Why They’ve Done It Is Anyone’s Guess, But They’ve Done It Again

We’ve got a bone. A bone of contention. And our purpose in hanging onto this bone is to pick it with the makers of these little handheld electronic games.

Why, makers of these little handheld electronic games, do you persist in making little handheld electronic versions of things that are already perfectly portable?

Here’s the little handheld electronic version of the TV Guide’s crossword. And OK, it gives us access to over 400 crossword puzzles from the venerable Guide on which it’s based. But we don’t want to do 400 crossword puzzles on a subway ride. We want to do most of one. And one crossword puzzle is little and handheld already.

Same with card games. You people are always making electronic card games. A deck of cards is like the original portable game.

Shoot, even at the high end, the Kindle and the Nook—those are just books. We could already carry books and had been for centuries before these things came on the scene.

You want to do us a favor, makers of these little handheld electronic games? Make us little handheld electronic versions of something we can’t already throw in a jacket pocket. Say, jousting, or regatta, or the Pacific theatre in World War Two.

Get back to us when it’s ready. We’ll be on the bus, doing the TV Guide crossword just like we have for years—except now we’re using up batteries to do it.

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