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Downtime delights: Favorite games for Palm OS

Even though I’ve had 8 different handheld gaming systems in the past few years, I’m actually not much of a gamer. I’ll usually eventually pick up a new Mario-esque adventure or a light RPG like Harvest Moon, Animal Crossing, or Pokemon Colosseum, but that’s about it.

I normally don’t play games on anything other than a console or portable system, but for some reason any gadget packing the Palm OS under its hood quickly becomes the exception to the rule, not least because it turns me into a puzzle-game junkie. I’m not sure why, but puzzle titles appeal to me only when they’re available on a Palm (although I do like Yoshi’s Cookie homebrewed for my PSP).

My current Palm device, as most of you know, is the Black Tie Treo 650. The 650 is sorely lacking in the memory department, so I’ve had to download a lot of demo versions of new games and pick and choose only the best to beam from my old Palm Tungsten C.

This is what I have.

Typical titles
I don’t think these need any explanation or even commentary. I mean, isn’t this what’s on your Palm?

Bejeweled Bejeweled2_1

Sudoku_1 Sudoku2_1

The next two games are part of the Tetris Classic Game Pak, which would’ve been a great deal if the other 5 games in the set were halfway decent.

Tetris_1 Tetris2_1

Pocketchess_1 Pocketchess2_1

Not-so-typical titles
I don’t know how popular word games are with Palm folks, but I love them. I think most English majors (and my mom) do.

Scrabble_1 Scrabble2_1

Wordpop_1 Wordpop2_1

Atypical titles, or What’s that?
All right. These games require a bit of explaining, as everyone who has either scrolled through my Palm or seen me playing had absolutely no idea what any of the games were.

Darts_1 Darts2_1

When my now-husband and I moved into together, he brought along his dartboard. It wasn’t long before we started playing Cricket or 301/501 to decide who had to do mundane household chores or who was simply the champion of the night. I guess the fact that I bought this game for extra practice reveals who usually won.

The calibration is a bit sketchy, but Darts Deluxe II is actually pretty good. It features 14 games, 3 difficulty levels, and various settings such as game type, double in/out, and opponent.

Shuffle_1 Shuffle2_1

I got this one free when I did something like purchase some other game or register for something somewhere. No idea.

The object of Shuffle is to get the colored shapes onto the tile bearing the same shape. Each shape can only move in one direction (forward), so you need to use the other shapes to get everything in the correct position. There are 3 difficulty levels (easy level shown above), as well as timed and puzzle modes of gameplay.

Yammy_1 Yammy2_1

This silly-looking game is developed by CrazySoft, who seem to really love their fruits (they make Frutakia, too). I think most people know them as the guys behind Paintball and Paintball 2. Anyway, Yammy Yammy sets itself apart from all the other Tetris-like puzzle games out there by including in the instructions, "The idea of the game is not to make three or more of anything!" This is just a joke, of course, although a game with those rules might actually be kind of fun.

In this game, you control both cauldrons and move the fruits around to make the same line of each cauldron identical. Three fruit-dropping speeds keep the game interesting and fun. There aren’t many features to customize aside from the game speed, but you can change the color of water from blue to green. Crazy is right. There’s also a vibration option, but it’s only available if you’re running the title on a Tapwave Zodiac (!).

So that’s what I have on my Palm. If you know of other great puzzle games or just great Palm games in general, scroll yourself down to the comments section.

And if you want to keep up with everything going on in the Palm world, head on over to Palm Addict. It’s updated 24/7 and features more than 30 new posts every single day. There’s also a store that offers tons of PDAs and other Palm gear for highly competitive prices. No wonder it’s the largest Palm blog in the world!

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Jenn K. Lee

Jenn K. Lee is the founder of Pocketables. She loves gadgets the way most women love shoes and purses. The pieces in her tech wardrobe that go with everything are currently the Samsung Galaxy Note II, Sony Tablet P, and Nexus 7, but there are still a couple of vintage UMPCs/MIDs in the back of her closet.

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