The Game Boy Advance, right now, has the kind of market saturation that Microsoft could only dream of. Seriously, what was the last challenger to any edition of the Game Boy that was taken seriously? Of all companies to come with the backbone to take on Nintendo, Nokia is not the one I saw coming. But they saw a natural convergence between their phone services and the portable gaming market, possibly because games are such a profitable portion of the portable phone industry.

As such, we are about to see the launch of the N-Gage. Due to a benefactor, I got a week with one, complete with ten launch titles. So for everyone out there, I did a crash gaming session, complete with messing around with the phone’s various other functions and in general giving myself a case of bad eyestrain. All this, and Nokia wants to charge you 300 bucks, before service, for this. Oh boy.

Anyhow, the first thing is handling the system itself. In terms of architecture, it’s very compact. It’s about two-thirds the length of the standard Game Boy Advance, but otherwise the same dimensions. It’s also really light, half the weight of a GBA with batteries and game. Not like the GBA was a heavy burden, but you’ll hardly notice this at all in your pocket. Nokia should be applauded for fitting it all in such a package.

However, the button layout is very poor. The power switch is a small, black switch on the upper right side, and you will likely not notice it the first time you pick it up. There are no shoulder buttons for games, and the primary game function keys are the 5 and 7 keys on the dialing pad, on which there is no space between the numbers. The entire layout feels almost claustrophobic, with a very busy design and it’s quite easy for the more ham-handed to hit multiple buttons at once. Moreover, with no shoulder buttons, your thumb has to do all the work during games, which quickly becomes no fun.

First, I should discuss the phone’s other functions. As a phone itself, well, it’s terrible, to be honest. The onboard microphone and speaker are terrible, and the only way you can hear correctly is if you hold it perpendicular to your head, as the photo above is showing. Moreover, due to its shape, you’ll end up saying much what I said to my fellow Netjak staffer Clay when I called him: “Guess where I’m calling you from? A taco!” In fact, for the rest of this review, this product shall now be called El Taco. You can plug headphones into a jack at the bottom, and these function much better than the built-in equipment. I’d complain, but sadly most phones are being built like this and there’s precious little my complaints are going to do about it.

Anyhow, El Taco does get rather strong reception, and I had no problem calling from anywhere in my house, whereas my actual cell phone service varies from totally clear to not available depending on where in my kitchen you stand, let alone the rest of the house. This may vary from carrier to carrier (the phone came preloaded with T-Mobile), but I was overall impressed with the quality of the phone.

I then went into messing around with the mp3 player. I placed my Totally Legal mp3 files (tm, and thanks to They Might Be Giants for selling them to me) onto the machine with the handy USB adapter that the phone came with. Not bad on its own by using the loudspeaker, but with headphones, Long Tall Weekend (TMBG’s mp3-only album) came through like I was at the studio. The interface wasn’t totally intuitive, and it wasn’t as effort-free as the iPod, but it certainly holds up as a portable mp3 player.

I then decided to try the radio setup on El Taco. This was perhaps the strongest suit of the phone. I tried several stations in the area, even a few that I knew didn’t come in too well where I live. Each one came in clearly, and it wasn’t hard to find them either by random channel scan or inputting their frequencies manually. I must say, the internal antenna on this is quite powerful.

The phone also comes with some PDA-style tools on board. You have a notepad, a calendar, and an address book. What you don’t have, however, is a stylus or a keyboard pad to make these useful. I’m sorry, but I refuse to sit there hitting the number pad repeatedly to take down some notes when I could do it much faster with this amazing pair of inventions, “pencil” and “paper” which cost a fraction of a phone shaped like a Mexican entrée.

But hey, that’s not why you’re reading Netjak. You want to know how this holds up as a gaming machine. Well, to be honest, it’s the most idiotic idea to come across in gaming. Ever. Well, no, that would really be the Phantom, but this is the worst idea that actually happened.

To begin, let’s actually get a game in there. First, you take off the back cover. Then, you remove the battery from its position. Finally, you can hit the tab that causes the game to slide out. Then after you put the game in, you can get it back together and play. Many problems spring to mind. First, this easily sets records for the longest it takes just to start playing, even if I’m switching which console is hooked up manually to my television. Secondly, taking apart everything constantly is a good way to start losing parts of your phone, which if I may say sounds like an exceptionally Bad Thing. Third, wouldn’t it have made more sense to simply have an external slot with an eject button to get the game cards (about the size of my thumbnail) out? Finally, I remember being told not to mess around with my battery when I got my cell phone (also made by Nokia), because it would cause it to lose charge. Is Nokia doing something stupid, or was the guy selling me my cell phone giving me the run-around? Either way, something about that doesn’t sit well with me.

One thing that does, though is the use of Bluetooth for connecting with others. All you and someone else have to do is enable it, and you can start playing multiplayer games. Moreover, you don’t have to get close and personal, like you do with the Game Boy Advance’s link cable. Nintendo, if they’re smart, should take a cue from this and try to figure out how to do this with their own portables.

It could be partly because I’ve had to remove the battery so much. Or maybe because I have to rely on the system’s backlighting to see. But this sucker eats battery charge fast. Granted, as a cell phone, it does come with a charger. And it does hold its charge well for a cell phone. But as a gaming console, it just eats power at an absurd rate. With a couple of Duracell Ultras, I can play the GBA for around 5 times as long. When does this matter? When I’m playing on the subway, when someone wants a portable for a plane flight or car trip, or anytime when you plan on being with your portable for a long time. That, and spare batteries are much cheaper for the GBA.

The biggest problem, though, is that the launch titles, even the best of them, feel like an afterthought on behalf of the manufacturers. Playing the games, I know each of these manufacturers could do better. Yeah, even THQ, although they’d only marginally improve. When every single game on the system feels like a pale imitation of what is available elsewhere, you don’t feel the burning need to own it for any games.

Of course, I do fear what would happen if a game ever tried to use its full potential. As it stands, the system has the worst load times this side of a malfunctioning Playstation. This is true across the board, with every game and function the system has. It very well may be that in order to make the system as light as it is, they sacrificed some of the guts required to make it as powerful as it should be.

What bothers me the most, though, is the screen. Yes, it is backlit, but that’s sacrificed by the fact that the screen size is exactly half of that as the Game Boy Advance. They are the same height, but the GBA’s screen is half the width. Look, Nokia, my vision is bad enough, did you have to attempt to exacerbate the problem by making me squint constantly at this? I really don’t want crow’s feet, you know. The small screen makes manufacturers choose whether to sacrifice clarity as ease of seeing or sacrifice the playability of the game by making the pixels so large that you can’t see what else you might need to see.

In theory, El Taco is a great idea. However, Nokia tries to do too much with the machine. Seriously, I already own a GBA, a cell phone, and a Walkman, and it cost me less than the $300 that Nokia wants for this. Moreover, I find that each of these dedicated machines generally outperforms the Nokia at their tasks. Okay, so I could stand to use a new Walkman, but still, it’s not worth it to replace everything with an N-Gage. Maybe, if the price comes down and they work out the kinks, this will be worth it. Until then, though, Nintendo doesn’t have to worry for the time being about their portable hegemony. Until Nokia learns the lesson Microsoft swallowed before they entered the console market (a gaming machine must focus on gaming to succeed), they’re not going to do anything but be a distraction.

Originally posted by Pender
This picture is at gamespot. It basically a size comparison.

http://www.gamespot.com/gamespot/mis...s/dsc03042.jpg

Originally posted by GizmoDVD
This is the official thread to discuss the N-Gage and its launch games. DO NOT Post here if you are going to bad-mouth the system.

Originally posted by GizmoDVD
This is the official thread to discuss the N-Gage and its launch games. DO NOT Post here if you are going to bad-mouth the system.

Originally posted by Josh Hinkle
My take on it (aka why I won't by one).

-likely won't sell well and thus won't have many games
-current games are all ports or spin offs of existing games
-screen is too small
-vertical screen is lame
-awkward to use as a phone as you have to hold it sideways
-looks stupid when using as phone for same reason
-too big for phone, I only like super small flip phones I can carry in my pants pocket comfortably
-lame to have to take it apart to change games
-button layout looks awkward