nice little shmup surprise

[zimmy]

Although it may sound strange, as a 18-year old high school student, I've never really felt the desire to own a cell phone. My friends and I don't really put much effort(O.K. every once in awhile I push them into getting on AIM for playing online games)into maintaining contact beyond school. So when my mom bought me a Nokia 1100 cell phone, I was quite surprised. Apparently she trusts me enough to only use it for emergencies(not very likely). Although surprised, I never really saw it as that great of a thing, until I checked out the games. One of the games is a pretty cool Snakes Clone, and the other one is this fairly decent shump called Space Impact +. Now this ain't no Space Invaders or Asteroids clone, Space Impact + is a full-blown "modern" shump(modern as in, 16-bit era and above). The game even has a little "introduction" where an anime-inspired image of the eyes of the main character split into the title screen-very stylish. Although, like all cell-phone games, the game suffers from horrible controls(only one key-press at a time, pressing a key cancels out input from another held down button until that button is pressed again), and it could diffinently be better, but the game is ambitious as hell and deserves some praise. So, wut I was wondering was, has anybody else heard of or played this game. I would expect such a game as this not to go unnoticed, but after doing a brief search, I didnt find anything(sorry if there was some stuff deeper down, I didnt bother to search too far back cause im lazy like that)on this forum. For those of you who havent heard of it and are in the market for games on a nokia phone, here's my little review of it:

Space Impact involves two types of stages. The first type is a sort of a cross between a platformer and a horizontal shooter, where the player operates a land vehicle that can jump over obstacles as well as shoot missiles vertically upwards and the basic shot horizontally forward. The game is still obviously a shooter since the screen scrolls to the right and, especially in the later stages, there's plenty of shooting, but obstacles, provided by incendiary bombs which explode into a permanent flame that the player must hop over as he/she scrolls past them, add a little bit of a twist. Unfortunately, despite being the most original aspect of the game, its also the weakest, since the player can only jump forward the length of a flame plus a few pixels, so players have very little room for error when jumping over obstacles, even in the first level. These stages improve later on as the game focuses on combat and decreases the number of obstacles, but they still remain the weakest link in the game. On the other hand, the other type of stage is typical shump stuff, resembling a vertical shooter mostly despite maintaining the horizontal view, since these stages focus on combat rather than obstacles. In these stages, players operate a space ship that can fly in any direction and can shoot the basic shot forward, but instead of the vertical missile, players can use special weapons in these stages such as homing missiles, lasers, and at least one other that I have yet to try.

The highlight of both types of levels are the bosses however, which start off incredibly simple and easy, but later adjust to a difficulty thats just right by using ramming attacks and homing missiles. Their graphics are also well done, since most are animated and later bosses start to resemble the organic bosses you might see in R-Type or Darius. Speaking of the graphics, this game really looks nice relative to what you would expect from a simple black & white(or black & green as the nokia 1100's case)game. Sometimes games like these(look at Firetrack 2 on the Ti-83 calculator)pack some really impressive details into their graphics, like full-blown backrounds, but all the graphics with so few colors results in just making it harder for the player to identify things in the middle of the action. To alleviate this, developers usually lean towards having no backround at all, but Space Impact doesn't settle for that. By using simple set pieces the size of a few ships while still leaving most of the screen blank, the backrounds possess a little detail that really looks nice, but the game is still very playable and easy to manage. Only in a few rare cases did the set pieces make it harder to see an obstacle in the platformer levels.

Overall, this is probably the best shump I've played on a cell-phone or even on the Ti-83 calculator(yes, I would even say its better than Pheonix), and also the best non-clone game(it doesnt beat Tetris)on one of these unintentional gaming platforms. Its a very technically impressive game, but at the same time, it doesnt focus on the technical aspect so much that it neglects gameplay.

And yes, I really did just write three paragraphs on a cell-phone game, but after having so much fun crowding my fingers around a number pad, I think the game deserves a little praise.

[Michaelm]

Check out Skyforce.
You'll love it.

[TWITCHDOCTOR]

Cell phones...emergencies...video games...?
I never liked cell phones. I never like games with shitty controls.

All I need is a Bar-B Que pit that plays 4 player Warlords.
How's that for a backyard party emergency!?

Sorry, I just dislike cell-phones, and I think its stupid to try and make a fucking telephone a gaming/entertainment device.

Whats next, a microwave oven with built in back massager!?

PSP's are good for some games, movies, and pre-mature arthritis. PLus, they also give pick pockets something to strive for in life.

Rant mode off-

[Herr Schatten]

Try the cellphone port of Aleste. It's great. Avoid Siberian Strike, you can't fly diagonally in that one and it totally ruins an otherwise nice shmup.

[Michaelm]

Ok, here's the link to SkyForce....
http://www.idreams.pl/product.php?idProduct=3

Now where can I find that port of aleste ?

[Minzoku]

PSP's are good for some games, movies, and pre-mature arthritis. PLus, they also give pick pockets something to strive for in life.

And they're like CHEESE you can listen to OUTSIDE!!!!!!!

[zimmy]

I concur that cell phones arent really great as gaming platforms, and a gameboy, psp, or some other handheld is probably a much more solid choice, but thats not really the point. Of course Space Impact, or any other cell phone game I've played for that matter, doesnt stand up to the average gameboy game, mostly because of how little support is given to input options. Maybe some exist, but all of the cell phones I've used don't have support for multiple key presses and thats really a necessity to have any real serious gaming goodness. But while we could just say cell phones shouldnt try to be gameboys, I still think a decent game should get recognition if released on it. For those of us who arent too commited to our portable gaming, cell phones offer at least some solution to boredom on the road.

Now that SkyForce and Aleste game just look awesome, maybe I can try Aleste on my sister's Ericson...

[TWITCHDOCTOR]

^ I realize your point. But my point overall is, why should companies waste their time making a possibly quality game for an inferior device?
Example:
There exsist a couple Cave shmups for cell phones, correct? Or is it Raizing?

[zimmy]

I believe its Cave you're thinking of. Personally, I think the existance of cell phone games is simply attributed to good ol' capitalism and the combination of cell phone companies wanting to increase the capabilities of their products and software developers either believing that cell phones offer a chance for making money off of simple software or are the last viable platform for 2D games to reach casual gamers(I've diffenently heard of some 2D purists hoping cell phones will usher in a revival of 2D games). Since most cell phone games are expected to be simplistic 2D games and are targeted at a more casual audience, developers dont have to put much time or resources into producing a cell phone game. I'm sure Cave donates a very small fraction of its resources to its cell phone games(seriously, one good pixel artist who knows how to program a little could prolly pump one of these games out in a reasonable time period), so I wouldnt be too worried about developers diverting so much attention to cell phones that it hurts the quality of their other games. And, after all, cell phones are just a different platform, and increasing the number of platforms you develop on could potentially increase the amount of people you can expose your software to. In Cave's case, I'm sure theres plenty of people who dont play in arcades much and have never heard of Cave before but still use their cell phone, so Cave's cell phone games could reach that audience that their arcade games really can't.

[TWITCHDOCTOR]

I believe its Cave you're thinking of. Personally, I think the existance of cell phone games is simply attributed to good ol' capitalism and the combination of cell phone companies wanting to increase the capabilities of their products and software developers either believing that cell phones offer a chance for making money off of simple software or are the last viable platform for 2D games to reach casual gamers(I've diffenently heard of some 2D purists hoping cell phones will usher in a revival of 2D games). Since most cell phone games are expected to be simplistic 2D games and are targeted at a more casual audience, developers dont have to put much time or resources into producing a cell phone game. I'm sure Cave donates a very small fraction of its resources to its cell phone games(seriously, one good pixel artist who knows how to program a little could prolly pump one of these games out in a reasonable time period), so I wouldnt be too worried about developers diverting so much attention to cell phones that it hurts the quality of their other games. And, after all, cell phones are just a different platform, and increasing the number of platforms you develop on could potentially increase the amount of people you can expose your software to. In Cave's case, I'm sure theres plenty of people who dont play in arcades much and have never heard of Cave before but still use their cell phone, so Cave's cell phone games could reach that audience that their arcade games really can't.

^Another good point you have...but, take that same said person(from Cave) and add about 9 more and lets see some more PS2 console ports.
Even if only available in Japan!
Wasn't there a Guwange cell shmup? It'd be nice to see a console port of that one! (among many others)

[Herr Schatten]

You're right. Cellphone games are targeted at more casual players. You shouldn't see them as games you'd play in your spare time, but rather as little time killers you play while waiting for the bus. Shmups are not the best type of games for cell phones, mainly because of control issues. But there are a lot of great games with simple controls that are a blast to play and very worthwhile.

Since most cell phone games are expected to be simplistic 2D games and are targeted at a more casual audience, developers dont have to put much time or resources into producing a cell phone game.

[...]

one good pixel artist who knows how to program a little could prolly pump one of these games out in a reasonable time period)

Now, that's definitely not true. Developing a cellphone game that can compete in today's market takes months of development and costs several hundreds of thousands of Dollars. This is just for the 5 or so master versions, the wide porting takes even more time and costs even more. Compared to arcade, console and pc games, the budget might seem small, but you mustn't forget that those games are developed once for a specific platform and then they are finished. Maybe one or two ports follow, but that's it. And the ports are usually for machines that are roughly equal in power to the original one.

If you develop for mobile phones, everything's very different. You need very good coders to develop for a platform that tricky. Keep in mind that the devices differ greatly in memory size, processing power, screen resolution and so on. The standard of graphics and the complexity of the games, depending on the phone, ranges from below C64 level to nearly PS1 quality, with lots of steps inbetween those two extremes. You just can't develop a game for one certain phone and then say you're finished. You have to develop 5 to 6 versions of the same game from scratch to make sure you have a blueprint that allows you to port it to as many devices as possible. There are hundreds of specific devices. It's a nightmare, really.

Additionally, you'd be surprised how few good pixel artists are actually there.