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 Great side-scrolling game Nicky Boom (being) released for several mobile platforms
Menneisyys
post Jul 19 2008, 22:08
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Nicky Boom was a nice platformer game released for the Commodore Amiga and MS DOS back in 1992 (Wiki page HERE). While, now, fortunately, there are several platformer titles for Windows Mobile (see for example THIS, THIS for a list of newer and THIS of somewhat older titles), few of them are compatible with the MS Smartphone platform (Nicky Boom is; note that I don't know whether it's compatible with low-end / old 176*220 MS Smartphone screens in addition to the now-standard QVGA ones). In addition, the game also has a Palm OS 5 version (only compatible with comparatively new models; that is, most models starting with the T3) and a Symbian S60 and UIQ 3 version is being worked on. It even has an in-browser ActiveX version on the homepage of the developer (click the Play button), DotEmu. A pretty decent demo is available; the full version costs $14.90 for all mobile platforms.



Note that the game’s homepage doesn’t have a trial version for Palm OS. It IS available at ClickGamer.

While, theoretically, it may be possible to run the original game under Amiga or MS-DOS emulators, I wouldn’t think it’s a good idea. The only Amiga emulator existing for all the mobile platforms, PocketUAE, is very slow and, as it’s long been discontinued, it’s highly unlikely it will ever be fixed. Emulating MS-DOS is far better on Windows Mobile (see the dedicated Bible HERE), but I seriously doubt it’s able to run this title without major at least sound problems and/or without quickly chewing through your battery. The original game having no console versions, you can't rely on much more CPU-efficient and established, commercial console emulators like the almighty SmartGear either.

On Windows Mobile (I haven't tested the game on Palm and the Symbian version hasn't been released as yet), the just-released native version behaves far better: it uses little CPU time, which means it’s quite battery-friendly and runs on even the slowest configurations like the ones based on the old TI OMAP 850, the “heart” of many popular models like the HTC Touch, Wizard and so on.

As it’s just a traditional side-scrolling platform game, there isn’t much to talk about, game story- or usage-wise.

I had no problems running / playing it. Make sure you give it a try! I think I'll also nominate it for this year's Smartphone & Pocket PC Magazine Best Software Awards contest.

Cons
* Mono music only
* Some stuttering now and then if autofire is enabled. The latter isn’t a CPU usage issue as it stays pretty low even with autofire enabled

Pros
* Much better and, what is even more important, battery-friendly than running the original game under a MS-DOS or an Amiga emulator
* Very good CPU usage: ~28% on 624 MHz PXA-310-based, VGA HP iPAQ 210 and ~60% on the 195 MHz TI OMAP 850-based QVGA HTC Wizard, even with autofire on

BTW, speaking of other platformers, a bad piece of news: the long-awaited Prehistoric: Road to Hollywood (see THIS) will be never completed / released: Bonanza Interactive has gone out of business in the meantime.
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zehlein
post Jul 20 2008, 08:37
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Fun thing is, the game is actually running within an emulator!


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