Global Race: Raging Thunder for S60 3rd Edition - Video Preview

As many different blogs have pointed out, there's a built-in arcade racing game called Global Race: Raging Thunder on the new Nokia E90 smartphone. Although it's been designed for the E90, the game file is also available from Nokia as a separate download and the initially released version actually worked on any S60 3rd Edition device with a 3D graphics acceleration chip, which so far includes the E90, N95, N93, N93i and N82.

However, it now seems that Nokia have altered the file so that it only works on the E90. You can get the altered version of the game from the E90 software support page at the following link:

http://europe.nokia.com/A4397273

Going back to the version which worked on many phones, Global Race runs in both vertical and horizontal mode, although as it was designed for the E90 (which has an extremely wide main screen) the layout of the dials causes problems on more normal smartphones. Specifically, the speedometer is large enough to blot out much of the action when you run the game in horizontal mode on the N95, so you have to play it in vertical mode if you want to see where you're going properly.

What's most amazing about Global Race is that it has fast, smooth (40+ frames per second) 3D graphics as well as five large tracks, and looks as good as anything on the Nintendo DS for example, yet the game file is only 2 megabytes. Imagine the possibilities if the developers were given 32 megabytes, 64 megabytes or even more to play with, which is what games for the Next Gen N-Gage platform will feature.

Running Global Race on a television through the N95's TV Out is a bit of a mixed bag: it's great to run a racer on a big screen, but there are a lot of jagged backgrounds which you notice far more than on the small screen. Another S60 3D accelerated demo, System Rush Evolution, looks absolutely wonderful on a television with virtually no jagged edges at all, so it's clearly possible to produce TV-quality graphics on an S60 game, but for some reason this hasn't been done on Global Race.

I've tried to contact the developers about when this game will receive a proper S60 3rd Edition release, but haven't heard back from them in many many months. However, it could well be that they're under a strict Non-Disclosure Agreement which stops them saying anything at all about the game to anyone.