Got this gem (at least for Sonic fans ) recently and thought I share some pictures: As you can see, there are quite a few small differences compared to the final release. Moreover, the MMC has a very unusual part number (C40012A, never saw anything close to this on any other N-Gage card) and does not work on retail N-Gage units.
does anybody even have an N gage? there was one idiot I used to talk to that would rather play his than XBOX which he called the worst system ever made (what about CDI what about 3d0?) But as a sonic fan this is pretty interesting. Wasn't Sonic N just Advance with less features?
Careful man. If anywhere you would find someone to stick up for the 3do or CD-I it would be here. ;-) I don't know about N-Gage being better than Xbox but there are plenty of other consoles I would rather use.
I knew a single guy in HS who had an N-Gage when they came out, I also knew of only 1 guy in middle school when the NGPC came out as well. When I switch to AT&T I'm totally going taco style for a while, assuming I can find one on the cheap.
I always took the stance that the Ngage was a good idea that failed Miserably. It's respectable what Nokia tried but not being a game company is what hurt them.
I owned one at one point. Decent concept, but it failed on a number of levels: -Biggest thing was the screen. Only two types of games benefit from its design: old space shooters like Galaga and puzzle games like Tetris. -Button layout was a pain in the ass. Needed to have the phone buttons on the side or on the back and the main 4 buttons and D-Pad on the front. -Battery life was more pathetic then the PSP. I remember getting less then 2 or even 1 hours some times. -Memory for the games was horrible. You could barely squeeze a 3D game in. Most games didn't even have music. -Graphics were too weak, even though it was the main reason I bought it. Some cell phone games have better graphics then it does. -Design was horrible all around, the whole battery fiasco, and just piss poor ports in general (Tomb Raider was fairly unplayable).
Memory as in the size of the cartridge itself. Maybe it is just me not remembering too well, but I also remember other games having little to no music. Anywho, the graphics were weak when compared to the competition currently. Sure, it was far more powerful then the GBA at the time, but the system pretty much lost any developers it had when the DS came out. That is what finally killed it in the end, along with the piss poor sales and it being a shitty system in general.
I have some demo/proto N-Gage units with different firmware. I wonder if this would work in them. However, these units are not development hardware, so it is doubtful.
FYI some cracked Ngage games like SonicN and other simple games without 3D would run fine on other S60 Symbian phones, even Sharp, Sony and probably some other brands as well, so you dont really need a Ngage to try this
Well, I have one too. That works perfectly, and well I can hear it, when it rings. Since it can annoy many with its midi phone melody I have chosen. Bubble Bobble, and I am thinking of getting Giana Sisters on to it. Heck, I used to have the Depeche Mode midis from this site as ringtones. But I chose to remove them, and go retro style . Heck the Ngage was the reason why I chose to get a new sound card, since the phone had better sound in midi than my soundcard. So I bought a new soundcard , and haven´t regretted it yet. And battery time ? what ? sorry my phone can holds its power at least 3 days in a row.
I carry an N-gage around still. The phone features aren't active, but I enjoy it as a game console. If you want to know about exclusives, it's interesting how many RPG titles came out only on N-gage. Rifts, the Roots, Xanadu Next, and Pocket Kingdom are all games planned for multiple consoles that only made it out on Nokia's platform. The Red Lynx strategy games (Pathway to Glory and High Seize) also haven't been repeated anywhere. Outside of exclusives, the N-gage boasts some surprisingly effective ports of the X-men Legends games and an Elder Scrolls title.
Sonic N is just a port of Sonic Advance with alot of 2D features missing. The N-Gage was not a bad system, it just was poorly managed and the system design was poor (the revision unit was alot better). Still it' was a powerful Symbian 60 phone at a very cheap price for the time. The System on a technical level suffered because it was a standard S60 phone, no s60 phone had hw accellerated 2d or 3d chips. Thus 2D games were poor compaired to the gba yet the 3D was down right fantastic and near early ps1 levels. Over all the system had a few good exclusives which I wish nokia would continue on cell phones (the WW2 game was great). ---edit--- If I can find what I did with it. I had an E3 alpha build of Tony Hawk for N-gage
