#n gage

[fyeahsonicthehedgehog]

[gamerzylo]

[sarahespacial]

Scans from Electring Gaming magazine (en español) march 2003

[hardcore-gaming-101]

Sonic Advance

Following the Dreamcast’s discontinuation in 2001, Sega pulled out of the hardware market and started making third-party games for other systems. While the main Sonic titles would be made for consoles by Sonic Team USA, a series of original handheld adventures were created for the Game Boy Advance by Sonic Team’s Japanese department in collaboration with the newly founded Dimps (which was partially made up of former SNK members including staff who previously worked on Sonic Pocket Adventure for the Neo Geo Pocket Color).  These kicked off with Sonic Advance, a 2D platformer that faithfully captures the Genesis games’ gameplay in a very solid game worth playing for Sonic fans old and new. The story’s gone back to basics, amounting to little more than stopping Dr Eggman from getting the seven Chaos Emeralds. 

Read more...

[agent0tter]

Nokia in the early 2000s dominated the cell phone market with their nearly indestructible phones. In 2003 they decided to release the first fully gaming oriented cell phone. The N-Gage. In many ways it was ahead of its time and had many of the same features of PDAs and MP3 players of the time.

Launching in late October for $300 (not bad for a cell phone at the time) it tried its hand at competing with the GBA. Running on Symbian OS 6.1, many cell phone games would run natively on the unit.

64 games were developed with notable titles such as: Bomberman, Civilization, Crash Nitro Kart, Tomb Raider, Sonic N, Super Monkey Ball, and The Elder Scrolls Travels: Shadowkey. 25 other games were in development at one point but were canceled for various reasons.

The system received much criticism alleging defects in its physical design and layout, including its vertically oriented screen and requirement of removing the battery to change game cartridges.

The most well known criticism was "sidetalking" due to the placement of the speaker and microphone being on the side edge of the device, causing the user to appear as if they are speaking into a taco.

Despite Nokia giving the device a redesign that addressed the issues of the original it would be discontinued in 2005 after meeting only half of the projected sales goals.

It sold around 3 million units.

[nmpositive]

NOKIA N-CAGE

[segadriven]

Sonic N is a 2003 port of Sonic Advance for the Nokia N-Gage. The game can be played in a cropped screen-filling mode or a bordered full screen mode

[nintendumpster]