But it's RESEARCH, Honey! Video Games for my Mobile Phone
I'm such a sucker. I just got an SMS/WAP from Telefonica Movistar, my mobile phone carrier. It just said "Juegos" (Games) and I was all over it.
Here's the list:
- Splinter Cell
- EA Sports Fifa 2003
- Space Invaders
- EA Sports Tiger Woods
- Moto GP
- Arkanoid
- Puzle Bobble
- Siberian Strike
- Star Trek Nemesis
- Men in Black 2
- Dwango Racing
- Prince of Persia
- Astro3003
- Kawaguchi Expedition
- New Skool Skater
- City Racer
- Dragon Fire
- Xtreme Boxing
- Magic Elements
- PoYo
- Summer Games 2004
- Zoy's Rescue 1
- Stagger
- Rudolph
That's a TON of games. And they just came to me via an SMS message, how cool is that? All I had to do was click-click-click and it downloaded a new game. Tiger woods for �3?!? Yeah, baby! Splinter Cell? Wooohoo! Fifa 2003? Gotchya! Man, that's only �9... think how much those games would've cost me on the Nintendo GBA! And notice how the rates for these games are only half of what GameLoft charged me to buy it on their site... hmm... I guess those Visa charges add up. Update: They've actually dropped the price now to 3.99... hmmm... The sweet spot must have moved when I wasn't looking. I'll have to adjust those business plan spreadsheets.
Anyways, I must say I'm pretty impressed with these games I've downloaded - all of them are pretty fun and definitely worth cash... and the ease of downloading just rocked. That doesn't mean that they were good games, just worth the 3 bucks to find out.
Golf obviously is perfect for a mobile because there's not a whole hell of a lot of coordination to worry about, just click-pause-click to drive, etc. Splinter Cell is like a modern Prince of Persia and again, doesn't rely on a lot of movement on the player's part. You run, then stop, then jump, then stop, then run, then fire, etc. Though it makes the game a bit less fluid, the dynamics are good for the device its running on. EA's FIFA 2003 is a complete disaster. They've tried to make a GBA arcade game for a mobile phone and it just doesn't work. I've played Konami International Superstar Soccer on my GBA until my fingers bled and am now working my way through FIFA 2002. Both games are pretty fun. FIFA 2003 for J2ME is not. It's a heads down view, slow and controlling the players is impossible. Pass? Shoot? Are you kidding me?
Well, doesn't matter about the games to me really, it was just fun trying this stuff out...
*Ahem*... I mean, it was good investment to further my understand of the mobile entertainment marketplace and processes of distributing and charging consumers for J2ME games. *Ahem*
Oh boy! Games! Too bad all the freakin' menus are in Spanish... Bleh.
-Russ