While Aleks and Greg discuss ostensibly important new titles like Half-Life 2 and Sims 2, I'd like to continue banging on about retro mobile games if I may. Earlier this year, THQ Wireless bought the rights to seven classic Midway arcade and console titles: Joust, Defender, Marble Madness, Robotron, Spy Hunter, Root Beer Tapper and Mortal Kombat. The resulting Java conversions are almost ready for release and will be filtered out onto all the major networks over the coming weeks. And I've played them.
Well, some of them. THQ is aiming to provide pretty accurate ports of the originals with the odd exception (looks like Spy Hunter will feature a new road layout). Joust and Defender look very similar to their arcade daddies, right down to the sound effects, although at the moment the shortcomings of Java as a games language means that every time an effect plays, the game slows down. This, I'm assured, will be sorted out. Marble Madness looks really nice too, but probably won't be taking advantage of the freaky tilt controller than comes with the new Nokia 3220. Shame.
Mortal Kombat looks like Mortal Kombat of old - it even has those crazy digitised graphics we all thought were amazing in the early nineties. The moves list has been significantly cut-down of course and it looks like the finishing moves might not make it in: apparently the major phone networks are a bit squeamish about games where people rip each other's throats out. Spy Hunter was at a really early stage when I saw it, but it looks okay and the top-down view seems to suit mobile handsets better than a forced 3D perspective - at least in terms of controls.
THQ also told me that the deal with Midway allows them to create their own sequels to these old skool gems. The question is, why didn't they buy the rights to fabulous (and soul-destroyingly hard) shooter Sinistar?
