When Tony DelGhingaro started playing Gladiator on his mobile phone, he chose the biggest, hulkiest fighter available in the game, equipping him with the biggest, heaviest sword the game had to offer.
"I found I was always getting my butt kicked by the smaller, quicker characters," said DelGhingaro, a retail sales manager for Sprint PCS. "I started over with a character I call Dancing Sue. She doesn't have a lot of power but she can jump and duck, and is hard to hit. I've made it to ninth-level gladiator with her."
When mobile phones were first introduced, they were designed for one thing: To make phone calls. They've evolved rapidly, though, and now make calls, send and receive e-mail and text messages, maintain contact lists and use the Internet to keep track of their users' favorite stocks and sports teams.
And when they're not working, mobile phones are now expected to entertain. Almost all mobile phones sold today come with a game or two built in. And phones equipped with wireless Web browsers have access to dozens more.
"Not too many years ago if you told somebody about adding a game to their mobile phone, they might have said, `Why would I want a game?' But phones have advanced so quickly that people expect them to do more," said Cingular Wireless spokeswoman Brooke Muegel. "You could run your whole life from your mobile phone, so it's natural you would want to have fun with it, too."
To explore what's available in mobile phone games, this reporter worked with four companies: Sprint PCS, Cingular Wireless, Verizon Wireless and Cincinnati Bell Wireless. Each company loaned a phone for testing and described its game offerings.
And, frankly, while some of the games were fun, playing games on mobile phones has a long way to go to catch up to playing games on a handheld game from companies like Nintendo or Tiger Electronics.
The mobile phone games are unsophisticated and mostly in black and white. And mobile phones were designed for talking, not for game playing. Their small screens and lack of specialized game controls limit what they can do. Sprint easily had the most elaborate game selection, and it provided the best phone for game play. The Sprint Wireless Web site has links to more than 60 games including trivia games, flying games, casino games and battle games.
Some games come loaded on Sprint phones when they are purchased, and others can be downloaded from Sprint's wireless Web site and played offline. Phones equipped with infrared communication can swap games among themselves.
The company provided a Samsung Model SPH-1300 that is a combination mobile phone and personal digital assistant. Its large, color LCD screen made games easier to play and more fun. Also the phone has several convenient options for entering text, such as a small virtual keyboard that allows the user to type with the tip of a stylus. Entering text with most mobile phones involves a cumbersome process of selecting letters using the number keypad.
Sprint officials introduced an even fancier game phone from Sanyo at a consumer electronics show earlier this year. But the phone, which features a full-color screen with superior graphics, probably won't hit the market until next year.
The Verizon Wireless Internet home page has a good choice of games, but not as many as Sprint.
Verizon provided a Kyocera 2235 mobile phone for the game test, a model not yet available to customers in this area. It has a direction pad that can be pushed to move an object in any of four directions, a plus in game play. The screen was the normal small size, though.
The Nokia phones provided by Cingular and Cincinnati Bell had only up and down arrows. Games that require movement in four directions are controlled by pushing numbers on the number keypad.
Cingular's Web site features the Cingular Arcade with several games, but Cincinnati Bell's system doesn't provide automatic links to games.
Any mobile phone with Internet service should be able to access games through sites such as www.wiregames.com if the phone is equipped with a browser using the standard wireless access protocol (WAP).
Game playing can be addictive even on the smaller screen common on typical mobile phones if you find a game you enjoy. But playing a game on a small screen may require a little squinting and a lot of scrolling up and down.
As for the games themselves, some are more fun than others.
Some are reminiscent of arcade games that were popular more than 20 years ago. Space Impact, for example, came loaded on the Nokia phones provided by Cingular and Cincinnati Bell. The game involved piloting a space ship to blast enemy ships that constantly fly toward it.
The majority of the games, though, are menu driven. Instead of moving a character around a screen in real time, the games are played by selecting options from a menu.
Typical is Star Trek: First Duty, a game offered through the Sprint system. Players take on the character of cadets attending the Starfleet Academy, and they advance through the game by making menu choices such as a) fire phasers; b) conduct a scan; c) take evasive action.
Star Trek: First Duty is played over the wireless Web, which means players are using air time they'll eventually have to pay for. A few of the games are considered premium services, and players must pay a small fee, usually about US$1, each time they play.
Particularly interesting are interactive two-player games played using wireless links. In games such as Gladiator, you can battle opponents across the room or on another continent by logging into the same game room at the same time.
Menu-driven games are not nearly as fast-moving as those on handheld game systems. In an online game, each choice the player makes must be transmitted to the wireless Web server, which sends a message back to the phone telling it the outcome of the choice.
Perhaps the games that are best suited to mobile phone play online are trivia games, and there are plenty of those available. The variety of games available means you'll always be able to find new questions in your favorite categories, and the lag time associated with playing online just gives you extra time to think.
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