N900 as a gaming phone?
 

Hello everyone,
So last month I decided to get a new phone - either Droid (Droid 2 now) or N900. For me, games and emulators (mostly RPGs and turn based strategy) are very important on phone.
I had almost decided on the N900 (HoMM II, FreeCiv and OpenTTD ftw :)) when, lets say the comunity had a mini meltdown with many users, devs (and even Nokia) abandoning the phone and the droid started looking more attractive.
But then I saw JA2 was available on Maemo 5 and the N900 is back in contention :D.
So I made a small list available on the N900.

Great working Games -
Nethack
HoMM II
JA 2
FreeCiv
Angry Bird
OpenTTD
WC II
Quake 1,2 and 3
Hexen, Duke Nukem, Wolf
Wesnoth

Possible or Not so good working Games -
HoMM III
Dune II, C&C and Red Alert
UrQuan Masters

Great working Emulators -
DrSnes, PicoDrive
Scummvm

Possible or Not so good working Emulators -
GBA, NES
PS1, N64
MAME, DosBox

Some questions for N900 owners.
Is this list complete and correct? I have searched and gone through a lot of threads before compiling this list. But it is difficult to know if any games is available or not. Can any more good games/emus be added - especially RPG and TBS?

Are the games really playable - I mean not just working but also easy to control with N900 keyboard/touchscreen (and no external controllers like wiimote). Eg I dont think FPS like Quake or Duke could be easily played on N900. What about TBS like HoMM or JA2 or FreeCiv and platformers like Super Mario World?

Any more roguelikes on the N900 - especially DCSS tiles? With the keyboard and the decent sized screen they will be great to play.

I dont really care about Meego but hopefully Nokia will give flash 10 support fo N900.
The answers will be a lot of help to decide whether to go for N900.

Thanks in advance.

Re: N900 as a gaming phone?
 

I would say you have answered most of your own questions concerning the current state of emulators and whatnot on this device.

Saying that the N64 emulator is superb for the games that do work and although things have stalled at the moment we live in hope of future updates. Things look bleak on the PSX front and GBA developement seems to have been abandoned. This is only what I have gathered from these threads though, I dare say the devs know more.

Control on the faster games (Mario etc) is horrible via the keyboard but there is a Game gripper (mine is in the post) available and the accelerometer on the N64 emu is very good.........esp on Mario kart:D

Re: N900 as a gaming phone?
 

You might also want to add the game gripper to the list. I haven't tied one but supposedly makes games easier to play on the n900.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9D8cedGr30

Re: N900 as a gaming phone?
 

I am pretty sure DCSS is portable to Maemo 5.
All we need is somebody familiar with SDL and DEB packaging.
http://crawl.develz.org/wordpress/downloads

Re: N900 as a gaming phone?
 

They could be. Devs just couldn't add accelerometer controls for aiming. I even bought a DS3 and the analogs don't work with the games! I have completed the single player of Quake 2 without cheats on N82 thanks to accelerometer controls.

Re: N900 as a gaming phone?
 

Could you describe how did you have your controls mapped?

I tried playing Duke Nukem 3D on N900.
- forward/backward and strafe left/right mapped to accelerometer
- head/aiming mapped to touch screen
- fire maped to keyboard

It was playable, but playing it looked like some wild dance tilting the N900, touching its screen and pressing keys... ;)

Re: N900 as a gaming phone?
 

why you dont use a ps3 controller?
the n64 emu runs really great with it and you even can use the joysticks thats just great.
and if your phone is overclocked many many games run pretty nice;)

Re: N900 as a gaming phone?
 

I don't find current FreeCiv SDL port playable. Interface is terrible.
I started an effort to port FreeCiv GTK+ interface with proper changes to be usable on small touch screen, but did got practically none feedback.

On the contrary, Dune 2 port is just fine. People reported finishing game with it. :)
Ur-Quan Masters is also complete and very playable. It's hard to win a battle using N900 keyboard. Some external controller is desirable.

For platformers, you should get a game-gripper. But be warned, this could wear your keyboard faster than normal usage.

Roguelikes are available. My POWDER port is very playable. It has great touch screen controls implemented.

Re: N900 as a gaming phone?
 

that is, untill you blue smoke comes out

Re: N900 as a gaming phone?
 

I don't remember it clearly but here it goes:

Walk forward/backwards and strafe mapped to D-pad, jump by clicking it

Left softkey for crouch
Right softkey for pause menu

Call key for use item
End key for drop item

7 for inventory
1 for prev item
4 for next item

Multimedia key for run

Volume rocker for next/prev weapon
Camera key (half pressed) for shoot
Gallery key for help computer

Accelerometer for aiming (turn/look up&down)
There's no keys mapped to accelerometer, it works just like a mouse.