Our first day back and we couldn’t ask for better news! Apogee has just announced that they are respawning from the dead. Their first creation will be a Duke Nukem Trilogy for handhelds! While we are still geek faithfuls who are still waiting for the Second Coming of DNfrom 3D Realms, mobilized versions of our favorite tactless FPS hero (and sidescrolling platform jumper, for those of us old enough to remember the original DOS game) is truly exciting.

Apogee claims to be the shareware pioneers who originally brought us episodic gaming and online distribution. I think they may be right. I remember waiting by the mailbox for my next levels of Duke Nukem and Commander Keen on 5.25″ floppies and thinking it was the coolest thing ever. Then I remember when I first purchased Duke Nukem 3D, and was able to download the Plutonium Pack directly and connect for multiplayer action with my friends directly through my modem. When I was able to send Duke’s famous oneliners with a single function key after destroying my opponent, Apogee and 3D Realms gained a fan for life.

Now, Apogee is back and will deliver the new Duke Trilogy to the Sony PSP and Nintendo DS platforms with three new episodes: Critical Mass™, Chain Reaction™, and Proving Grounds™. No launch date or screenshots announced yet, but when they do, you can bet we’ll let you know!

Dear Apogee,
Please release a Commander Keen game next, k? thnx.
-Jason

Apogee

E3 2008: Apogee Returns! Duke Nukem Trilogy for Handhelds! is a post from: Portagame

The old N-Gage:

“It’s a phone.”
“No it’s a handheld.”
“It’s neither!”
“It’s both!”

The NEW N-Gage:

“It’s a phone?”

“Nope.”
“It’s a handheld?”
“Nope.”
“What is it?”
“Software.”

The N-Gage is no longer a single system. It is essentially any Nokia Nseries phone. All you RAZR buffs out there are now helpless fashion victims after a quick ass kicking from the next generation Nokia N90 or N93. The N-Series phones handle all the media that most smartphones do, but also will play some serious N-Gage and N-Gage Arena games.

With all the noise from Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo, few “not attending E3″ gamers realize that Nokia has a large booth at E3 this year. Sure it may not be Metal Gear Solid in your palm, but what they are doing is is showcasing the next generation of mobile gaming to a bunch of hard core gamers who realize they are also cell phone addicts. Seems that Nokia is starting to mix their kool-aid just right.

E3: N-Gage Then and Now is a post from: Portagame

Before all you fanboys get so excited that you pee a little, I hope you take a brief moment to download the E3TV / PermissionTV Player. This application rocks. It will stream eventually play all three of the major press conferences from Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo, FULLSCREEN AND FREE OF CHARGE. If you have to go to school or work (What? You used up your vacation already? Call in sick already), the media player will download the press conferences for later viewing. So don’t fret about paying Gamespot for a subscription or battling 1UP users for bandwidth. This media gobstopper of a goodie is coming directly from E3Insider.com, the official news site of E3.

Also, if you enjoyed last years Floored and FanCam blogcasts, the E3TV app will work like a podcast retriever and download those episodes for you as soon as they become available.

Hurry, the Sony event is only a couple of hours away. Download now before their server bogs up.

[UPDATE: The player is cool in concept but poor in execution. I still have yet to see the Sony conference available through the player and it has been over for 8 hours. Verdict: Stick with the low-res free Gamespot coverage.]

Hey Kids! It’s The E3 Show! is a post from: Portagame

So what’s with all the Next-gen, non-Handheld links? Well, I took the first couple of weeks in May and started working on a pet project. This project would gather news and information for me on the subjects I’m interested in and the subjects I report on here and in other places across the net. The project is basically a series of online RSS readers for my personal use, but displayed publicly. I’m still hacking on them, and not quite sure what the finished version will be like. It’s like a sandbox. I currently call the project Blu RSS, or BluRSS for short. And yes, one of the subjects of huge interest to me, was E3. For the most part, BluRSS is fairly automated. So I will be able to turn the majority of my attention back to Portagame.

Also, while we’re on the topic of E3, did you catch all the E3 news over at 4ColorRebellion? Or what about Ferrago, which includes all the headlines from the best gaming sites on the net (including Portagame). Our pal dmgice had some well done video coverage, especially of the Gameboy Micro. Also check out NDS.Progressive who caught the DS version of A Boy and His Blob (nice!). Don’t miss the console videos dug up by iamlegend. Or the DS title list. I’ll be doing PSP, Gizmondo and GBA wrapups this weekend too, so stay tuned. There’s plenty more out there, these are just to help you get started. We didn’t see anything Tapwave or GP32 related, looking specifically for third-party applications. We didn’t expect any either, so no big deal. Next year we’ll do a scavanger hunt or something.

E3 2005, Next-Gen Systems, Blu RSS, and heavy linking is a post from: Portagame

E3 PSP Video [LINK]

Behold all 5 N-Gage Games! [LINK]

E3 GBA Coverage [LINK]

And last but not least check out the Nintendo DS Coverage
(make sure you watch the horribly un-informative DS Hardware Video) [LINK]

LOL. Enjoy. I will be waiting by my phone for Jason to call and explain why those E3 tickets never came. = )

All Your PortaGaming Needs in One Place is a post from: Portagame

# Advance Wars DS
# Elecktroplankton

# Meteos
# Mario and Luigi: Superstar Saga 2
# Metroid Prime: Hunters
# Metroid Prime Pinball
# NEW Super Mario Bros

That’s right a New Super Mario Bros. Cool huh? Check out the screenshots they posted and notice the Giant Mario on that one level? WTF?
Here’s a link to movie of the New Super Mario Bros

More DS Goodness from E3 is a post from: Portagame

I don’t want to get all you Zod-heads bummed out, but don’t be looking for any Tapwave Zodiac news during E3. According to the official E3 exhibitor list, Tapwave is MIA.

This just further supports their shift in business model from the Zodiac being a Gaming Unit to it just being a Multimedia Unit (which it still does mighty nicely, might I add). With the recent release of Palm’s LifeDrive, I may just rename the Tapwave section to Palm or PDA and cover the other PDA. Then again, I like Tapwave, I might just let ‘em be.

(And for those wondering about OQO and Flipstart, hang tight. I’ll be reorganizing those sections soon).

E3: Tapwave Mysteriously Missing is a post from: Portagame

While I’m on my N-Gage kick, I figured I should toss out these. Nokia announced some new accessories for their existing N-Gage QD unit. Aside from typical cases, headphones, and S&M leashes (or lanyards, whatever) that most portable units already have–there were a couple of unique items. Of note were the Aluminum MMC Game Card folio and the MMC expander. The folio is slick and slim and easily fits in your front pocket behind your pocket protector. The MMC expander will let you load two game cards into it for easy swap and play. Switch games just by flipping switch. Odd, easy game swapping is what I thought the whole QD redesign was all about. Oh well, anything to make me lazier and fatter, I’m all for.

Via NGage Gaming.

E3: New N-Gage Accessories is a post from: Portagame

Nokia announced their future N-Gage plans this week. No new phone, as we had hoped but knew we wouldn’t get. Instead there will be many new phones. Start thinking of N-Gage as a platform, not a unit. This move will allow Nokia to make different phones for different personalities and have them all be N-Gage enabled for some quick gaming.

Think about it, you have a GBA, a DS, a PSP, and a cell phone. Which one of those items are you most likely to have on you at all times? Ok, I realize that question might not work with Portagame’s audience. Let’s try this: which one of those items will an average, ordinary person have with them?

The phone.

Nokia has the right mindset. Get more phones in peoples hands that can support the software, you’ll sell more software. MP3 phones and camera phones went through a same evolution. At first, they were pretty exclusive. The bleeding-edge technod0rks all had them, but they paid a premium to have those features. Now, you can’t go anywhere without some etiquette-challenged mobile user snapping shots that you happen to be in. This is what Nokia is hoping will be the new era of Mobile gaming.

Nokia may also open the doors to third party manufacturers. Imagine an LG or Samsung N-Gage enabled camera phone–now that’s exciting. Not only that, but this business move will put Nokia’s Symbian operating system in front of more developers. The true race here isn’t Nokia vs. Nintendo or Sony. No, Nokia’s battlefield is versus Microsoft. Symbian vs. WindowsMobile (or whatever it’s called now). And Nokia just made a big move.

As a gamer, imagine the next time you sign a contract for a cellphone service, and you get to pick out a new phone. Half of the phones are N-Gage enabled. Would you pick an N-Gage Smartphone over a Microsoft phone? I know I sure would.

Asides from new phones, Nokia also announced a new Games Locker service. This will allow you to download, store, and manage all your games content on your PC. Nokia has tested the waters for this model and has seemingly decent results.

All-in-all I think AllAboutNgage.com stated it best:

Sounds like the other experiment, having Snake on electronic distribution only (no MMC card copies for the public), along with the popularity of 16MB downloadable demos for titles such as “Pathway to Glory”, has proven to Nokia that they can ship games out this way. Add in Nokia’s Preminet system to charge the end-user for the games, and the building blocks for a huge online gaming system become clear.

Yes, HUGE! Nokia is telling the world “Bring it on Fanboys, we’re here to stay!” And for developers, reaching an installed user base in the millions cannot be ignored.

But I also like the buzz I’m hearing from others:

Russell Beattie:
Nokia just announced their plans to support N-Gage Games across their smart phones starting next year, essentially turning “N-Gage” into a brand rather than a specific device. Just like I predicted… W00t! I love it when I’m right. Well, I was right on the details, but my predictions of timeframe still need some work. But that’s okay, I’ve learned a lot more about the speed of handset manufacturers since November of 2003 when I wrote this

NGage Gaming:
For developers, this means less effort spent creating dozens of versions of the same game. We will provide a robust development environment with the first set of tools expected to be available in Q4 2005 and a range of APIs native to the smartphone.

In addition, all mobile games available through this next generation Nokia solution will have advanced connectivity features, making connected mobile gaming easy over mobile networks via the N-Gage Arena, Nokia’s global mobile gaming community.

For operators, this solution provides the opportunity to expand their current mobile gaming offering. Nokia is able to offer operators with a modular turnkey solution, including scalable investment options and community management that will assist in driving subscriber revenues.

E3 2005: N-Gage Update is a post from: Portagame

I found some great E3 Coverage about new games coming out for the GBA and DS this year at E3. Here is a screenshot from the new Splinter Cell DS game.

And here are some links to even more Videos and Screenshots

http://djcostello.free.fr/e3/GBA/

http://djcostello.free.fr/e3/DS/

New Screenshots and Videos from E3 is a post from: Portagame