New Amiga Software ... Kinda
from Mike Ellis
This is the text of an email message I received from Mike Ellis on April 24. -- editor
Hi Bill, The other day I was in CompUSA and noticed a software package with the Amiga name on it. It was a set of games for the PocketPC. I couldn't resist buying it... gave me a strange thrill to see ANYTHING with "Amiga" on it in a mainline store after so many years. Wow!
The games come on an SD card, and work fine with my Ipaq PocketPC. Presumably they are all ports of existing Amiga games. On initial powerup there is a seamless install, then you have 4 games to choose from. There is an arcade-style game called "Blobula." I was not very impressed with it at first blush because the control scheme via stylus is fairly awkward. The Ipaq has a bit of stutter dealing with sound and graphics in the game as well, even with a 400 MHz processor. The other 3 games are much more appealing to me... they are all word puzzles which I have always enjoyed.
There is a nice word search puzzle, seems a bit too easy in the beginning. There is also a "lexical IQ" game which gives you a definition and you have to enter the word -- pretty challenging and a lot of fun. The best though is a crossword game called "Crossword Evolution." The puzzles are well constructed and the user interface makes typing the answers into the squares quite easy and quick. I'll be playing this one a LOT, hopefully there are extra puzzles available somewhere.
Interesting note -- when you start the games, there is an animation of the familiar Boing ball but it has chrome and red squares instead of red and white, and spins rather than bouncing around. But just the sight of it was enough to make me want to pound my chest and holler "KREEGAH!!" ha ha ha
See ya,
Mike Ellis