It only seemed like yesterday when back in grade school, a friend of mine and I were drawing sea maps on plain bond paper and playing a makeshift version of the popular electronic board game Battleship. The game was addictive and fun, and those were the days where you can derive lots of fun from such a simple game; fast forward to today and it comes to no surprise to me that I would still be playing this classic game, albeit on a different medium.

Battleship, by Handmark, is a faithful reproduction of the classic game of the same name which was quite popular back in the eighties, in which two players are pitted against each other in a naval battle that have them blasting each other's ships to kingdom come. The game is available on devices running either the Palm OS or Pocket PC OS.

At the start of the game, you are brought to the main menu screen, where you can choose the difficulty of your computer controlled opponent (there are 3 levels). You can also choose the type of game in which you want to play (Normal and Salvo, both of which I will explain later), the volume and the tempo speed of the game. After going through the various options, you are brought to the playing field which consists of a 10x10 board grid; in this field, you position your 5 naval battle ships (each of your 5 ships differ in sizes, the biggest one takes up 5 blocks while the smallest one takes up 2 blocks). Once you have finished with the deployment of your ships, you are given the first move to fire your cannons at your opponent, hence the battle commences.

As stated earlier, there are 2 type of games in Battleship, normal mode and salvo. In normal mode, the players fire missiles at each other alternately but is limited to only one shot each turn; Salvo mode is no different from normal mode other than that the number of shots a player has is in proportion to the number of ships he still has afloat; this means a player has a maximum of 5 shots per turn and a minimum of 1 shot per turn. Playing against the computer controlled A.I. is fine and dandy, but it's nowhere near as fun as when you're playing against a friend, and here lies Battleship's best feature. Depending on the features of your handheld (Palm or PPC), you can opt to play Battleship against a friend either via IrDA, Bluetooth or TCP/IP.

The game is simple, too simple in fact that some people might find it boring, but I find the simplicity of the game to be an attraction, as anybody can play this game with no difficulty. A game can be also played in just a matter of minutes, which is perfect if it’s a few minutes you’re trying to kill.

The Verdict:

Blame it on nostalgia or complete boredom, but I thoroughly enjoyed playing Battleship; its combination of simple game rules and mechanics make it an easy game to pick up and play. The game's absolutely perfect if you want to kill time for just a few minutes, like while you're standing in line to use the bank ATM.

The Good:

• Good presentation
• 2 player versus mode available
• A good port of a classic game

The Bad:

• A bit expensive at $19.99
• Some people (especially the younger generation) might find it boring