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Zodiac: first Tapwave review? sort of!

The first Tapwave Zodiac in Europe was reviewed, exclusively for NewsWireless.Net this morning. Well, "reviewed" may be overstating it. We chatted to PalmSource's Albert Chu in his Paris office as he unwrapped his new toy.

"The first thing you notice when playing games on the Zodiac, is the screen; and after that, what hits you is the rumble feature," said Chu. "If you are driving over a bump, or hit an obstacle, the Zodiac shakes! The game experience is great."

He also expressed himself delighted with the screen. "For standard Palm games, which number about 1,400, it's brighter and bigger, at half VGA. But the really neat thing is the way you can switch it from landscape to portrait. There's a game here which is a bowling alley; and it's far better in portrait mode, as you'd expect."

Chu described the console as "the Gameboy for people who have grown up." He compared the display and the "professional appearance" of the device with normal portable consoles, and said: "It will have enormous appeal to the Nintendo player, but I think it will wipe out Nokia's chances with the N-Gage."

Chu is, of course, not an unbiased observer. He's vice president for business development for Palmsource, the company wrote the operating system - Palm OS - which is inside the Zodiac, and he once worked inside Apple with several of the Tapwave founders (who subsequently worked for Palm Computing in its early days).

But his delight with the toy was evidently unfeigned, as he kept getting distracted from the interview with another game. Strange sound effects kept coming down the phone line from Paris.

"The games are genuinely breakthroughs from the gaming people; IDsoft, Midway, Activision, and so on - as well as the existing Palm games, and talking to developers, they are giving us feedback that they think this is the one to go for. They're even comparing it favourably with the forthcoming Sony Playstation Portable."

The sound effects will startle anybody who is used to the normal palm "squeaker" device; it is audible. "They make a big feature of their alarm," said Chu. "It's designed to make sure that adult professionals don't get so engrossed in their game that they miss appointments." And of course, being a palm device, this can have your appointments on it, too.

Tapwave had the Zodiac under wraps in preparation for the DemoMobile exhibition this week, and organiser Chris Shipley ties exhibitors down with fierce contractual bonds to keep all new products completely secret. Zodiac appeared last night (California time) and very little has appeared in print about its launch this week, except for one or two excited reports from La Jolla from people attending the show, and a few repeated press releases.