Play all the games you want on your mobile phone using mobiPad.

There have been several attempts at building dedicated gaming controllers for mobile phones. One recent example is the Zeemote JS1, which is a small Bluetooth joystick that you can easily take with you. Another controller more closely simulates a traditional gamepad layout.

While these solutions might be good, there are some logical issues that might be problematic in real life:

• Some controllers require a specific SDK in order to use them on the phone – currently, not many games support such proprietary SDKs, making the adoption of those controllers some kind of a hen-and-egg problem.
• You have to buy extra hardware that you can only use for mobile phone gaming. Most likely, only very few will consider themselves as hardcore phone gamers to go into a shop and buy gaming hardware that they can only use for their phone.
• Compared to game controllers for game consoles, the controllers for mobile phones are selling at much lower volumes. As prices usually go down with volume, you’ll not get the same bang for your buck / the same build quality for a dedicated mobile game controller.

mobiPad

All of those three issues are solved by the new mobiPad application developed by the students Alexander Erifiu and Mario Grammer at the University of Applied Sciences in Hagenberg (Austria) at the department of Mobile Computing.

In a nutshell, mobiPad allows controlling your entire phone with the Nintendo Wii™ Remote. This includes all games that you might have installed, as well as the rest of the phone like the media player. Essentially, the Wiimote is turned into a high quality wireless controller for your phone.

Tests have shown that it’s not the best way to simulate digital keys (pressed or not pressed) using analogous motions of the WiiMote. As a consequence, you will usually control the games using a traditional d-pad. In contrast to the predecessor WiiConnect / WiiRider (which allowed controlling a motorcycle game by using the Wiimote as a virtual handle of a motorbike – free download at symbianresources.com, the new mobiPad dropped support of motion control in favour of utilizing all keys as well as the d-Pad of the Wii Remote for optimal control of every game.

Another very interesting aspect is the recent ascent of touch screen dominated phones. A touch screen makes it impossible to play mobile games that have not been specifically designed for it. This situation is true for most of the currently available Java ME games, and already applies to most of the SonyEricsson UIQ-based phones – the keypad does not feature a joystick and the buttons are difficult for gaming due to their two-letter-input method. While this is a great feature, it just isn’t optimal for mobile games. Through mobiPad, you can play any standard game on those phones as well, no matter if they have QWERTY-keys or no keyboard at all!

Summary & Download

Grizzle Dizzle is a free Java ME-based Bluetooth multiplayer-game that was also developed by Alexander Erifiu, Mario Grammer and Kristin Ließ.

• You don’t need an SDK for using the Wii Remote to play games. Just start mobiPad and connect it to the WiiMote. The application will be active in the background and transform the wireless control input into simulated key input.
• The Wii Remote is of course no specific mobile game controller. Use it at home for your console, put it into your rucksack when you’re planning to travel and want to have a better gamepad with you.
• Due to the enormous experience of Nintendo producing game controllers and the huge volumes, the build quality of the controller is great and the price tag is good considering this.

Alexander and Mario have released mobiPad as Freeware (donations are welcome), you can download it from their dedicated web site http://www.mobi-pad.com/. If you're searching for a new game to play using the Wii Remote, try Grizzle Dizzle, which was created by the same developers and Kristin Ließ, who did the wonderful graphics!

mobiPad is available for S60 3rd Edition and UIQ 3.x. The current version (1.0) is Symbian Signed and has been tested very thoroughly, but due to the nature as a non-commercial research project, it might not be 100% bug-free. Please inform the developers of any issues you might encounter. Future versions might also include the possibility to define a custom key mapping. This mostly depends on your feedback!