as can be expected on a small cellular phone. It won't win any awards for gameplay, but the board and pellet placement is true to the real board, and despite some choppiness, is fun. The phone also tracks high scores in all three modes (easy, normal, and "original"-read hard), which is very good considering you won't be able to compare scores with other versions of the game due to the distinctly non-emulated (yet VERY faithful) nature of the game. Also, the screen, while small, is very easy to see even with the black background. the Hitachi p300 screen is what the GBA screen should have been, but I digress...

As for paying for games, a friend of mine has already figured out how to generate files for ringtones and images and how to host them so I don't have to pay for ringtones or images at all. For those less hypertextually inclined, there are a million places that do this for you at a much lower charge than sprint (www.matrixm.com (http://www.matrixm.com) and www.midiringtones.com come to mind) and also have some free content as well. I haven't found any free games yet, but frankly I'm not looking for them yet. You can either have these places send you the image by calling your phone or they will set up a "locker" (similar to the vault) with a web address that you can access via the browser on your phone to click on the link to begin the download.

If you have any other questions, feel free to ask. I'm having a ton of fun with my phone so far, and reccomend it to anyone.

[Zaxxon]

Thanks for the answers. I want to get one of these when my current cell phone contract expires. I kinda wanted a GBA but it was like when am I ever going to use it and I'm not going to carry it around with me everywhere just in case. These new game system/cell phones solve that problem. That bums me out that these games are running in Java. Isn't there a way to program directly to the hardware? When I think of Java games I think of crappy, novelty stuff that's amusing for about 2 minutes.

[Anonymous]

Well let me put it this way: I wouldn't buy the phone just for the games. They are neat, and pac man does do a pretty good job of passing the time (as does super monkey ball), but the hardware definitely isn't for playing games. I'd suggest trying a phone out before you buy it. I gush about my phone, but I'm a bit of a technophile so waiting for things to load and dealing with choppiness/weird glitches is part of the hobby for me. If you just want a quick simple phone, then you might want to wait until mid to late next year when the "real" smartphones come out.

[Anonymous]

Just an FYI I switched phones out today. I exchanged my Hitachi P300 for a Sanyo 5300 (the one with a built in camera, it's superfly!). If you can, get this phone if you want to play games with it. it comes with a demo for Ms. Pac Man, which is good, and the pac man game I purchased previously is much much better on the Sanyo 5300.

The screen is huge and bright and pac man looks way better (and plays smoother) on it. You can actually see the eyes of the ghosts looking in the direction they are going now. So in short, if you're buying a phone for the games, get the Sanyo 5300 (it's the best phone out there anyways).