Even high-end games for handhelds tend to be moderately priced, which makes them good candidates for last-minute holiday gifts. To a small collection of longtime companions, I've recently added a couple of new Palm versions of full-sized board games--one well known, the other less so.

Trivial Pursuit

The old standby is Trivial Pursuit. Handmark sells both Palm and Pocket PC editions for $30 each; I tried out the former on my Treo 600 and found that it does a good job of recreating the classic circular board on a very small screen. One nice feature is a little zoom toggle that lets you view the entire board, or an enlarged version of the portion in which your token is located.

Blokus

Blokus, a less well-known game, also survives the transition to a tiny screen quite nicely. This is a game for two to four players, each of whom plays Tetris-like pieces of a different color (red, blue, yellow, or green). At each turn, you must place one of your pieces on a large grid in such a way that it touches at least one previously placed piece of the same color at a corner without coming up immediately adjacent to any side of a same colored piece.


review and more games here

PC World