Slight OT... Pocket Gaming

[Robert Riter]

...but it seems like the place to ask.  Other than Doom (and now Quake - if I didn't have an E-125, anyway! heh), are there any other quality game ports (from any platform) roaming around out there, and if so, anyone know where to get them?  So far all I've been able to find made custom for the E-125 makes the Atari version of Pong look like cutting edge technology, which for any system that can run what it can, is such a waste I simply want to shutter.  This is a device that I can take hour long TV shows on, play 44khz music on, and even do First Person shooters on - but that's all they make for it!<br><br>P.S. Anyone know if a Wolfenstien 3D port is in the works, considering it'd not nearly seem quite as outdated on a pocket system?  Or a version of Doom with a save feature unlike Eskimo's? <br><br>....eagerly awaiting the MIPS port, even at .2 FPS...<br>                                     -Cola<br>

[Dan East]

Well, as is being proven with each new game release, the latest Pocket PC devices can handle some serious gaming.  It also appears that the only people half serious about making any gaming breakthroughs in that area are Jimmy Software.  I can understand to some degree a software company's hesitancy to design and create games specifically directed to the PDA market (when I say PDA I'm talking about the more powerful Pocket PC devices);<br>* When you consider the number of PDA's out there, and then remove from that the large proportion of people who either do not play games, or are not willing to actually buy a commercial game, then the market is probably too small to generate the type of profit the software industry normally expects.  Especially when you consider the revenue generated from Playstation games and the like.  That is likely a viewpoint of the big software companies.<br>* The complexity of generating and maintaining several hardware-specific versions of a piece of software, each of which has varying strengths and weakness that must be accounted for, is a daunting task that would further reduce the profitability of creating the software.<br>* The vast number of programmers out there have no CE experience.  While programming CE is not really any more difficult than writing software for other platforms, there is a learning curve that needs to be overcome to get up and going.  This applies to the previous point as well.<br><br>There are likely several more valid reasons that no "real" commercial games have been produced.  <br>I think with releases of Doom and Quake it has been demonstrated that there exists a very large pool of software whose adaptation to play on Pocket PC would absolutely be successful.  Relatively, it took a minimal amount of effort to modify the Quake source code to generate a playable iPaq game.  I think that appealing to the corporations that hold vast amounts of source code for games that are no longer money-makers in the PC market, to perform the small amount of work to release these games on the Pocket PC platform, may be the best chance at producing some quality commercial games.<br><br>Dan East

[Moose or Chuck]

http://www.jimmysoftware.com<br><br>It has the best DoomCE version and tons of other great games as shareware.