Sponsored Item: GameBox Asia II
 

GameBox Asia II is our excellent quality, authentic collection of two famous games from the Orient. Superb graphics, high-quality music and sound effects, and fantastic playability make this a excellent addition to your game collection and to the GameBox series. GameBox Asia II includes the most intuitive versions of the classic Chinese Strategic game of Go, and one of the most popular games in the world, Xiangqi (also known as Chinese Chess). These games are easy for anyone to be able to pickup and play, while maintaining a difficulty level that can challenge even the veteran game players out there. And of course, as a GameBox it strives to be the best looking, best sounding, best overall gaming experience on the market. Features Two Complete High Quality Games: Go and Xiangqi Great graphics Hint feature Choose between Two Beautiful Xiangqi skins: Traditional or Western, and Two different Board Sizes in Go. Ambient Music Unlimited Undos and Redos Auto-save

WordPop was a neat little game kind of like Scrabble but more focused on identifying words rather than placing them strategically on a game board. In addition to clicking on adjacent letters (weighted by their relative difficulty in forming words), WordPop set itself apart by introducing the idea of gravity: after removing letters, remaining pieces would fall from above as if they were stacked on top of each other. And to make things even more interesting, you could rotate the entire game board 45 degrees clockwise to scramble the remaining letters and (hopefully) make additional words. Smart Box Design's games have always been visually pleasant, making them among the higher-quality titles out there.

As I write this, version 2 of the game is now in beta testing. While the basic mechanics of the game haven't changed much, the following features are being added:

• Added "Use System Sound" to prefs.
• Added Trainee Tips.
• Added Clear button on best words screen.
• Added Clear button on high scores screen.
• Added New Dictionary.
• Added Treo Support.
• Allow a single Undo in the menu.
• Allow the “I” along with the “A” as a word.
• Display a lowercase letter where a blank bonus is being used in the best words screen.
• Drag and Drop Bonus Tiles in addition to tap and drop.
• Update all dialogs to new standards.
• Update bottom menu to OS 5/ 6 standard layout.

While these new features don't dramatically change the experience of the game, the big difference is that WordPop will now work on Windows Mobile 5 and 6 machines. This means that they will display properly (although this is still an issue on my Dell Axim X51v) and feature full compatibility. WordPop is a pretty good game and one of the better titles if you enjoy word search puzzles. While these simple games lack the complexity of crosswords, Scrabble clones, and Sudoku, they're still plenty of fun. Since this game is still a beta, I won't include the purchase information, and I'll refrain from giving it a rating at this point. However, I will say that those with Windows Mobile 5+ machines who enjoy simple word games should check out the demo of this game when the full version is complete: I'm confident that it will be a quality title.