Ever played the free RedBall by Heliad (also see the comments here) on your Pocket PC? Wanted something very similar, but with some decent in-game music and much better graphics / enjoyability? Get JumpyBall!



Availability

The game is available here free of charge for both the Pocket PC (all Pocket PC operating systems are supported except for the oldest Pocket PC 2000) and the Microsoft Smartphone platforms.

Gameplay

It’s pretty simple, but entertaining: in the pseudo-3D world, you need to make sure you don’t let the ball sink into water.

Compatibility

No problems here either: the game ran on all my test Pocket PC’s: the PPC 2002 iPAQ 3660 (with slightly decreased speed and slight background problems – the background image just vanishes when you move the ball left or right), the WM2003 iPAQ h2210, the WM2003SE VGA Pocket Loox 720, the WM5 VGA hx4700 (2.01 ROM), the WM5 VGA Dell Axim x51v (A12 ROM), the WM5 VGA HTC Universal and the WM5 QVGA HTC Wizard (2.26 ROM) running at 195 MHz (had no speed problems even at such a low clock speed). I, in addition to the PPC2k2 / iPAQ 3660 problems outlined above, only encountered problems on my hx4700 because of the D-pad, which is pretty useless for gaming. Whenever I tried to redefine the left/right scroll buttons (which is possible in the game) so that I reassign them to “real”, more gaming-friendly buttons, this turned out to be impossible because of the two-state buttons. That is, it’s the best to forget the hx4700 entirely unless you have an external Bluetooth gaming pad.

Graphics

Pretty good for a freeware game and much better than that of RedBall. Doesn't use high resolution on VGA devices.

Music

The game uses quality scener tracks; for example, delicate 0ooz! by emax / trsi (also see the main page here). Hopefully all this with permission of the original authors – see the story here. The tracks are swappable in the \Program Files\PocketNew\JumpyBall\Musics\ directory.

Compared to Heliad's RedBall...

(as of (current) version 1.2 of the latter)

Pros

1. Has great in-game music
2. Has much better visuals; looks far less computer-generated
3. Much more stable on my WM5 VGA devices (x51v A12, hx4700 2.01). RedBall often (on the hx4700, always, upon trying to return to the main menu) crashes on these devices
4. Allows for redefining buttons
5. Has auto-jumping upon encountering water (this can be disabled)
   

Cons

1. No PPC2k support. RedBall works great even on my Casio E-125
2. No minimap at the top of the screen
   

Verdict

This title is definitely worth getting - you can't beat the price. If you've been an avid RedBall player, make sure you download it: RedBall was a definitely worse title (except for the minimap). There are very few free titles and most of them are of much worse quality. Give it a try.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to AximSite forum member pmcizhere for pointing my direction to RedBall.

Recommended links

Don’t forget to check out my other game reviews here. I also recommend the game reviews in the Smartphone & Pocket PC Magazine's Expert Blog by Ben Stanley, Al Harrington and Eric Pankoke.

(Original heads-up news source: PocketGamer.org)

Microsoft MVP - Mobile Devices, 2006, 2007. See my PPC & SP blog HERE.

    

Very cool! Thanks for the heads up.

Paul

   

Nice, thanks allot.

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