Finally found some intriguing Palm games. I know it's no Gameboy Advance, but I keep scouring for some reasonably unique Palm games. Anyway, my faves of late are:

Hexcon.

'tis a neat turn-based strategy game using spaceships of various sizes on a hex battle grid. Each ship gets 3 action points to use during a turn (moving, firing and recharging shields each uses 1 AP). Recharging depends on your mothership so you're encouraged to protect it. This is quite neat, and polished (with online documentation and strat guide available from the menu in game). It's designed to be fast playing (most games are maybe 5-10 minutes in duration overall).

Knight Move
This is pretty entertaining mixture of Monopoly and a Magic The Gathering type card-battling game.
The trial version is rather brief I'm afraid, but I've had a lot of fun with it still. While the graphics are drawn quite nicely, you probably need a Vx or Visor Platinum (with their improved screens) to really appreciate the monochrome version.

Freeware Palm recently set up Palm Gaming World, and it's a fun place to find all kinds of games, both shareware and freeware. A lot of it's dreck though, so I figure I'll babble here when I find some fun ones - regardless of whether anyone else here cares. :D

www.eruptor.com

they've got a virtual George W. Bush game... supposedly it's kinda cool... but I don't have a Palm anyway.

It's funny but not really a game per se. :) I imagine PortaPimp is probably more popular than PortaBush knowing how Net tastes are....

I'm trying it out though. It's relatively hefty (176K) due to using actual digitized images of George W. They've apparently been getting huge numbers of downloaders from China in recent weeks.

Check out http://www.ardiri.com/

Aaron Ardiri has some great "clone" Palm apps. "Hoards of the Deep Realm" is an excellent Lode Runner remake. He also has a very passable Donkey Kong game.

I'm now certain that I've got the gaming hardware disease bad. I have a Palm Professional that I've been using for a few years, and it still works great. However, I gave serious thought to upgrading today because it won't support PalmOS 3, and I need that to play Bejeweled and Hexcon. I'm sick, sick I tell you!

Palm IIIC's just $299 now. :) Palm is dropping prices on all its Palms due to overstock, the economy and their upcoming 500/505 line. I'd like to get a Visor Prism but it's too pricey for my tastes, and I'm glued to my MP3 module so I'm not inclined to go with Palm, so I'm kind of stuck for now. Alas, Handspring has supposedly done a better job with their inventory and their LCD screen supply, etc., so they're not inclined to cut prices just yet.

I tend to favor Palm games that don't frantically use the buttons (Hexcon is mostly stylus-only, and the Knight game is a nice leisurely paced thing mostly using the stylus). There's a nice slip-on gamepad available now, but I don't think it protects the buttons from premature wear.

Any handheld that runs Quake gets my vote.

http://www.pocketmatrix.com/pocketquake/

iPAQ all the way baby. Though iPAQ has one seriously annoying trait for a gamer (button presses and pad movement are mutually exclusive) I believe future models will rectify this.

wumpus http://www.gamebasement.com

You know what I would like to play on a handheld? Ogre. One of the very, very VERY few traditional turn-based boardgame type computer games I got into.

That and Six Gun Shootout by SSI.

Hey Tom, do you think Shadow Watch is a spiritual descendent of Six Gun Shootout?

wumpus http://www.gamebasement.com

"Hey Tom, do you think Shadow Watch is a spiritual descendent of Six Gun Shootout?"

Hey, good call.

I wonder if the Gollop brothers played Six Gun Shootout before they did Laser Squad? Of course, computer game developers don't have an exclusive on squad-level action -- I was doing stuff like that with plastic green army men back in 1974.

-Tom

Then go start a PocketPC thread, guys. :)

Part of the charm of Palm games (for me) is seeing what the better developers can do within its limitations, and in terms of coming up with some unique things you can't play elsewhere.

If you can blow $500 to play an FPS on a handheld, be my guest. :)

I have jumped off the Palm bandwagon. I guess I got fed up with the battery life of the Palm Pilot. I found I spent more attention to how much battery life was left in it than using the bloody thing.

Have the latest Palm devices improved battery life ?

"Any handheld that runs Quake gets my vote."

"Runs" and "runs playably" are two different things. Even if the game has a reasonable memory hit (and I seriously doubt that it does) and runs at a great framerate (maybe), the iPAQ lacks the controls to make Quake an enjoyable experience. I mean, they have a gamepad-like controller, but it doesn't register continuous inputs when you hold it down. And are you supposed to be able to mouselook on a PPC? Seems kind of unlikely.

The 2.5D shooters probably play a lot better, given the controls. I'd go for Doom or Hexen (both of which are available for PPC).