For those who purchase N-Gage games from Nokia, here's a bit of good news to lighten up your day: Nokia has announced that it would be working on a solution to allow N-Gage games to be transferable between Nokia devices.

"We acknowledge our customers' concerns and have been working on a solution that would allow people to transfer purchased N-Gage games to a new Nokia device."

Source: BBC News

Nokia released the N-Gage platform yesterday for the Nokia N81, N82 and the N95 (and also their respective 8GB variants), although there wasn't any official press releases; instead only with a small announcement in their news room. So far only 5 phones are supported - but Nokia will be making the N-Gage available for more phones, including the N73 and the N93, in the future.

And it's pretty surprising that Nokia has left instructions for both Mac and PC users installing the N-Gage on their N82. Such user-friendliness hasn't been seen in a corporation this large for quite a while...

Click here to download N-Gage from Nokia.

According to the developers of the N-Gage platform, the First Access program is ending on the 27th of March. Although you can still play games in the application, it will no longer be officially supported, so do take heed. Here's a couple of notes to remind you:

• Player Names and Passwords will not be valid for the official release of N-Gage
  
  
• Game licenses for purchased games will be valid for commercial release, but you will need to upgrade to the new N-Gage and reinstall the game again
  
  
• All saved games and N-Gage points will be wiped for a "fresh start for everyone"

No words on when the final release will be available, but it's probably out in a "few weeks".

By the way, Nokia is also offering a free game for N-Gage, Mile High Pinball, as well as 1000 community points if you complete their survey, so why not do it now?

As you may recall from my previous blog post a few days ago, N-Gage First Access (Public Beta) has been released exclusively for the Nokia N81. Well I don't like things released exclusively for one model - in particular, considering that the N82 is the flagship product along with the N95, and has even more functions than the N81, shouldn't us users get a chance to participate in this public beta?

I managed to find a method to install this new public beta on this Chinese forum - it's working fine for me, so I'm happy to share it with you guys.

First off, download this archive file. It contains the N-Gage application that you're going to need to run your games. Install Pips. sis (if it hasn't been installed yet) and NGageInstaller.sis. You should numerous prompts for multiple components needing installation when you install NGageInstaller. Just keep clicking next until it installs. And it doesn't really matter where you install it, it still runs either from the Phone memory or your Memory stick.

After your installation, you should notice that the N-Gage application is missing from your main menu. It's now located in the "Applications" Folder under the main menu. The logo should be coloured blue now instead of the orange you've seen for the past months. Beats me why they've changed the colour...

Now the easy part. You've gotten N-Gage installed; the only thing missing is the games. Download this second package which includes the first 3 games offered from the Nokia website (since the app is in beta, all the games are only trial versions). All you need to do now is to connect your N82 in USB Mass Storage Device status (or take the memory stick out and connect it via the card reader) and drag all the downloaded games (which are conveniently in the n-gage file format) in to X:\n-gage.

Now disconnect the cable, boot up N-Gage, wait for it to lag a bit before the app starts, and you're there. The last step is to install the game in to your system - notice that all the game titles are slightly transparent. Scroll to the game you want to start and click on the middle button; it prompts the user for installation. Once that is done, click again on the game title and start gaming away!

Source: Sogi! Forums

Yep, you got me right. I quote from Nokia...

N-Gage First Access has begun. To ensure N-Gage is the best it can be, we want you to take an active part in its development.

Unfortunately, it's only out for Nokia N81 and N81 8GB users. :(

But this means we'll definitely be seeing the N-Gage released for the N82 in the very short term future. If it's already out in some sort of Beta form, it probably is ready to be released in full for all compatible phones.

Source: N-Gage