The Games:

This is probably what most of you care about anyway. I demoed all of the games they had on display. These included: Sonic N, Pandemonium, Bubble Bobble Vs., Kart Racing, Tomb Raider, Space Invaders, and Virtually Board Snowboarding. These games looked early, but gave me a good idea of how these games will play.

So far, out of all of them Space Invaders and Pandemonium are the best of the bunch, but that’s not saying much. Space Invaders is a decent but basic port, but in the end it’s not revolutionary. Control was rather sketchy with Pandemonium, and there was some basic slowdown. As far as the rest, there wasn’t anything that really jumped out at me. Sonic N looked like a port of Sonic Advance, but with a horrible frame rate. Bubble Bobble Vs. had really small bubbles in the 2 player mode they had playable, which made it rather hard to distinguish the different colors of the bubbles. Tomb Raider looked like the pixilated version of the original PlayStation version, and control was also shoddy. Kart Racing seemed to be more of a tech demo showing off the Bluetooth multiplayer connectivity, but that wasn’t ready for the version that I played. Snowboarding showed how polygons would look on the N-Gage, but it was still rather slow, and most of the gameplay elements didn’t seem to be implemented yet. I was virtually bored. All that said, some of these games, like Sonic for example, were running in emulation, and they are very early. I expect to see great improvements.

The Phone:

Everyone that I talked to on the staff asked me one thing about the N-Gage. How do you use it as a phone? There are two ways to talk and play at the same time: the optional wireless Bluetooth headset, or stereo headphones. If you don’t have either of those, the earpiece and microphone are built into the top of the unit. You actually hold the unit like a taco to your head. Take your GBA and turn it on its side. Pretend the R button is the speaker, and the L trigger is the microphone and stick your GBA on the side of your head. Go look in the mirror. Why Nokia opted to put these elements in these positions is beyond me. I don’t think most people will enjoy talking on a phone this way.

The phone is a Tri-band EGSM, and can be used in North America, Europe, and Japan. The only current carrier is T-Mobile. Nokia is in negotiations with other providers, and they will probably have other companies on board by the time the system is launched in Q4 2003.

Costs:

Well that’s the big unknown. Nokia still has to unveil pricing. There wasn’t any data available if and how much extra downloadable games will cost, or what other costs will be incurred by MMS messages, or if there will be any other separate overall N-Gage costs with carriers.

I would almost bet there will be an announcement at E3. People are speculating that the base cost for the unit will be around $300. Then tack on a hypothetical $40 per month for a base service, and $90 for a Bluetooth headset, and the costs keep rising. Things like messaging, e-mail, and web surfing may also add more to the bill.