Mark Adkins

New Palm games are getting less and less frequent. This really saddens me- I really love my Palm Centro and I get bored with games quickly, so constantly need fresh blood… er, I mean ‘games’- yeah, that’s what I meant.

Ashley Glenister wrote ‘The Belt: 2120’ in her spare time, and it compares nicely to games offered by many of the ‘big boys’.

This is not the game I planned on reviewing. That was going to be Astraware’s Westward, but I was beseiged by demons while trying it out (named Small Screen, Bad-Eyes, and Lotsa Rulez) so it will have to wait.

As I was a cruzin’ for new games, I found that eSoft Interactive, the home of one of my ‘All Time Favorite’ games, Traffic Jam, had several titles I had not seen before, including the previously reviewed Traffic Jam 2. I also asked for codes for a couple of other games that looked interesting- Earth Day, and Spot!, They were kind enough to provide codes for all of them.

Astraware’s Platypus ($19.95) is a side-scrolling shooter. Yeah, I know, *Yawn*. If you’ve seen one shooter, you’ve seen them all, right? As usual, Astraware ups the ante.

While the life of a Palm Software Reviewer at a prestigious site like The Gadgeteer may seem glamorous, in reality I have to wade through a lot of mediocre stuff to find something that rings my bells enough to write about it- whether it is because I love it or I hate it. Toyspring’s ‘Bike or Die’ ($14.95) is a breath of fresh air in what has been a rather tedious season.

The Death of a Good Idea, A Cautionary Tale

Once upon a time, a perfectly nice little company had a perfectly nice little game- eSoft Interactive’s Traffic Jam, based on a board game with the same name. It used few resources, was stable, intuitive, attractive, and fun. I would stack it up against any other company’s offerings for its price of $9.95.

Suit of the suicide king in a standard deck?

Body of water where the Republic of the Maldives is located?

Don’cha love trivia? I love trivia. I played Trivial Pursuit
when it came out in the early 80’s and routinely beat the pants off so many people that no one would play with me anymore. In hindsight, I am not sure if it was their humiliating defeats, or my winner’s dance that they objected to the most, but I digress.

I love Games Magazine, but generally not every game in the magazine. I feel about the same way about Simon Tatham’s Puzzles Pack. (Thanks to The Gadgeteer Forums poster Mark Reid for the heads-up on this one!) Some of the 27 games in this freeware collection are pretty cool (Black Box, Guess, Map, Same Game, Unequal and Tangle so far are favorites), several are variations on the theme, and a couple I still have not figured out.