Using the Nokia N81 for Gaming

I have recently acquired a Nokia N81 8GB, also dubbed a “multimedia computer” as with any Nokia Nseries device. I have had a Nokia 6110 Navigator previously, but the GPS features don’t really appeal much, so I got this really sexy phone as a replacement.

The Nokia N81 has such a great design (if you don’t count the buttons) that even the upcoming Nokia N96, the over-hyped successor to the Nokia N95, is using a tweaked design of the N81. The N81 also comes with two dedicated gaming keys (I’ll explain later how great it can be!), WLAN connectivity and superb music features as well.

Now, to the gaming portion of the Nokia N81, which is the main topic of this article. The N81 is designed so well it can function as a GameBoy. This can be done with GameBoy Advance emulators such as vBag X.

Along with some great GameBoy Advance games, the N81 can really function very well as a mobile gaming machine. Since it’s not really legitimate, I’m not going to write about how to go about setting up vBag X, which can be runned on the N81 or any other Series 60 Version 3 device.

However, the good thing about the N81 is that the two dedicated gaming keys can be used as the A and B buttons and the volume keys can act as shoulder buttons in a GameBoy Advance game. Since you can set the screen to be rotated to landscape in vBag X, as well as modify keys, it is good for playing GameBoy Advance games and it feels natural too.

The Nokia N81 can also run emulators of several other platforms, but the main attraction is the N-Gage 2.0 feature. There are not many titles you can play around with on the new N-Gage 2.0 platform, but more games are coming out in the future.

The N-Gage 2.0 platform works like Xbox LIVE with the Arena feature, but there are still many bugs yet to be ironed out. For example, I have had a connection problem with any access point I used to connect to N-Gage Arena. I could connect and browse succesfully with the in-built web browser, Opera Mini and Windows Live Messenger, but just not with N-Gage Arena. It’s a real shame.

Lastly, for anybody intending to purchase a Nokia N81, whether you go for the Micro-SD version or the 8GB version, I would like to add that it is indeed a really well-designed and all-rounded phone built for gaming and multimedia. It’s a really hard choice between this and the iPhone, but the N81’s multimedia functions can easily help you make a choice over another.

So, here will be the end of another blog post. I hope you have enjoyed reading this, if you are a Nokia mobile phone owner, somehow. It might even impact your mobile phone purchases. I don’t know, but Sony Erricsson doesn’t seem to match up with Nokia on the mobile gaming area. I would really love to see a Sony Erricson PSP phone in the future though. Have a nice day, guys!

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