Jawbreaker / Bubblets / Bubblet / Bubble Breaker | |
---|---|
Developer(s) | Oopdreams software, Inc. |
Publisher(s) | Microsoft |
Platform(s) | WM:Windows Mobile 2003, Palm:Palm OS, Win:Microsoft Windows, iPhone/iPod Touch:iPhone OS |
Release | Pocket PC: April 7, 2003 (packaged with Windows Mobile 2003) |
Genre(s) | Puzzle games |
Mode(s) | Single player |
Jawbreaker is a port of SameGame for the Pocket PC bundled with the Microsoft Windows Mobile 2003 operating system for PDAs. [1] The operating system, and thus the game, was officially released on April 7, 2003. The game itself was developed by American studio oopdreams software, Inc. [2] Jawbreaker is officially listed as one of the "Core Applications" of the Windows Mobile software family, in a paper released by Microsoft. [3] In Windows Mobile 5.0 and Windows Mobile 6.0 it is called Bubble Breaker. The original non-bundled version of the game is available from the developer itself as Bubblets.
The game-board consists of a screen of differently-colored balls arranged in a matrix. There are five different colors: red, blue, green, yellow and purple. The player then clicks on any two or more connecting similarly-colored balls to eliminate them from the matrix, earning an appropriate number of points in the process. The more balls eliminated at once, the higher the points added to the player's score.
The scoring can be expressed in the formula "Y=X(X-1)". X represents the number of balls grouped together, Y is the resulting score. For example an elimination of 16 balls will result in 240 points (240=16(16-1)).
In the standard mode of the game, the game ends when the player has no more moves left; there are no more like-colored balls adjacent to each other. The screen immediately goes to the scoring screen, where statistics such as Average Score, Total Score and Games Played can be seen, along with a button that the player can press in order to start a new game. [4]
The Breaker Set option allows the player to choose between Colorful Breakers and Greyscale Breakers. The first option is the default and sets the game balls' colors to the standard five colors. Choosing the latter changes the color palette and instead of differently-colored balls, the balls are adorned with various unique greyscale patterns allowing players with monochromatic Pocket PCs to play the game, as well as players who may be colorblind and have trouble differentiating the colored balls from one another. Some of the patterns include lightly colored balls, dark grey balls and a white ball with a dark dot in the middle.
The player has four unique game styles to choose from, including Standard, which is described above. The other game styles are Continuous, Shifter and MegaShift.
Windows Mobile 2003 was Jawbreaker's first inclusion into a packaged handheld operating system. Pocket PC operating systems prior to Windows Mobile 2003, ending with Pocket PC 2002 did not include the game. It has since been bundled with succeeding Windows Mobile releases, including Windows Mobile 2003 SE (second edition) and Windows Mobile 5.0 & 6.0. [8]
Aside from being included in the Windows Mobile operating system, Jawbreaker is also distributed by Oopdreams Software, Inc. under another name, Bubblets. Bubblets is almost-identical to Jawbreaker, with some slight visual and semantic differences. Instead of balls, the player bursts bubbles, thus the name. Bubblets in this form is available for a much broader range of operating systems than the Jawbreaker version. The game is officially distributed as shareware for Pocket PC 2002/Windows Mobile 2003, [9] Palm OS, and the Handheld PC Pro platforms. [10] Bubblets is also available for desktop PCs, with the official Windows version of Bubblets, also distributed as expiring shareware. [11] As Bubblets, the game was a finalist for the Best Puzzle Game category of Pocket PC Magazine's Pocket PC Award Winners of 2001, won by another SameGame clone called PocketPop produced by PocketFun (http://www.pocketfun.co.uk/PocketPopRevenge.html Archived 2016-03-03 at the Wayback Machine ). It was given the People's Choice Award in the same event. [12] The Palm OS version of the game Bubblet, was favorably reviewed by PDAStreet's Palm Boulevard. [13] Geek.com gave Bubblets a perfect score on their review and was named a Geek.com pick. [14] The game has also been distributed as freeware for mobiles since June 2008. The mobile phone version, also called JawBreaker, was developed for those who did not have Jawbreaker-capable PDAs but had phones supporting Java ME. This iteration of the game could be run on mobile devices supporting Java ME CLDC 1.1/MIDP 2.0 with screen resolutions of 240×320 or 176×220. [15]
There is also a JavaScript online version published as Google Gadget.
A personal digital assistant (PDA), also known as a handheld PC, is a variety mobile device which functions as a personal information manager. PDAs have been mostly displaced by the widespread adoption of highly capable smartphones, in particular those based on iOS and Android.
Palm OS is a discontinued mobile operating system initially developed by Palm, Inc., for personal digital assistants (PDAs) in 1996. Palm OS was designed for ease of use with a touchscreen-based graphical user interface. It is provided with a suite of basic applications for personal information management. Later versions of the OS have been extended to support smartphones. Several other licensees have manufactured devices powered by Palm OS.
A Pocket PC is a class of personal digital assistant (PDA) that runs the Windows Mobile or Windows Embedded Compact operating system that has some of the abilities of modern desktop PCs. The name was introduced by Microsoft in 2000 as a rebranding of the Palm-size PC category. Some of these devices also had integrated phone and data capabilities, which were called Pocket PC Phone Edition or simply "Smartphone".
Palm was a line of personal digital assistants (PDAs) and mobile phones developed by California-based Palm, Inc., originally called Palm Computing, Inc. Palm devices are often remembered as "the first wildly popular handheld computers," responsible for ushering in the smartphone era.
The iPAQ is a Pocket PC and personal digital assistant, first unveiled by Compaq in April 2000; the name was borrowed from Compaq's earlier iPAQ Desktop Personal Computers. Since Hewlett-Packard's acquisition of Compaq, the product has been marketed by HP. The devices use a Windows Mobile interface. In addition to this, there are several Linux distributions that will also operate on some of these devices. Earlier units were modular. "Sleeve" accessories, technically called jackets, which slide around the unit and add functionality such as a card reader, wireless networking, GPS, and even extra batteries were used. Later versions of iPAQs have most of these features integrated into the base device itself, some including GPRS mobile telephony.
Windows Embedded Compact, formerly Windows Embedded CE, Windows Powered and Windows CE, is an operating system subfamily developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows Embedded family of products.
Bejeweled is a tile-matching puzzle video game by PopCap Games, developed for browsers in 2001. The first game developed by PopCap under their current name, Bejeweled, involves lining up three or more multi-colored gems to clear them from the game board, with chain reactions potentially following.
A mobile browser is a web browser designed for use on a mobile device such as a mobile phone or PDA. Mobile browsers are optimized so as to display Web content most effectively for small screens on portable devices. Mobile browser software must be small and efficient to accommodate the low memory capacity and low-bandwidth of wireless handheld devices. Typically, they were stripped-down web browsers, however, some recent mobile browsers can handle latest technologies also such as CSS 3, JavaScript, and Ajax.
Windows Mobile is a discontinued family of mobile operating systems developed by Microsoft for smartphones and personal digital assistants.
ActiveSync is a mobile data synchronization app developed by Microsoft, originally released in 1996. It synchronizes data with handheld devices and desktop computers. In the Windows Task Manager, the associated process is called wcescomm.exe.
A handheld personal computer (PC) is a miniature computer typically built around a clamshell form factor and is significantly smaller than any standard laptop computer, but based on the same principles. It is sometimes referred to as a palmtop computer, not to be confused with Palmtop PC which was a name used mainly by Hewlett-Packard.
Handmark is an American developer and distributor of mobile content, based in Kansas City, Missouri. The company was created in 2000 by the merger of Mobile Generation Software with Palmspring Software.
Microsoft Reader is a discontinued Microsoft application for reading e-books, first released in August 2000, that used its own .LIT format. It was available for Windows computers and Pocket PC PDAs. The name was also used later for an unrelated application for reading PDF and XPS files, first released with Windows 8 - this app was discontinued in 2018.
Windows Mobile 2003, originally codenamed "Ozone", is a discontinued mobile operating system and member of the Windows Mobile family. It was released on June 23, 2003, and was the first Microsoft OS to be called "Windows Mobile". It was based on Windows CE 4.20.
An ultra-mobile PC is a miniature version of a pen computer, a class of laptop whose specifications were launched by Microsoft and Intel in spring 2006. Sony had already made a first attempt in this direction in 2004 with its Vaio U series, which was only sold in Asia. UMPCs are generally smaller than subnotebooks, have a TFT display measuring (diagonally) about 12.7 to 17.8 centimetres, are operated like tablet PCs using a touchscreen or a stylus, and can also have a physical keyboard. There is no clear boundary between subnotebooks and ultra-mobile PCs, but UMPCs commonly have form factors other than the common clamshell laptop design, such as having small keys on either side of the screen, or having a slide-out keyboard.
The HTC TyTN is an Internet-enabled Windows Mobile Pocket PC PDA designed and marketed by High Tech Computer Corporation of Taiwan. It has a touchscreen with a left-side slide-out QWERTY keyboard. The TyTN's functions include those of a camera phone and a portable media player in addition to text messaging and multimedia messaging. It also offers Internet services including e-mail, instant messaging, web browsing, and local Wi-Fi connectivity. It is a quad-band GSM phone with GPRS, and EDGE, and a single/dual band UMTS phone with HSDPA. It is a part of the first line of PDAs directly marketed and sold by HTC. On AT&T/Cingular, the TyTN was the successor to the HTC Wizard, known as the Cingular 8125. Also on AT&T, the TyTN was superseded by the HTC TyTN II, known as the AT&T 8925 and the AT&T Tilt.
Smartphone & Pocket PC was published every two months by Thaddeus Computing and covers Windows Mobile devices, software, and accessories. It included news, tips, articles, reviews, how-tos, and an enterprise section. The headquarters was in Fairfield, Iowa.
Pocket PC 2000 is the first member of the Windows Mobile family of mobile operating systems that was released on April 19, 2000, and was based on Windows CE 3.0. It is the successor to the operating system aboard Palm-size PCs. Backwards compatibility was retained with such Palm-size PC applications. Pocket PC 2000 was intended mainly for Pocket PC devices, however several Palm-size PC devices had the ability to be updated also. Further, several Pocket PC 2000 phones were released, however Microsoft's "Smartphone" hardware platform was not yet created. The only resolution supported by this release was 240 x 320 (QVGA). Removable storage card formats that were supported were CompactFlash and MultiMediaCard. At this time Pocket PC devices had not been standardized with a specific CPU architecture. As a result, Pocket PC 2000 was released on multiple CPU architectures; SH-3, MIPS, and ARM. Infrared (IR) File beaming capability was among the original hardware features.
Pocket-sized computer describes the post-programmable calculator / pre-smartphone pocket-sized portable-office hardware devices that included the earlier DOS-based palmtops and subsequent Windows-CE handhelds, as well as a few other terms, primarily covering the 1980s through 2007.
11/13/2003 Bubblet v1.8.1 for Palm OS,08/16/2008 for the Apple iPhone