Even the original iPod came with games, but the iPod Touch has none. I don’t care too much about games, but Solitaire is okay when you’re bored (the original Solitaire for the iPod using the click wheel was HORRIBLE). And Euchre is kind of fun. But the biggest selling game app on iTunes is Angry Birds, which I had never even heard of. I downloaded the free intro version and it is pretty funny. You use a slingshot to hurl different kinds of birds at structures that house green pigs until the green pigs are all gone. It’s kind of like Lemmings in that different birds do different things, and maybe reminds me a little of Fantastic Contraptions except it is less about building and more about destroying. The graphics and sounds are really cute. I played it all weekend and got 3 stars (the best score) on all but one of the 10 games. What is great about this game is that it is the most downloaded, highest grossing, and it only costs 99 cents. So I figured I should pay for the full version.
I also downloaded Euchre Lite which is free because it has ads. I thought the computer was doing a decent job, but my computer partner and I won 10 games of the first 11. The free version makes everyone play screw the dealer whereas the one on my Palm I would force myself to pick a suit on my deal, but I didn’t set it up so the computer had to (it was on the honor system). But the Palm really did some dumb things, so that just helped level the playing field. There are some pay versions of Euchre at the app store that are supposed to be hard to beat, but part of that seems to be because they cheat and give the human a weak partner and miserable cards. I had a Backgammon game like that on the Palm where if you ever left a piece by itself exposed, the computer would always roll whatever it took to send that one back to the bar. That takes a lot of fun out of the game.