I don’t play a lot of games. For good reason: I tend to get sucked into them. I could easily lose half a day to a game, so I rarely start.

That said, I do on occasion indulge myself. I occasionally need to look at a game for my kids. Or I occasionally get asked to write a review of a game. Today’s distraction is a game for Android called Enzo’s Pinball, made by a company called Haptify. Their PR firm sent me a free copy of the game for review.

Being someone that owns a real pinball machine, I have fairly high standards for what a pinball simulation should do. Honestly, most of the simulations fail for a number of reasons.

Enzo’s Pinball is certainly one of the better versions I’ve played. It comes with three unique tables. The game was fairly intuitive to play, though I found it far too easy to get both flippers to flip on my Nexus One when I wanted one or the other.

The game also makes use of the phone’s vibrator. It vibrates to the action on the game in an attempt to simulate real pinball action. The vibrator is a nice touch, but any serious pinball junkie will tell you there’s nothing quite like the thunk–or the feel–of a real machine.

Certainly $1.49 isn’t bad for a game of this quality. The game is fun to play and includes OpenFeint support so you can share your achievements with the world.

Related Posts

• Fun With Old Pinball Machines
• PhoneBoy’s Week That Was 30 March 2008
• Eight Ball Deluxe–It’s Alive, Again!
• Android’s Definition Of “Open” Creates Problems
• Android: Closed is Open, Freedom is Slavery

This work originally came from The PhoneBoy Blog and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Fingerprint: e37ac627f3d973694c212ff9430d215a

The non-stick surface is a kind of rubbery pad that your mobile device can rest on. It seems to support my iPhone with case quite nicely as well as a number of Nokia phones I tried. The pad does occasionally lose it’s “stickiness” but it can easily be restored with a towel dampened with water to clean off any dirt or debris.

The most confusing this about the device is the instructions, which were clearly written by someone whose first language was not English. The device plugs into your computer with a USB cable. There is also a port on the back of the device where you plug in a different cable that has an end where you can plug in a number of different ends (which are included). The upshot of this is that you can charge a number of different devices.

For phones like the iPhone where you might also want to sync your phone to your machine while charging, you should use your regular USB cable instead of the supplied charging cable. The upshot of this arrangement is that I can also use this device to charge my Nokia E71. Unfortunately, the Nokia 2mm tip included in my set did not reliably charge my Nokia E71. Unfortunately, this is a rather common issue I have ran into with chargers not made by Nokia. Fortunately for me, I had a similar tip provided with a different charger that seemed to work ok.

All in all, a worthwhile item to purchase as it combines a number of different items in a small space. With the current USD to GBP exchange rates, it’s not a bad deal, though it might take a while to arrive.

Related Posts

• Rearranging my Office
• meme: blogdesk
• A Makeshift Desk Improves Productivity
• The Plantronics CS50 Headset
• Cleaning Up The Office

This work originally came from The PhoneBoy Blog and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Fingerprint: e37ac627f3d973694c212ff9430d215a

Trapster Goes iPhone 3.0 and Android: While this isn’t a service I’ve used in quite a while, I love the idea of a user-generated speed trap tracking system. Trapster has been around for at least a year and now supports the iPhone 3.0 firmware, exploiting to great effect the new mapping APIs as well as the background notification services, making it much quicker to report traps as well as have the ability to receive trap alerts without having to run the Trapster application in the foreground! Of course, if you have an Android phone, you’re covered as well since you can run the app in the background.

ShoZu Going Pay, Sort Of: ShoZu is an application that takes pictures from your phone and automatically puts it in social networks and the like online. Their app had been free, but it looks like they will move the application to the various phone application stores and charge for the app. They are already doing this for the iPhone version of the app. It’s an interesting way to pay for what is essentially a “service”–buy an app to access said service. Not sure how this is going to play with ShoZu users, or how it’s going to increase their user base, but it will be interesting to see.

The Nokia Glock Model 40: My dad sent me this picture. It gives the phrase “sidetalking” a whole new meaning, if you catch my drift.

OnRelay Brings Fixed Mobile Convergence to Sony Ericsson XPERIA X1: OnRelay is announcing on 23 June 2009 that they are collaborating with Sony Ericsson to bring OnRelay’s Mobile PBX software onto the Sony Ericsson device. My response: So what? This might have been interesting several years ago, but the world has already converged on the mobile phone. PBXes do nothing for me, nor do they do anything for most of the people I work with.

Related Posts

• Inbox Liquidation, Part 56: A Mobile Phone Bonanza!
• My Battle with Email
• Inbox Liquidation Part 50
• Something happened to GMail!
• Inbox Liquidation, Part 53

This work originally came from The PhoneBoy Blog and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Fingerprint: e37ac627f3d973694c212ff9430d215a

There are a few games I spent far too many quarters in as a kid. One of them was Punch Out, a boxing game that pitted you against such boxers as Glass Joe, Piston Hurricane, Bald Bull, and of course the dude at the end: Mr. Sandman. They also made versions for the NES, though it nothing comes close to the original.

It’s nice to know that the folks at Nintendo haven’t forgotten there’s a bunch of us 12 year olds in the mid 1980s that grew up to become 30-somethings wanting to relive a taste of our misspent youth. They are revamping and bringing the classic game to the Wii.

Of course, based on the trailer, it’s probably going to be different than the original arcade game, or even the weak NES version. Hopefully it’s easier to manipulate than the boxing that comes on Wii Sports, which is difficult to get the moves right.

Via TechEBlog

Related articles by Zemanta

• Wii ‘Punch-Out!’ Bids Me Good Night
• Punch-Out!! returns! First screens and video of new Wii sequel
• Wii Shop releases for the week of 9/6: Bowling, MadStone, Mario Golf 64, more
• Joystiq live from Nintendo’s fall media summit
• Rumortoid: Punch-Out!! for the Wii at E3

Related Posts

• Internet Channel on Wii
• Why AT&T’s $10 DSL Matters
• Now Low Can It Go?
• Since When Do Arcade Machines Run Windows?
• Grand Central Sucks Too

This work originally came from The PhoneBoy Blog and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Fingerprint: e37ac627f3d973694c212ff9430d215a

Meanwhile, if you want to want to show your addiction to Tetris, you might want to decorate your house with these Tetris tiles. They are just like tiles you’d put in your shower, countertops, or backsplashes, but they are in different shapes and colors. Just like real Tetris pieces. And you can pick your colors, too!

I don’t think my wife will be allowing me to decorate with this stuff any time soon, but it’s fun to dream.

Product page via TOKYOMANGO

Related articles by Zemanta

• Classic Arcade Games That Everyone Loves
• ‘Tetris’-like iPhone app to be pulled
• Tetris Splash
• Brave Space Design Tetris Shelves are Best Yet [Home Furnishings]
• The Horror II: Revenge of Tetris Shoes! [Shoes]

Related Posts

• This Week in PhoneBoy 5 August 2007
• Full Disclosure on Coverage
• The Week in PhoneBoy 19 August 2007
• This Week in PhoneBoy 9 September 2007
• More of the damn cold, Dell, Wireless, and turning people onto Open Office.

This work originally came from The PhoneBoy Blog and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Fingerprint: e37ac627f3d973694c212ff9430d215a

A couple of months ago, the folks at Cahoona Games sent me a review copy of Marble Maze for the Nokia N95 and Nokia N82. I feel bad that I didn’t review it before now, but I certainly played it several times in the meantime!

The reason this game needs these two specific phones is that it actually uses the accelerometer to move the little ball through the maze. This limits the game to the N95 and N82, both of which contain an accelerometer.

It’s like that old labyrinth game where you take the ball on a table and try and navigate it through a maze without the ball falling into a hole. Marble Maze is exactly like that, except you can hold the maze in the palm of your hand and there are 40 different mazes to go through.

This game is so worth the $5.99 it will cost you to pick it up.

Related Posts

• Use PhoneGnome From Your Nokia N95
• Nokia N80 versus Nokia N95: Howard Chui Has Spoken!
• Nokia N81 8GB: The Final Verdict
• Nokia N75 in April? And the N95 in North America?
• Testing Think Outside Keyboard With Nokia N95

This work originally came from The PhoneBoy Blog and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Fingerprint: e37ac627f3d973694c212ff9430d215a