Menneisyys

When I reviewed the (for its price) great Arcade Park, I mentioned the best River Raid clone as of now is, in my opinion, SkyForce by the well-known multiplatform arcade developer Infinite Dreams.

I've already reviewed an older version of this title here. Now, I've re-run the tests on all my (compatible) test Pocket PC's with the latest version. The game worked flawlessly on all of them, including the WM5 Dell Axim x51v (ROM version A06) and the WM5 PPC PE edition HTC Wizard (a.k.a. i-mate K-jam, Qtek 9100, MDA Vario, T-Mobile MDA) with Qtek ROM version 2.17.7.2. Note that while many consider the CPU in the HTC Wizard very slow, this definitely isn't the case - it was able to run the game as smoothly as the Dell or, even better, the Pocket Loox 720 (the latter runs the game a bit more smoothly than the otherwise faster Axim x51v) and much smoother than the iPAQ 3660.

Note that while version 1.22 is no longer PPC2002 compliant, the demo archive (as with the commercial one) contains a For_PocketPC2002_Devices subdirectory with a slightly older (2004) version 1.1, which runs flawlessly (but decidedly more choppily, as far as scrolling is considered) on my old Compaq iPAQ 3660, with music.

As far as the Palm OS version is considered, the game has so good CPU usage that it is perfectly playable on my 144 MHz, 3-year-old Palm Zire 71; it was just the missing stylus control that is different from the Pocket PC version.

Note that the folks at Infinite Dreams didn't update the trial version filename to reflect it already having version 1.22. That is, the filename containing (the download link is here) the 1.22 demo is still called SkyForceDemoPPC_v1.21.zip. Don't let it mislead you - it contains version 1.22.

Also note that Infinite Dreams has released several other, high-quality and highly recommended games; of them, I like Explode Arena and Super Miners the best. Please see the Definitive Multiplayer PPC Game Roundup for more information on them. (Unfortunately, these games haven't been updated for more than a year, which is bad news for, for example, Pocket Loox 720 or Microsoft Bluetooth users.)

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MS MVP- Mobile Devices.