Sponsored Item: Maggot Attack Pinball
 

Maggot Attack Pinball gives you the great experience of playing an authentic, state-of-the-art Pinball machine with tons of extra gameplay features only possible in a video game, all in the palm of your hand! As a hired Mercenary for the Federation Army, your job is to eliminate a new breed of Alien Maggots that are trying to take over the planet, and rack up as many points as possible! Maggot Attack Pinball features an incredible physics engine, fast-paced action, beautiful graphics and audio, plus the traditional PDAmill polish! Features Classic Arcade Design, with tons of new extras Authentic flippers, bumpers, slingshots, and more modeled after real pinball machines! A superb physics engine giving realistic play Awesome Space Alien Hunter graphics, art, and visual effects! Unique Quests to perform and Mini-Games, giving you endless playtime Smooth gameplay supporting Directional Pad and On-screen controls Enjoy great sound effects, music and voices

I remember someone going crazy a while back trying to find a Pocket PC version of this game, and now it's finally available. Spore Cubes is one of those Internet games that's very popular, with people clamoring to have it on their mobile devices. The game is very simple and has been around for quite a while. Those of you who were into Pocket PC gaming back in 2000-2001 will likely remember the concept: tapping adjacent blocks of the same color to remove them from the board, and the larger the group of blocks, the higher your score.

This type of simple puzzle usually gets old rather quickly and tends to pale compared to the other game categories out there today, but fortunately, Spore Cubes Deluxe is evolved enough to breathe some new life into the idea. To start with, while most similar games tend to look rather drab and perfunctory, SCD has a a great deal of color, with good menus and great in-game graphics. (The purple backdrop seems to work really well.) The actual cubes are shaded, beveled, and have enough color contrast to make the game easy to view on small screens. The animation is also very good, and about the only way they could improve things would be to offer a VGA mode.

What really makes SCD worthwhile, however, are the game modes. To start with, the simplest game mode (where you just try to clear the board) has four difficulty levels. There's also a puzzle mode, which contains predefined layouts. And there are three timed modes, which adds the element of new cubes entering the screen as you're removing what's already there.

Spores Cubes Deluxe pushes its subject matter to new limits, and it's probably about as good as this type of game is going to get. If you don't like simple color-matching puzzle games, then you probably still won't care much for Spore Cubes Deluxe. For those who do like the basic idea, though, this game is a pretty good modernization.

Title: Spore Cubes Deluxe	Developer: Spore Productions
Genre: Puzzle	Demo: Y
Platform: Pocket PC 2000+	Price: $11.85
Discuss this game	Rating (of 4): 3.3