Nokia refuse to let N-Gage die
By Luke McKinney
Like a seven-fingered chef waving a meat cleaver and screaming “It’s okay, I’ve got it this time”, Nokia are set to relaunch the infamous N-Gage brand this month. This shows either remarkable daring and dedication or an utter ignorance of just how much of a joke the brand has become.
In fact the N-Gage has moved past the ‘Daikatana’ region of joke, through the ‘Duke Nukem Forever’ zone of travesty and into the realm of tragedy. In the past hardware has failed for economic reasons (like the MSX), or undeservedly like the Dreamcast (which conclusively proved that a devoted and passionate fanbase is not as good as people actually buying the damn thing). The N-Gage is no such victim: throughout its history the N-Gage could do nothing but fail, and fail hard, the same way an caterpillar will fail at the hundred-meter hurdles.
In the first version you had to remove the battery pack to change the game cartridge, for God’s sake, proving that even to the designers the concept of somebody actually wanting to play games on the thing would be a rare and unforeseen occurrence. They fixed that in later versions, but when you need user feedback to get the “insert game cartridge into game console” step right you’ll need ten thousand iterations to get as far as the Atari 2600.
In their defense, the N-Gage is abandoning hardware and focusing on software this time round, raising the chance that it might be only half crap. But when the launch lineup includes such flagship titles as “Another Breakout clone! As seen on every other mobile phone, flash-enabled browser, or DOS capable box since the beginning of time!”, it’s not exactly engaging the competitive games market guns blazing.
Gregg Sauter is excited to announce Crash Bandicoot will lead some exclusive titles, and that’s very cute, because he’s the only person excited about Crash in the world. And that’s because it’s his job.
Crash is a hangover from the “Let’s make a cash-spinning mascot!” craze of the nineties. The only thing stopping him from being the worst ‘zany’ character ever is the fact that Bubsy the Bobcat is still being tortured in the deepest spike filled pit of platform gaming hell.
It’s strange the a company so technologically advanced and media-focused as Nokia could be so blind. The could really make a gaming delivery platform work, but they need to change the name. Maybe to something like “Game delivery in no way associated with the N-Gage, in any sense, shape, or form. We fired all those guys and burned their notes.”
Related:
Entry was posted
on Tuesday, November 6th, 2007 at 10:42 am
under
Read more entries by Luke McKinney.
Stumble It!
Tips N4G
April 23rd, 2008
Bessie now endeavoured to persuade her to take a sedative draught free movies of musclar lesbians irids, and a fine pencilling of long lashes round, relieved the sagtdbuzini