Rating: 
Summary: A Good Starting Point
Review: This book is the first I have read on Micro Game Development. I have recently looked into the subject for my Final Year Project, and found that there are lots of tools, standards and SDK's etc. to get your head round. The information on Sun Microsystems and Nokias sites is vast, and is going to take weeks to correlate. This book covers most of the things I need to initially know to get started in mobile game development.
The book starts with a brief explanation about the history of computer games and how they have changed over the years along side growing technology. An overview of the books mission helps to imprint what the book is going to teach you. This has helped me understand the overall structure of the subject.
If you are new to gaming the book explains some of the basics of game design but later goes into more detail, including choosing genres that are more suited small devices.
The first part of the book explains small devices on a wider scale. Different Java enabled devices are described such as PDA's Set Top Boxes and Smart Cards etc. this puts mobile game programming in perspective to the overall structure of small device programming.
Java has a number of add-ons which cater for these different devices, such as JavaTV for set top boxes and j2me PDA profile for PDA's. These technologies are briefly described along with MIDP and CLDC which are specific to mobile phones, to give an overview of the different development environments of small devices.
Part two goes into mobile phone technologies in more detail, explanations include first, second, second and a half and third generation phones, as well as SMS, MMS, WAP and WML etc.
Part three starts to get into the meat of mobile phone technology, J2me. It describes the need for a cut down version of Java, and ex[plains the structure of j2me, CLDC, MIDP on mobile phones.
This part also walks through the writing, compiling and deploying of a simple miDLET using the command line and the 'Wireless Tool Kit'. It then goes into simple procedures such as displaying graphics and command listening. Threads, code size reduction and memory optimisation is also covered.
The game side of the book really begins in part four. High and Low level GUI's are discussed, before moving onto sprites and their management. Audio and Networking is also discussed here.
Part five describes some j2me extensions such as PersonalJava, CDC and the Siemens Game API.
The most exciting part of the book however is part six which walks through the creation of a racing game. This gives the necessary code along side explanations to develop a small game.
This book overall, is a good starting point into the understanding Micro Game Development and is also an enjoyable read. I would recommend it to anyone who is considering moving into this area, and wants to take a quick look first.
There are a few downsides to the book though, there are plenty of typo's which I also noticed in an article by one of the authors. Also the book is now a year old, which like any computing subject is more like a thousand years This along with the fact that it covers mainly the basics means that I would recommend this book as a starting point, but more up to date and detailed information will be needed.
Rating: 
Summary: Good but 50% of it is way too general
Review: This is a good, very readable book. Its main drawback, though, is that the first 260 pages present information which in my opinion everyone interested in MIDP games development already knows.Chapters 1-5 & 7 are a light discussion on mobile networks, available handsets, some common services such as SMS, EMS, WAP and MIDP games currently on the market. This is quite interesting but not very deep and it doesn't correspond with the title of the book very much.
Chapter 6 focuses on the Japanese market and until you want to create products in this language version and sell them there, it won't be too interesting for you either. So the first half of the book disappointed me because it wasn't what I paid for. Chapters 8-13 discuss the very basics of J2ME. If you have any skills in java and if you looked through the J2ME specifications which can be found on various web sites (Sun/Borland/Nokia) or if you at least have gone through some tutorials you won't find anything new in these chapters. They are well written, but this is rather the beginners' stuff. The whole MIDP API is so simple that you can get used to it in one day and in my opinion such a long introductory discussion is obsolete. What is really valuable in this book are the next 180 pages on which the authors present the complete process of creating a sophisticated, very well-written, multiplayer MIDP game. This is really worth the money and this is what this book should start with. Even if you have some experience in game development you should read these chapters thoroughly because of the many tips&tricks which you simply have to know to be able to use. I was very satisfied with this part of the book, mainly because the resulting code was condensed and clear and the results were better than expected. The last part of the book presents various J2ME APIs and is enclosed by the index. So to summarize: This is a good, very well written & worth reading book but the hardcore programmers might feel disappointed becasue of the amount of the basic to intermediate material. It's also a pity that there is no CD-ROM accompanying the book so unless the publisher posts the source code on its web site you'l have to type it yourself.
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