Have you been wondering you are not getting enough of exercise for that grey matter of your brains? What with the calculators and computers making things so easy for us, that we hardly rake our brains anymore for day to day calculations. Forget calculations, with the advent of smartphones of the likes of our N900, we don’t even bother remembering our daily schedule as everything is programmed onto the mighty Maemo calendar, which does an amazing job of reminding and updating the schedule to our convenience. So, the bottom line is we are getting rusty and we need to oil the bearings of the very mechanism which keeps us on our toes: yeah our brains. So here comes a game from Hudzilla Games: Brain Party , a game originally written for  iPhone and now has been ported to our N900s. Yeah, iPhone games are ending up on N900 now and thats something to rejoice about, for we all know there are tons of games (that rock) for the iPhone and though our N900 is as capable as the iPhone, not many game developers have woken up to its existence. But may be things are changing and after successful ports of Angry Birds and now the Brain Party, drive more iPhone games to  the N900 bandwagon. Coming back to Brain Party, catch a brief review and more after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s been over two quarters since our N900 was launched and the wonder device is not exactly taking the world by storm as one would have expected it to but it looks promising nevertheless. As developers and hackers churn out one amazing hack after another, one of the most engaging genre of apps-Games are rather neglected in the official ovi store, which does have a few head turners like the Bounce Evolution and Angry Birds, but there is not as much variety as one would expect to have, especially with the ARM Cortex A8 600 MHz processor with PowerVR SGX graphics onboard our N900. But, then there is the Flash equipped browser, which opens up the world of flash based games found in abundance in the web. Add several emulators, courtesy of hackers, the gaming scenario on N900 looks more promising. Let’s now take a look at how exactly these options pan out on our N90o. Read the rest of this entry »

The ultimate haven of fighting games: Namco Bandai’s Tekken has been now ported to our N900 (courtesy-PCSX emulator). While the latest version of Tekken as available on Xbox and PS 3 is Tekken 6, YouTuber-Smokku, has managed to port the 1995-96’s Tekken 3 on to N900.

Tekken, as you know is one of the most popular fighting video games available across several gaming platforms including PS, PS 2, PS 3, PSP, Xbox, Gameboy Adcance, Wonderswan etc. Such was the popularity of this game that it was made into a well-received movie by Japanese film maker,  Junji Sakamoto in the 90s. Save the Tekken praising for another post, let’s jump to see how Tekken 3 fares on the N900. Read the rest of this entry »

Face Detection, Tracking! Looks straight out of that James Bond or Jason Bourne movie, ain’t it? But yeah these technologies are so cliche now that even our N900 can boast of one. Seriously no kidding, as demonstrated by German developer Johannes Kuhlmann, with his unique game based on face detection and tracking- Burger Face.

The concept of the game is pretty simple, your face is the controller and you have to dodge the knives and eat the burgers. While game may not be that impressive with graphics and the like, what really impresses me is the innovative control technology. Based on face detection and tracking, this is another contactless control technology successfully implemented on the N900. Catch the demo video and further details, after the break. Read the rest of this entry »

Missing that Rubic Cube of your childhood or whatever age you were in when you toyed with it? Now, thanks to Offscreen Technologies, one of the best known names in games and applications for the Symbian platform and now in the Maemo platform, for this amazing adaptation of the popular puzzle into the touch platform.

Rubic Cube as you may know is a 3D mechanical puzzle and is so popular that there are world championships held every year and world rankings are maintained by World Cube Association. There are all sorts of variations of Rubic cube with people playing blindfolded, feet etc and the cubes come in different grid sizes as well ranging from 2×2 to 7×7. Enough of introduction now, let’s now dive into Cube Touch on N900:

Screenshots-

Offscreen Technologies are sticking with the most popular 3×3 grid size for this version of Cube Touch and frankly speaking this is best suited for the screen size of n900. Since our N900 is no cube or not even square, anything more than 3×3 will be a difficult implementation. Not surprisingly, Offscreen have restricted this version at 3×3 and they have done a great job indeed. Sliding across the faces is intuitive and easy and so is sliding individual plates. The bottom line is this one addicting game and you are gonna spend hours on this one.

The world record for 3×3 Rubic cube is around 7 s. How close can you get to it? Better, if anyone can beat it!

Here comes the weekend and in a typical jolly mood of the weekend, I was looking to having some fun gaming on the N900. After digging a few rounds of Bounce Evolution, I kinda got bored with it. Awesome 3D graphics and sound effects and engaging gameplay indeed but it being the only default game on my N900, I have played it far too many times now. So I headed straight to Downloads section of App Manager and downloaded a few games. Unfortunately there are no 3D games that can measure up to Bounce Evolution in any of the known repositories yet but I was able to find a couple of entertaining 2D games, which though not high on graphics are engaging and fun nevertheless. Hex-A-Hop is one such 2d game and its not only entertaining, but it also tests that grey matter of yours, which might have gone rusty over the mundane lifestyle of the weekdays! Read the rest of this entry »