Dungeon crawl

Holy crap, an actual update! Sort of related to my tag hunting from the last time. Impress Watch has been pretty good about keeping their tags relevant, in recent months adding tags for downloadable services, and the iPhone. Yesterday I noticed that they also have a new "Android" tag. The story was about a new device from KDDI for its au mobile service, which also promised a new digital delivery service along with the device. A shadow Android Marketplace of sorts. Since au is a popular service with a lot of games, the thought of an exclusive service wasn't my idea of fun. To date, Android has proved itself as an open, international platform. "Jeux sans frontiers," if you want to be a douche about it. The games they featured looked pretty impressive too, although after a little research it turned out to be just licensed G-Mode shit.

This news prompted me to take a little trip through the Android Market, to see if there was any new software that looked interesting. There I came upon a interesting looking homebrew RPG game. It looked to be simple 3D with 2D sprites for characters and enemies, and was also the showcase for a custom game engine. I wondered why would someone make a 3D app for a device that can't handle 3D. But since they did, that means it has to, right? I downloaded a trail version, and was surprised to find it ran like crap on my phone. For the longest time I thought the only Android headset in Japan was NTT DoCoMo's HT-03A, which is the same model that I own. It made me feel better about still schlepping around with Android 1.6. After checking the developers FAQ, it looks like there are plenty more powerful alternatives to the lowly HTC Magic. NTT themselves have Sony Ericsson's Xperia, as I mentioned earlier, KDDI is about to launch the Sharp IS01 "smart book," a cross between a netbook and a phone, and J-iPhone carrier Softbank is in the game with HTC's own Desire, a follow up the the mighty Nexus One. Welp, time for an upgrade.

The only other thing I downloaded was a free pole jumping thingie from Genki of all people. It sucks pretty hard, can only be played in landscape mode, despite having a perfectly square game screen, and has annoyingly loud music. Good price for it.