FIGURE B

Even Tetris runs slow, and all we're doing is dropping bricks.

Now, granted, my trusty Palm III-upgraded PalmPilot Professional isn't the speediest system in the world, but I would guess it's fairly typical of the device owned by the average user. However, the faster you can overclock your Palm device, the better Liberty will run. One of the programmers suggests cranking your Palm device to the 230% range before you start seeing what Liberty can really do, but my machine conks out if I attempt anything near that.

Perhaps I'm coming at this expecting too much. I use my Game Boy on a regular basis for both work and play, so I know all too well how the real machine behaves. I have to keep telling myself, "My Palm device is not a Game Boy. My Palm device is not a Game Boy. My Palm device is not a Game Boy."

Handheld hands-on
Liberty does a fine job of approximating the Game Boy experience, though. These are the 8-bit graphics gamers have grown up with, quaint and blocky and never really "good," but certainly functional enough to allow the game-play to shine through. If you're running a Palm IIIc, you can assign colors to the grayscale palette. This is a nice touch, as you can see in Figure C.

FIGURE C

This is Klax, a fun puzzle game, running on a Palm IIIc

The default control setup is the best you're likely to get (Up, Down, Left, and Right are the central buttons, while A and B occupy the Memo Pad and Date Book buttons, respectively), but all the buttons can be remapped, for those who like to mess with things. There's no sound, but you're not missing much more than some bloops and bleeps. Besides, don't push your luck--your processor's straining enough as it is.

Good things come in small packages…
Liberty subscribes to the old "the bigger, the better" maxim. While some of the early Game Boy games won't take up too much space (Tetris, for instance, occupies only 32K and can be loaded with Liberty's demo version), modern games creep into the 200K range and higher. If you want to play uberhit Pokémon, for instance-a nice slow-paced game that doesn't rely heavily on fast screen refreshes the way action games do--you'll need to set aside 2MB of storage space just for the ROM. That's great if you've got a Palm IIIxe and nothing to fill it with, but otherwise it might be a bit of a crunch.

Is that Gambit's fault? Certainly not, but the large size of Game Boy games does force you to make choices: PocketQuicken or Pikachu? Asteroids or my entire Address Book? Chances are, you didn't buy a Palm organizer to play games in the first place, so it might be hard to really give up your tools for the sake of some cheap thrills.

Good things come to those who wait
Don't throw your Game Boy away just yet, but even without sound or color support, Liberty's early stages are more than encouraging. Face it: Palm devices will only get faster, and Liberty will only get more efficient. Eventually, the two will meet in the middle, and when they do, game enthusiasts will be there.