I was told about the brand new, multiplatform (desktop PC, PPC & ALL Smartphone platforms, including even Landscape QVGA models like the Q) in THIS MoDaCo thread. The Smartphone (not counting in Skyforce (Reloaded) and, of course, arcade emulation with FinalBurn Alpha) heavily lacking GOOD vertical scrollers, I hurried up to test the game on my handhelds.
It’s, as can also be seen in the above-linked MoDaCo thread, is constantly updated; the current version (1.21) was released just a few days ago (06/25).
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The game supports all current screen resolutions. This, however, doesn’t mean it makes use of high resolution on (W)VGA Pocket PC’s – just that it supports the common Smartphone resolutions and orientations (in addition to the standard QVGA and 240*240 square resolution on Pocket PC). Note that, on 176*220 Smartphones, some of the titles are not readable or hard to read (see for example THIS and THIS screenshots); fortunately, in-game graphics is pretty good (example screenshot HERE). On QVGA models, everything is OK.
Speed-wise, I haven’t encountered any speed problems on any of my handhelds, not even on my comparatively slow Vox (s710) with A2DP activated (A2DP takes a lot of CPU cycles).
Getting the game
Get it HERE or on c2matrix’ official homepage.
The trial version is one-map only (fortunately, it contains several submaps and a lot of graphics); the commercial version costs $14.95.
Note that the c2matrix server, unfortunately, returns the CAB files as text. This means you will have problems with some Windows Mobile Web browsers downloading the CAB files for direct install – even the latest Opera Mini 4 Beta. See the Download Bible and the “Saving, downloading group:” section in the Web Browsing Bible for more info & help, should you REALLY want to get the OTA (Over-The-Air) installer without having access to any desktop PC.
Compared to…
Let's compare the game to the two best alternatives, Skyforce Reloaded and FinalBurn Alpha:
Skyforce Reloaded, this title is definitely weaker:
The in-game music is WAY worse, low-quality, mono and repetitive. Sound effects are mono only.
In general, there is less happening on the screen: fewer sprites, slightly less spectacular vision effects etc.
While there are 3D (mostly hills and towers) models in the game, those of Skyforce Reloaded are clearly better and much more please the eye
emulated CAVE, CPS and NeoGeo games (with FinalBurn Alpha reviewed HERE),
it isn’t THAT good either. These commercial arcade games have really good music, sound / visual effects. Make sure you give them a try – read THIS tutorial, get some games and play – you’ll LOVE them!
Note that neither Skyforce Reloaded nor Finalburn Alpha support vibration, while this game does. Not that it’d be THAT important – it’s only when you die or when your main enemies are destroyed that the vibration is used.
Also, this is the only vertical scroller I know of to support replay functionality. It’s definitely a nice addition, should you want to see recorded playing sessions. (And, of course, it supports map codes so that you can quickly return to a given one, without having to play through the ones you already know. Of course, Skyforce Reloaded also unlocks already played maps and, with non-Neo-Geo titles, Finalburn Alpha support state saving / loading.)
Compatibility
I had absolutely no problems on any of my WM2003+ Pocket PC’s I’ve tested it on (HP iPAQ 2210, WM5 2.01 VGA HP iPAQ hx4700, WM2003SE VGA PL720, A12 Dell Axim x51v). The same stands for my MS Smartphones: the 176*220 WM5 HTC s310 (Oxygen) and the QVGA Portrait s710 (Vox).
The game, by default, isn’t compatible with the old Pocket PC 2002 operating system. Rewriting the DLL’s with Executability Check (also see the page HERE) helps, but the graphics will still be messed up and unplayable.
Verdict
While this game is clearly better than the VAST majority of vertical scrollers on the Pocket PC (and, particularly, on the MS Smartphone), there are still better alternatives. Both Skyforce Reloaded and arcade (CAVE / CPS / NeoGeo) emulation delivers definitely better, more enjoyable results – at a reduced price (Skyforce Reloaded is cheaper) or for free.
This, however, doesn’t mean this game is bad, not in the least (except for the in-game music, which is REALLY bad). Even if you’re a fan of the above-listed games, you will want to give it a try to find out whether it’s your taste or not. Also, if you only know lower-quality titles (the old Burning Armor, Star Invader II by IBE Group, Super Invade, AngelFish or Resco Guardians), you’ll certainly like this title (but, as has already been pointed out, go for Skyforce Reloaded and Finalburn Alpha first).
Also see…
Allen Gall’s review
Related
It was some months ago that I’ve published a roundup of all Air Hockey clones on the Pocket PC. In the meantime, having seen the lack of a really up-to-date and, most importantly, multiplayer-capable Air Hockey clones, the excellent folks at 4Pockets have developed a really decent clone, which has just been released (therefore, the current, tested version is 1.0).
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There isn’t much to be said of the genre itself: if you’ve ever played an Air Hockey clone, you already know what it’s about. If you don’t know the genre, you’re strongly supposed to check out the demo – it’s really entertaining. Fortunately, the implementation of the game isn’t at all worse than the other, decent 4Pockets titles (see the Appendix for some of them).
Availability, compatibility
The game is available here and costs $14.95. There is a playable trial (which lets the players play some 1-2 minutes a game).
It’s compatible with most devices I’ve tested it on (WM2003SE VGA Pocket Loox 720, WM2003 HP iPAQ 2210, WM5 HTC Wizard (2.26 ROM), WM5 VGA Dell Axim x51v (A12 ROM)). Unfortunately, it’s incompatible with both the WM5 (2.01 ROM) HP iPAQ hx4700 and pre-WM2003 (Pocket PC 2000 / 2002) devices.
I've tested the title in all possible Bluetooth PAN and Wi-Fi peer-to-peer combinations (the former between Widcomm BT stack-based devices; the latter between Wi-Fi-capable ones) in multiplayer mode; I've never had any speed / lagging problems in either configuration. That is, it'll work just great in multiplayer mode, independent of your particular Pocket PC model. Of course, you may need to disable the particle effects if you play against/with a slower device because it'll cause considerable lag to both participants.
Note that while the homepage states the game requires a 300 MHz XScale/StrongARM CPU, it’s perfectly playable on the 195 MHz OMAP HTC Wizard too if you disable the particle effects (you can do this on every game setup screen – NOT in the general preference settings!)
Pros
Definitely better than any other Air Hockey clone on the Pocket PC, even Paul Ellams’ Air Hockey 3D. For example, particularly in Landscape, the screen estate is far better utilized than with the Paul Ellams game, which only uses a portion of the screen to render the board.
LAN-based (BT PAN & Wi-Fi P2P-compatible) Multiplayer, meaning compatibility with both all Widcomm/Broadcom Bluetooth-based and Wi-Fi-capable Pocket PC’s (unlike in other Pocket PC Air Hockey clones, which have absolutely no multiplayer support)
Good ambient sounds & effects (not stereo though)
As with all 4Pockets games and unlike all other Air Hockey clones, spectacular particle effects (must be turned off on slower devices like the HTC Wizard though)
Power-ups (unlike in other Pocket PC Air Hockey clones)
Playable on slower devices too
Selectable screen orientation: the presence of (selectable) Portrait mode is welcome news for devices having screens that (may) have polarization problems in Landscape mode (for example, the Dell Axim x50v/x51v)
Cons
No Bluetooth serial support any more, as opposed to 4Connect from the same company (bad news for Microsoft Bluetooth stack owners that don’t want to use Wi-Fi peer-to-peer connections to save battery life)
No Pocket PC 2002 support any more, as opposed to most previous titles (for example, Great Gold Rush or Harry Putter) from the same company
No in-game or menu music (unfortunately, most newer 4Pockets games lack this)
Considerably more expensive than even the so far best Air Hockey title Paul Ellams’ Air Hockey 3D (of course, much better too)
(No map editor, unlike in Paul Ellams’ Air Hockey 3D)
Verdict
If you are looking for the best Air Hockey clone, particularly if you need multiplayer, go for this title. You won’t regret it, I'm pretty sure - this title lives up to the (high - 4Pockets has always produced quality titles) expectations.
Appendix: other apps / games of 4Pockets worth mentioning
Some other games and apps of the 4Pockets folks are 4Talk, a great walkie-talkie app; some really fine sound applications (AudioBox, PocketRTA (Pro), Auto Tuner), multiplayer games (4Connect; The Great Gold Rush) and some really great single player games, for example Super Elemental (one of the best color matching titles with really great in-game music and explosion effects), Particle Wars (a great vertical scroller; while not as good as SkyForce (Reloaded), I still heartily recommend it), Marble Worlds (a very good Marble (Gyroscope) clone), Harry Putter's Crazy Golf and some other titles. Also see the Roundup of All Pocket PC Games Part I for more information on some of these titles.
how come this game is lag with my hermes using wm6? is there a way to lesser the lag? ty.
blyx21 said:
how come this game is lag with my hermes using wm6? is there a way to lesser the lag? ty.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Haven't tested it myself on the Hermes so I can only guess; most probably, because of the infamous HTC touchscreen CPU usage bug.
Remember the Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge series on the home computers of the late 80's / early 90’s? Ever wanted a game similar to them on the Pocket PC? Now, you can!
Apart from Kart games (please see this roundup of them), there have been very few “light”, "arcade" racing games on the Pocket PC. The new, reviewed title, therefore, really welcome – despite its problems on VGA devices and lack of 2700G support.
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Availability
The game is available here for all popular handheld platforms (MS Pocket PC and Smartphone; Palm; S60 and UIQ).
Note that the official homepage of the developer (still) doesn’t have a trial version online; ClickGamer (see link above) does. That is, visit the latter for the trial version.
Compatibility
It’s compatible with all my WM2003+ (no PPC2k2 support, sorry) devices. I’ve tested it on the following devices without problems: WM5 VGA Dell Axim x51v (A12), WM2003SE VGA Pocket Loox 720, WM5 VGA iPAQ hx4700 (2.01; bad controls - D-Pad is not gaming-friendly!), WM5 QVGA HTC Wizard (clocked at the default 195 MHz), WM2003 QVGA iPAQ h2210.
Differences between Palm and Pocket PC versions
I’ve also tested the game on my Palm Tungsten T3 to find out the differences between the different mobile platform implementations (in this case, Pocket PC and Palm). It runs great on it too, even in HiRes+ (320*480 mode) (with, of course, high car / track rendering resolution). To get the best speed, you’ll want to run it in plain HiRes (320*320) mode though. Unfortunately, on Palm OS HiRes+ devices, it doesn’t support Landscape mode mode at all, unlike on Pocket PC's.
The most important difference between Palm and Pocket PC is the lower sound / music sampling frequency on the latter. On Palms, the in-game music / sounds sound considerably better than on the Pocket PC. This should also be fixed in a subsequent PPC version.
Controls
D-Pad only; there is no way to (fine) control the car with the stylus, as opposed to, say, GeoRally EX (review here, in the second part of ALL 2700G-enabled games and demos) and like Stuntcar Extreme (review of the 2700G version here and the multiplayer capabilities of the title in the Pocket PC Multiplayer Bible). This, on one hand, understandable (after all, stylus control can greatly decrease the speed of the game on some devices – for example, see the example of Skyforce Reloaded on the iPAQ h2210 and the HTC Wizard. This, unfortunately, also means it’s pretty unplayable on devices with non-gaming-friendly controls (most importantly, the HP iPAQ hx4700).
The landscape mode is available only via OS-level and not in-game switching. This is bad news for WM2003 users – in WM2003, there are no OS-level landscape switching capabilities.
Note that you must use left-handed (NOT the default right-handed one!) landscape mode in order to be able to have the D-pad in a non-inversed mode!
Visuals
Pretty good, particularly considering it doesn’t use any kind of hardware acceleration.
On VGA devices, it’s a bit slow (but still tolerable) and you can’t switch back to QVGA resolution. The latter is a big problem. Note that it runs with approximately the same speed on all the three VGA devices I’ve tested it on (hx4700, x51v and PL720).
Sounds
The sounds aren’t bad, albeit they are all in mono, as opposed to, say, Michael Schumacher Racing World Kart (see Mario Kart games on the Pocket PC). The in-game and the menu music repetitive but pretty good – just like what a “light” racing game should have.
Summary
Pros
Very fast on QVGA devices, even on older (for example the iPAQ h2210) and “slow” (see for example the non-overclocked HTC Wizard) devices and even in landscape mode
Hi-Res track / car (but NOT ambient buildings / trees!) resolution on VGA (and on Palm OS) devices
Cons
Considerably slower on VGA devices than on QVGA ones
No 2700G support (bad news for Dell Axim x50v/x51v users)
Lack of Landscape support for WM2003 devices
Inconsistent menu exit/enter button over different PPC models if you don’t have dedicated (or assigned) WM5 softkey buttons. For example, on some devices (for example, the PL720), it’s Today / Action ; on other devices different (for example, on the iPAQ 2210, iTask / Calendar)
No stereo in-game sound / music
Lower sound / music sampling frequency on Pocket PC than on the Palm
No multiplayer capabilities (unlike MicroQuad – see Mario Kart games on the Pocket PC), Stuntcar Extreme and the “original” Lotus series
Verdict
Recommended. Go get it if you’re a fan of “light” racer games, you’d like to have a Lotus-like game on your Pocket PC and you happen to have any QVGA device. If you have a VGA device, you can also give it a try to see whether you can live with the considerably lower frame rate.
Recommended links
Mario Kart games on the Pocket PC
The Games category in the Smartphone & Pocket PC Magazine Expert blogs
Warelex, an established Symbian / Java developer but a newcomer to Pocket PC development, has just released their second Pocket PC title (the first, Sky Striker, was released back in July), a flight simulator title Sky Racer.
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The game, which is a traditional mission-based title, starts with a pretty simple tutorial (screenshot 2 3), which, then, is followed by more interesting missions.
Availability, compatibility
Te game is available here. The trial is pretty playable; the game costs $19.95.
Currently, while the developer advertises it as WM2003(SE)-compliant, it isn’t – it can’t be installed on these devices. That is, it only runs on WM5 ones.
As far as the latter are concerned, I have’t had any problems on mine.
Sounds, in-game music
There is no in-game music, just in the menu (the same as in the previous title, Sky Striker); the sounds are pretty OK.
Visuals
They’re pretty OK for a non-3D-accelerated title. If you are into nice visuals (and don’t mind the close-to-unplayable speed on even the, for gaming, fastest Pocket PC’s like the Dell Axim x51v), you may like the visuals. Needless to say, it doesn’t make use of the high-resolution capabilities of VGA devices – except for the space shooter Anthelion II, no 3D simulation title does that without true 3D hardware acceleration support.
Compared to Sky Striker
Pros
Controls at last definable (screenshot 2) – no more problems with few-button or PPC Phone Edition devices like the iPAQ 2210, the HTC Universal and the HTC Wizard
Support for different profiles
Touchscreen support at last (should be controlled in the lower right quarter only)
Screen orientation can be freely chosen: Portrait (great news for Pocket PC users of models (like the Dell Axim x50v/x51v) having polarization problems in Landscape) and two Landscape modes. Sky Striker only supported the two Landscape modes but not Portrait
Cons
Without explicitly switching to using low-quality textures, it’s pretty slow on the x51v - Sky Striker was definitely faster, albeit it had much worse visuals (no skies, pretty low-res textures etc). On the overclocked (!) HTC Wizard, it’s almost unplayable – in there, I needed to switch to even low-resolution (160*120), which, of course, looks pretty ugly low-resolution. With everything setting to low-quality, it’s pretty responsive – but, then, the visuals really suffer. That is, on some devices, you MUST manually decrease the graphics detail, while, on some other, the default “auto detect” will be OK.
Only available CAB installer is WM5-only – no WM2003 support any more (unlike with Sky Striker), despite what the official compatibility statement states
Generic problems
No pre-WM5 support – I’ve tested the (slightly different) CAB files on both the official homepage and Handango.
No in-game music and it uses exactly the same menu music as Sky Striker – I’d expect of a pretty expensive ($19.95) title at least a new menu music!
Still no OpenGL-ES / 2700G or any kind of 3D support. Developers, we do want hardware 3D support!
Bad English, a lot of typos (examples: the resolution setting dialog, the video scheme dialog
Screenshots
The new settings screen: advanced video settings: 1 2 3 4. Also see the homepage of the game for more screenshots.
Verdict
This title definitely has advancements over the first Pocket PC title of the developer, particularly controllability- and fine tune-wise – it seems the developers have really read my Sky Striker review and implemented what I’ve mostly complained about (except for OpenGL-ES / 2700G support).
I can also recommend it over OmniGSoft’s well-known Mini-Dogfight and Mini-Jetfight (please see the Multiplayer Bible for more information on these titles) because, now, controllability- and fine tuning-wise, this title is considerably better, not to mention the much better missions. You may only want to stick to the OmniGSoft titles if you need multiplayer support, which the Warelex title, unfortunately, (still?) lacks.
If you are a flight simulation fan, give this game a try.
Fortunately, the Windows Mobile gaming scene is thriving. It was just a few days ago that I’ve published the last gaming news article (available HERE; it was also mentioned in THIS PPCT frontpaged story); in the meantime, there have been two major, new releases. (BTW, as far as the games reported on in the last part are concerned, in the meantime, the bugs of Plasma Duel have been fixed. I also recommend THIS PG.org thread on Corsair, which I have also nominated for this year’s Best Software Awards contest.)
Sindbad: Return of Legend – a GREAT Prince of Persia clone – finally out!
I’ve already reported on the early alpha of this title. It was pretty much useless and unplayable. Fortunately, the final version is (almost) flawless and offers a REALLY nice and rich graphics enviromnent – definitely better than the home computers or 8-bit consoles of that age (early nineties) – it’s only the SNES version that is similarly rich. (See them HERE if you’re interested.)
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Unfortunately, there’s absolutely no in-game music, only (not really great) sounds.
It, as with the alpha version, is available HERE for WM2003+ -based Pocket PC’s (no MS Smartphones are supported, sorry, mostly because of the two on-screen tap areas).
Verdict: I heartily recommend the title if you’re a die-hard Prince of Persia fan and want to play through all the games based on the original game, but with brand new maps and excellent (albeit QVGA only, which is bad news for owners of VGA devices) graphics.
If, however, you “only” want to play the original Prince of Persia and find the (pretty hefty, if you ask me) price tag ($19.95) of Sindbad too big, you may want to go for emulating the original title (I particularly recommend the NES (for example, with SmartGear) and the MS-DOS emulation (with both n0p’s DOSBox port and PocketDOS); both are excellent). It’s not only free, but, as far as emulating with SmartGear is concerned, is much easier on the battery. (Sindbad continuously uses 100% CPU time even without you moving; this means heavily reduced battery life when compared to, say, the newer version(s) of SmartGear).
ConcreteSoft releases 3D Lawn Darts
This title is the second game of ConcreteSoft, the first being Constructo Combat reviewed HERE.
(main menu VGA screenshot HERE)
It’s a 3D darts game, with two special features: native Bluetooth multiplayer and camera-based motion controllability, the latter being the major (intended) selling point of the title.
I was unable to test the former (BT multiplayer support) because the trial version doesn’t support multiplayimg features at all (and I hate requesting review copies of titles I know I won’t write a 100% positive review of – you know, I hate biting the feeding hand). Therefore, I can’t even comment on the BT compatibility – whether the developer has implemented support for the Microsoft BT stack in the meantime (Constructo Combat didn’t support the Microsoft BT stack). Please, developers, DO provide ALL the functionality in your trial versions so that they can be tested before purchasing – or, for that matter, when writing a definitely unbiased review of.
As far as the camera-based, Wii-like control scheme is concerned, I don’t think it’s as groundbreaking as the developer claims. Even after a two times three-stage calibration (example screenshot), I’ve had problems with unreliable shots (screenshot). What is more, it’s only at throwing the dart that you have any effect on the direction of the dart, not later. This means, if the camera-based control works at all, it will inherently be more unreliable than the standard, D-pad-based control. That is, the camera mode, in my opinion, is pretty much useless.
It also has some bugs; for example, if you have a pair of stereo (wired or wireless A2DP) headphones, you won’t like the in-game music / sound effects to be played back in one channel (in the right piece of the headphones) only.
Finally, bad news for users of pre-WM5 devices: as with Constructo Combat, this game is completely incompatible with older operating systems. That is, it's not even compatible with the three-year-old WM2003SE operating system.
It also has strengths. For example, it’s one of the very few games to natively (!) support the MS Smartphone (WM6 Standard) platform (in addition to all flavors of the Pocket PC platform, including native, hi-res (!) graphics on VGA devices, just like in Constructo Combat). It even runs on 176*220, low-resolution Smartphones models – with some minor glitches. With menus (screenshot) and in-game screens, it’s OK as can be seen in the following screenshot:
With tutorial screens, however, it isn’t, as can also be seen in HERE and HERE.
The title is available for download HERE; the price of the full version is $19.95.
Verdict: I think you will want to check out the other darts alternatives first. There are many; most const half (or even the quarter) the price. Examples include, most importantly, Devil Darts, Patriotic Darts, JasonGoldman.com’s Dartz and Webfoot Technologies’ Darts.
Clickgamer 48-hour sale & other rebates
There are some interesting rebates at Clickgamer; make sure you check them out. You can get the following titles for half the price: the brand new Secrets of da Vinci, The Quest and Ballrush Aqua. Astraware Solitaire (links to reviews in the previous two Games News) is also offered with a 50% rebate. Finally, if you have a Dell Axim x50v/x51v and you still don’t have Quake Mobile Ultimate Bundle (review HERE), you may be interested in THIS 20% rebate.
Emulator news
This time, there are no new releases. I’ve, on the other hand, finished adding the missing emulators to the Emulators category in the Encyclopedia of Software & Accessories. While some emulators are still missing (for example, the latest native MS Smartphone ZX Spectrum and C64 emulators and some calculator emulators – their authors have still not registered them, which means I will need to do it myself. Please check back tomorrow or the day after for the final list), you can already have a good picture of what emulators (along with the Best Software Awards 2007 contest, of course) these categories will contain.
Emulation article-wise, I also recommend these kind words from Allen Gall, the Games Editor of PPCMag
This is the latest part of my Games News series; you can find the previous part HERE. The news in this part applies to both the Pocket PC (Windows Mobile 6 Pro / Classic) and MS Smartphone (Windows Mobile 6 Standard) devices - that is, no matter what Windows Mobile device you have, you WILL want to read on.
Arcade Park 1.3 out – now, with redefinable fire button!
Arcade Park is, in my opinion, a really good collection of reimplementation of old arcade games reviewed HERE (you may also want to check out the two other reviews linked at the end) containing several old subgames. It’s available for example HERE for all mobile platforms, including both the MS Smartphone (both 176*220 and QVGA) and Pocket PC (it’s even compatible with 240*240 square-screen devices; unfortunately, it doesn’t make use of high resolution on VGA ones).
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(main menu on a 176*220 Smartphone; the same on a QVGA/VGA PPC / QVGA Smartphone)
In-game screenshot on a 176*220 Smartphone; the same on a QVGA/VGA PPC / QVGA Smartphone)
The biggest problem with the game, so far, have been the inability to redefine keys; most importantly, the Action button. Now, oin the new version, you can do it in the new Controls menu. Example 176*220 SP screenshots: 1 2 (on a QVGA PPC / SP)
(Incidentally, as can also be seen in the in-game screenshots, you no longer need to defend the Soviet flag, which may be good news for several players, particularly in post-Soviet countries. Another plus for the developers.)
(Guys, I’m really sorry you’ve just missed the deadline date for the Awards 2007 with this upgraded version. Should you have published the new version some days earlier, I would definitely have nominated it for this year’s awards. No problem – I’ll do it next year.)
Verdict
Now that the button redefinition problem is fixed, highly recommended, particularly if you have a Smartphone (given the lack of good MS Smartphone games).
SmartGear 0.28 out!
SmartGear is one of the best gaming console emulatrors I’ve featured in my past emulator news / roundups.
So far, one of the biggest problems with the emulator was the sound problems (in addition to its incompatibility with some games – for example, enhanced NES titles; the PC Engine version of Turrican – unfortunately, this hasn’t been enhanced. The only change is that for example Turrican no longer starts (with all 0.2x versions, as opposed to 0.12)). Now, according to the developer, this is supposed to be fixed.
Note that there are still some problems with the sound: for example, the PC Engine (TG-16) version of Bonk's Adventure still plays the same FM-like sounds during the game as earier versions. Also, very few Genesis (Mega Drive) games have music (for example, Xenon 2 (Xenon 2 Megablast (E) [c][!]) and Risky Woods (Risky Woods (UE) [!]) don’t have, the former not even sounds; one of the very few games that do have music is Alien 3 (JUE) [!]. Also, the FitWin* mode still crashes on my VGA devices and FitWin is unberabaly slow – you will still need to use either the 100% or the 150% mode, which means stamp-sized screens on VGA devices. On the other hand, on 176*220 Smartphones (for example, on my HTC Oxygen / s310), where it’s REALLY needed with most desktop games (otherwise, they’d be too big even in 75% mode) FitWin works just great and doesn’t result in any really bad speed decrease (tested this with the GG version of Sonic and the PC Engine version of Bonk's Adventure; they both worked just great with the default sound / frame skipping / throttling settings on my Oxygen).
The desktop Windows version of the emulator, after closing it once (because I couldn’t continue a paused game), kept crashing after restarts.
All in all, while this title is REALLY good (particularly on slower devices – for example, non-overclocked TI OMAP ones, including, screen size-wise, both types of Smartphones), the FitWin performance may need to be addressed on VGA Pocket PC’s as soon as possible, along with the Genesis (Mega Drive) music issues.