At the ongoing CTIA 2004 conference in San Francisco, we had an opportunity to get a hands-on test of Elkware's upcoming racing game, Speed Chaser 3D. As the title suggests, this game features 3D graphics, and it uses them to full effect in rendering your car, the other cars on the road, and the surprisingly detailed environments. Despite the amount of detail in each scene, our test phone, a Sony-Ericsson K700i, managed to run the game at a crisp frame rate.

　　Speed Chaser 3D includes three different game modes. Chase mode lets you race along a track with computer-controlled traffic on the road with you. Much like in the Xbox and PlayStation 2's Burnout 3, you can try ramming into other cars to knock them off the road for extra points, but if you spend too much time wreaking havoc, you'll fall behind and lose the race. A meter on the left-hand side of the screen tells you if you're ahead or behind the prescribed pace for a given level. Speed mode is more like a time-trial mode--you have to beat specific times to advance--but unlike in the chase mode, there's no other traffic on the road. The third mode, championship, is a bonus that must be unlocked by playing through the other two modes.

　　There are eight different tracks in Speed Chaser 3D, including varied locales like snowy mountains, lush forests, and a tropical island. Although there's only one drivable car included in the game, the 3D engine lets you change perspectives from a third-person isometric view to a first-person behind-the-wheel point of view.

　　Overall, Speed Chaser 3D is shaping up to be a promising game for mobile phones. Its attractive 3D graphics and tight controls should prove appealing to fans of racing games.