I’m back from the N-Gage meetup from tonight, and while I was disappointed not to see any new devices, I got to play with the pre-release versions of The One and Yamake games for N-Gage. I also met two faces of a new N-Gage campaign that the world may be seeing in a couple of months.

I liveblogged the event which you can replay and see. Unfortunately the photos are not so great from the Nokia E71.

N-Gage Campaign

Scott, also known as Emo185 in the N-Gage Arena and Norman from Symbian World were in New York today for a photo shoot. If Nokia likes the photos, they may appear in billboards across the globe for an N-Gage campaign. Pretty cool! Scott shares some of his thoughts on the photo shoot over at his blog.

Scott from N-Gage Arena

Norman from Symbian World

I met the two earlier this evening along with other bloggers and a representative from Nokia N-Gage. The meetup was organized by WOM World Nokia.

Preview

Jen from Nokia showed us a few games from N-Gage and I got interested on the pre-release games: The One and Yamake. I was not allowed to take pictures or videos of gameplay for the two games and Jen actually stood next to me to make sure while I was holding my camera!

Jen from Nokia

ONE. The One is a fighting game with great visuals. I played it on a Nokia N81, an Nseries phone I’m not really fond of, but was pretty impressed. Gameplay was fast too. I wonder how it will be once it comes out and I can fight against another player online.

For more info and sample videos to the official ONE page. The sample pages show the videos in portrait view, but I was playing on landscape.

Yamake. Yamake is a puzzle game with user-generated content. I was shown that I can take a picture and convert it to a jigsaw puzzle I can share with others. The game is simple, but I like the concept. I can see myself taking pictures of New York City landmarks then others can solve it to see the photo. One question I had: what happens if people use it to post porn or photos that may offend people?

Other Bloggers

I also met others from the social media surrounding Nokia. Here are some photos I’ve taken.

Colin from WOM World Nokia

Erick from Mobile World Innovation

Kevin from Kevinchiu.org

Eric from Eric’s Corner

Thoughts on the Meetup

I’m glad I went to the meetup because it sparked my interest in N-Gage again. I haven’t played N-Gage on my Nokia phones in a while because because it didn’t meet my expectations. I actually enjoyed playing the newer games that was shown to me tonight. I’ll give N-Gage another try.