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Handhelds Hardware

Classic Atari Games for Cell Phones 39

Posted by michael from the donkey-kong dept.
Peterpan writes: "ZDNet reports that Infogrames is going to port their classic Atari games to J2ME-enabled mobile devices. The Japanese still are far beyond the rest of the world regarding such devices. BTW Infogrames also wants to become Atari! I have heard that the company has established ties with Amiga Inc, so we may see Atari games for Amiga powered devices!? I would love to see Turrican on a Zaurus PDA, Rainbow Arts where are you?! :)" There's also a BBC story.
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Classic Atari Games for Cell Phones More

Classic Atari Games for Cell Phones

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  • Oh the irony... (Score:3)

    by CMiYC ( 6473 ) on Sunday June 24, 2001 @02:23PM (#131409) Homepage
    "The Japanese still are far beyond the rest of the world regarding such devices."

    The beautiful irony in this statement is that Atari was an American company. I know that isn't what he was getting at when the comment was made, I just find it interesting. I am amazed that people do not realize that Atari always was an American company, considering the fact that Japan is where all the amazing Video Game shit happens now.

    ---
  • What a great idea- unfortunately it shows how far behind cellphone display tech really is. At least playing pitfall is better than the nibbles ripoff. ;)

  • Re:Perfect medium (Score:3)

    by Rayban ( 13436 ) on Friday June 22, 2001 @09:41PM (#131411) Homepage
    That's true. It's good to see Java entering the mass market. Sure it was in browsers, but noone really interacted with it full-time. :) I'd like to see more devices optimized for Java use though. Having a cell-phone as an easily reachable application target is a Good Thing.
  • But Zork for cells might actually work, given decent text-to-speech software. But those screens are useless.
  • I can imagine that there's a 2600 game that's perfect for every type of phone call. Girlfriend just call to break up? Pitfall. Boss call you back to work? Cobra Command. Trying to figure out some complicated rendezvous? Raiders of the lost arc....
  • I wouldn't normally object to retrogaming (tasty Bard's Tale I IIGS), but having seen how many old games are being re-released (Gradius III & IV on a PS2? How about Silpheed? I still have the original Sierra disks I used to play on my IIGS! For irony, how about using a PS2 to play a PS1 game that emulates the Atari 2600 so you can pretend to have an arcade machine, but without the trackball!), it seems like a lot of it's being done because nobody thinks they can make games as good in such a limited space. In other words, they know they've become eye-candy manufacturers.

    Have the genre-busters just been slipping by me?

    -_Quinn
  • It might be different if the thing had a keyboard.

    Ahh, you should get a Nokia 9210. I've got a 9110 (and I'll be getting the 9210 as soon as it's out down here) and it's possibly second in terms of usefulness only to my notebook.

    Sure, the keyboard on the 9110 sucks, but at least it is integerated into the unit, and is a full qwerty keyboard, a telnet and a VNC client. So when I'm sitting at the pub having a few Pale Ales and I get the call that a server is down, I can fix it from there. It's also extremely useful to email the office to let them know I'm going to be an hour late, _again_.. 8)

    So I can't wait until the 9220 comes out, running EPOC and Java2ME, the thing will *rock*.

  • So I can't wait until the 9220 comes out

    Of course, I meant the 9210. Duh.

  • or the love of god, don't use Java.

    Gotta disagree with you on that. Java is perfect for this kind of environment. Besides, Java runs fine on small devices, look at Dallas Semi's embedded "Tini" processor. The OS has a J2ME runtime and the whole thing fits in a button.

    All the usual Java benefits of course apply; GC, cross-platform, easy to work with, yada yada yada.

    The problem with standarising on one hardware platform is that there wouldn't be a standard. Nokia would have their "standard", Ericson would have theirs, Motorola would have another "standard", and so on. So developers would have to go through the same shit they have to today to get an app running on many platforms. In the end one vendor would win out, gain the monopoly and hey presto, the phone software world will suck as much as the PC software world does today.

    Save your sanity. buy a Java-enabled phone today.

  • Check out Frac [mufrac.com], a distributed fractal explorer for J2ME-compatible phones and PDAs.

    Maxence
  • I think it was bigger than the (original)gameboy.... if i recall correctly

    i think the screen was a bit bigger, and there was about twice as much non screen area

  • perhaps Nintendo can take this trend and start creating cell phones out of Game Boys. Or Sony could muscle into the handheld gaming by creating ps compatible cell phones.

    on another note, Zork for cell phones anyone???
  • I'll have to agree. My brother, who does not own a computer or PDA, decided on his current mobil phone over two others in his price range because it had SnakeII.
    --
  • If you're stupid enough to play atari while driving. You deserve to get into an accident. You also deserve to have your insurance pay for whatever damage to who's ever car you hit, and do have your rates go sky high for being an idiot.

    Cell phones arn't the problem people.. the people that drive while doing stupid shit like playing with their cell phone will find some other distraction to get them into an accident.


    --

  • Ive got a bunch of carts, where do I plug em in ... oh wait, I have to buy them again?
  • Can't comment on my previous employer more than I've already done, sorry :) I would say that I'm very competent on commenting on the merits of the Symbian platform and its Java implementation, though.

    PS: The information you seek is available by following a trail from the Symbian website and its partners - esp. hardware partners.

  • Re:Do one thing, and do it well (Score:3)

    by Troed ( 102527 ) on Monday June 25, 2001 @12:34AM (#131425) Homepage Journal
    Nah, you really don't know what you're talking about, sorry.

    Symbian [symbian.com] - the future of cellphones. Great operating system (Epoc) and are of course J2ME (and full Java) compatible. Symbian's owned by Nokia, Ericsson, Motorola, Panasonic and Psion so the fears I see in some replies here about incompatible platforms is just dead wrong.

    Take a look at that owner list for Symbian again and do the math as to how many of the cellphones sold in the world are from them.

    Free Symbian platform development kits can be downloaded from Symbian Devnet [symbiandevnet.com] - and yes, there are sites that explain how to get them running on Linux with a little help from Wine ;)

  • Heck that goes back to before the Apple/MS war :)
  • That gives me an interesting idea. Time to see if I can write a profile for the MS game voice to allow me to play my favorite text based adventure by voice :)

    World of Eamon here I come!

  • 32mb is enough to hold all the atari 2600 games ever made like 30 times :)

    You must remember that the basic atari 2600 cartidge was 4k and the really super advanced paging schemes were limited I think at 32k or 64k. Most all games were made at 4k though with another fair sized group at 8k and 16k and like just a very few larger than that.

    I think I was able to zip all the atari games plus an emulator for dos onto a single 1.44meg floppy disk with room left over. I think I also got pkunzip on there :)

    At that point I think the cell phone memory wise is perfect medium. And come on, what other arcade game can you pay 70cents for to play as many times as you want until you need to make a phone call. Sure better than plunking quarters in the machine at a real arcade. The only thing that beats it in value is purchasing a REAL atari 2600 because you can own the system for about $20 and buy games for $1 to $3 each on auction sites and garage sales :)

  • 1) it's cheaper than the voice call

    On One-2-One (in the UK!) its 10p for an SMS (5p it its to someone on the same network).

    It costs 2p for a one minute, national, off peak call.

    So its `R U about dood` or a 5 min call, for the same price. Tricky choice... (Having said that, sms is cool when you are standing next to someone but cant hear them, like in a Club, Carnival etc).

    I thought SMS was cheaper too, but its not.I have no idea why they are so expensive.

    (I guess someone has to pay for the gillions of pounds wasted on next generation phones, which just isnt going to happen. Unless you can think of where to put up another 5 times as many relays (nowhere near schools, hospitals etc) Anyone have any ideas how they`re going to get their money back?Massive cost-of-call price rise, anyone?)

  • Do one thing, and do it well (Score:3)

    by Bodnar42 ( 138383 ) on Friday June 22, 2001 @09:39PM (#131430)

    I was just reading this article, and thinking about how much I would not implement portable internet gaming that way. At all. Maybe I'm a Unix weenie, but I think the philosophy of "do one thing and do it well" applies here. This is how I'd do it:

    • Do not put games on a cell phone. The cell phone is a communications device, and should be nothing more. Needlessly bloating it with features will make the user find it klunky and complicated to use. Also, it'd be much harder to properly design and test a device that performs so many different functions. Nobody wants a cell phone with a cucumber slicer if it bluescreens every 5 minutes
    • When the phone is on, provide a local Bluetooth IPv6 network (look, now I'm buzz-word compliant). It could IPv6 autoregister an IP from the cell phone provider servers, and use that for the duration of the phone being on. Other devices could hook in to this wireless network and use the cell phone as a gateway to the internet (keep in mind IPv6->IPv4 and back is nearly trivial once the infrastructure is up).
    • Make the gaming device use this internet field around the cell phone. It should be about cell phone size, maybe a bit bigger for easier handling. The screen could be much larger, and less of the device would be dedicated to buttons. It would be like a cross between a Gameboy pocket (a bit too large to be uberportable) and a Sega VMU (a bit too small to be fun to use). You would probably want to throw in a color screen. Firstly, for how impressive they look, and secondly because when a screen is relatively small, you want to get as much information packed in there as possible. Clever use of color could actually improve gameplay.
    • For the love of god, don't use Java. Java has it's place, but not in portable gaming devices, were every cycle counts. Make a standard gaming system specification everyone could live with. I'd look in to something resembling a fast m68k compatible processor, 256KB of RAM with impressive memory bandwidth, and a custom 2D chip with respectable on-board 2D rasterization abilities. Any game worth playing could be implemented on a system like that (it'd end up being slightly more powerful than a SNES), and the hardware could probably be mostly implemented on a single chip

    Then again, I'd probably be one of the only people in the known world that would enjoy playing Chu Chu Rocket Embedded infinitely more because I knew the technology was cleanly implemented.

    -Ryan
  • It's one thing to play games on a Game Boy, which was designed for this, but will it really work to try and play centipede on a screen so small? I'm wary of trying to use a directional pad that's half the size of a Game Boys. Will this eat batteries like crazy? How about with constant back light use? If a game requires jamming on a button, it was easy with a Game Boy because holding it with two hands was no problem, but cell phones are smaller than a pack of cigarettes now.

  • You can only play one game at a time?!? It's 70 cents per game too and I'll have to delete it when I'm done so I can make a stinking call or at least do anything useful with it? Hell no! If the phone makers won't put a 32MB chip inside like in the new Providian "smart" credit cards to hold a small library of games this isn't worth it at all. It seems to me instead of making cell phones with larger screens the goal should be to make clam-shell PDA's that open like a glasses case. True the screen is broken at the middle but it still has most of it's functionality. Now put a number pad for dialing on one side of the screen, tell it the number to dial, close it up and stick it next to your ear.

  • In a similar story, modern dishwashers are now being equipped with GPS receivers so you never get lost in your kitchen! Isn't this great? Atari games on our cell phones. Is it just me, or is this whole cell phone thing gotten completely out of hand? Now, personally, I think cell phones are great. It's indispensible if I ever get stranded on the side of the road, or get lost somewhere, or if I just really need to get in touch with someone and can't be tied to a regular telephone.

    But now they're coming with web browsers, email clients, instant messaging tools... That one really made me laugh. I once saw a guy using IM on his cell phone. I'm there thinking, "You're on a cell phone, dude... just call the guy." It might be different if the thing had a keyboard. Then you might be able to type out a message in a reasonable amount of time. I just think that we're trying to put applications which, in theory, are very useful to have in a portable device, into the perfectly wrong kind of medium

    Okay, so this isn't really about Atari for me, it's just about the whole issue of the technology getting bloated and companies trying to give these devices applications which are clearly impractical for them. Speaking of which, I love how dialup ISPs are still making money, even though the Internet has really, for the most part, outgrown narrowband access.

    I'm not really sure what exactly it was that I was getting at with this, but seeing good technology get bloated like this just makes me queasy. But that, of course, is just my own opinion.

    /* Steve */
  • Hey, nibbles in just a wormy rip-off. I had wormy for my Tandy TRS-80
  • Ok, IHBT...
    In the UK and Europe, we've had digital mobile phones for *years*. From the very first of these, they've had SMS facilities. Sometimes is just easier to send a text message to another person, instead of having a whole conversation.
    Also, it may not be convenient for the other person to talk - so send them a text message, and they'll either send one back or phone you.

    It's very simple really.

  • Excuse me for being so last year and all, but if I want a cell phone, I just want a cell phone. It does not need to play games, act as a GPS, connect to a laptop, get local weather reports, tell me sports scores, or have a "cool" sound clip for when it rings.

    It needs to just be a phone. Because I don't want any damn toys on it and I don't want to pay for things I'm not going to use.

    Is simplicity of design lost these days?

    Kierthos

  • For the love of god, don't use Java. Java has it's place, but not in portable gaming devices, were every cycle counts.

    You said it. One thing to remember about cell phones is they are highly optimized for call processing and voice. Low voltage, low frequency CPUs. Many are based on the efficient ARM CPU core. The CPU goes to sleep as much as possible to prolong battery life. To get any decent performance of a JVM, you need about 10x-40x horsepower on a RISC CPU. Games, especially JVM-implemented, would suck battery faster than a six-year-old on a melted milkshake. Clock cycles are very precious on a cell phone.

    On the other hand, companies like Zucotto Wireless [zucotto.com] are betting their future on direct-on-silicon Java execution for cell phones. I hope it doesn't end up being J W Bush style "execution"!

  • Oh the wonders of modern technology. The erry thing to wonder too is where will it all be next?

  • Things are moving to fast for me (Score:3)

    by perlchimp ( 263475 ) on Friday June 22, 2001 @11:14PM (#131439)
    First, I learn how to drive with Atari Indy 500. 20 years later people tell me not to drive while using a cell phone. Now the two are combined. Who do I listen to in this fast paced crazy world?
  • Dial Up-Up-Down-Down-Left-Right-Left-Right-A-B-B-A for phree long distance.
  • Ah you mean you want a bluetooth capable Atari Lynx?

    The Atari Lynx was way ahead of time of course, like everything from Atari except the marketing. it had a colour LCD screen, you could flip it and use it left-handedly (try that with any other game console), and was about the size of the original gameboy I think.

    If Infogrames would sell Lynx devices, they wouldn't even need to port the games :).

  • Re:Next on FOX: When Good Technologies Go Bad (Score:3)

    by Script0r ( 305025 ) on Friday June 22, 2001 @09:20PM (#131442)
    I think you need to stop thinking of a cell phone as just a phone and start thinking of it as more of a pda, like a palm pilot that you can make phone calls on.
  • Nothing like a game of Pitfall to screw up my driving (in a Firestone-equipped Explorer nonetheless) even more than it already is.

    "Watch out for that gator Pitfall Harry!"
    *CRASH*

    Then again, I'll more likely be rear-ended by someone trying to figure out the object of Pac-Man or Pong...
  • I wired my Nokia to play Coleco Adam games and print on the Coleco daisywheel printer via IR. The cool thing is I can use the Coleco tape deck to store numbers from the phone. I just pop in the right tape and push play and it will dial for me. Couldn't be easier!

  • For the love of god, don't use Java. Java has it's place, but not in portable gaming devices, were every cycle counts.

    Java seems to be working fine for the new DoCoMo phones here in Japan. I admit, their implementation is a tad proprietary. They've created an API and dubbed it iAppli, but it is still Java, which gets you a lot of power. To think that optimization for gaming is a reason not to use Java is silly. Java can be plenty fast for the types of games that one would play on a cell phone, especially considering that it would be embedded Java, not the same as what one runs on one's desktop where the difficulty involved in a non-peer GUI has given people the impression that java is "slow". Though this article was on gaming, the real benefit of using Java is its flexibility outside the realm of gaming. Since bytecode is very compact, it can be used to do a lot of things for embedded systems. Games are great and all, but the coolest thing I've seen on the new Japanese phones so far is the GPS-like direction system. "Where the heck am I? Oh, there I am." That's a lot more handier than a game any day.

  • I can't wait until
    The secret of monkey island 2
    is out on the pda, the amiga version with 11 disks to swap about continually... ah how I've missed that.
  • I wounder when I can choose from "all the exciting tiles for the atari home videogame system" for my cell phone... Hmm, I think I've seen those old commercials too many times...

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