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Logical Games has created a truly beautiful and thorough version of the popular boardgame Scrabble. You can play with a friend, play against the computer, or watch the computer play a demo game if you're not sure of the rules or procedures. You can save a game in mid-play so you can return to it later. There's even an "undo" feature, so if you don't like the last move you made, you can forget that it ever happened.

Scrabble is all about words, and Pro Scrabble comes with a searchable dictionary database that you can use during play to find words to create with the letters you have available. Add your own words to the dictionary, or import a word list from another site if you find a list you prefer. When you've played a game of which you're particularly proud, you can export the table as a jpg file to save for posterity. With Scrabble becoming more and more popular, there are even professional players who make a living playing this game, so here's your chance to start training to be the next national Scrabble champion.

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The game of blackjack is all about probabilities. To have the best chance of winning, you can rely on your lucky pair of shoes, or you can practice, practice, practice and develop real skill and understanding. Blackjack Analysis Toolkit is for the serious gambler who wants to best shot at beating the house on their next trip a casino, and who doesn't mind some hard work along the way. The software author claims the program will teach you to play perfect strategy blackjack, with an even higher rate of accuracy than card counting.

The program is not a blackjack simulator, so you don't really "play" the game as you learn. You instead drop different combinations of numbers into program (cards a player might hold vs. what the dealer holds), and the program will calculate your correct play (whether to stand, hit, or double down). It will show you not only the best result, but all results, so you'll be able to compare the "perfect" answer to your own answer. You can mix and match the number of players and number of desks.

Blackjack Analysis Toolkit is written in Visual Basic, and requires that Microsoft .NET Framework be installed.

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If you're not allowed to goof off at work, don't download 123 Solitaire. This is a free collection of twelve highly-addictive versions of the card game solitaire. The assortment includes classic solitaire renditions like FreeCell, Spider, and Forty Thieves. The games are complete with sound effects and detailed help files to get you started, and the TreeCardGames claims that each game has more than nine trillion possible variations to play.

To keep things interesting, the full-color games are compatible with Windows XP Themes and are skinnable.

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Circuit Weaver began as a 2D game where you would "move your energy mass around a circuit by rearranging the circuit elements". It sounds like a game only electricians would want to play, but it's now been totally revamped and re-released as Circuit Weaver 3D. Unlike its rather plain-looking predecessor, Circuit Weaver 3D has beautiful 3D graphics and arcade-like audio. To win the game, you must guide Robi the Robot safely across the surface of his home planet, trying to avoid evil robot interlopers in the process. The game's unique colorful 3D playing field is quite mesmerizing.

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So you like DOS, do you? You really miss all the crackpot memory issues with UMB’s and expanded memory and extended memory and TSR programs? Well, here you go: DOSBox is a DOS/x86 emulator which has been ported to all sorts of systems: Windows, BeOS, Linux, Mac. It also runs 286 or 386 emulation, both in real and protected modes. It includes support for all manner of sound and video cards, such as Tandy and Hercules. Truly the past revisited! It’s true that when we upgrade from one system to the next we likely lose things that worked well and that we’d really like to keep; DOSBox is a solution to those losses, although it was primarily developed so that old games could be executed under more advanced operating systems.

DOSBox was written by four Scandinavian programmers. There is a lively user community hosted on Very Old Games on New Systems and the on-line support is extensive and complete. It’s totally free and is Open Source software.

Really, you’ll either be tickled or turned off by the whole idea of DOSBox. But in defense of those who do like it – there’s no shame in working with what works!

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I've written about StepMania, the very fun, free Dance Dance Revolution clone, here before. Dance games are fun and are great exercise. Kids love them, and I know adults who have cancelled their gym memberships to play 20 minutes of StepMania each day instead.

To play StepMania the way it was meant to be played, you need a dance pad. It turns out that Kraft is giving away dance pads for free: you just pay $6 for shipping. The pad is intended to be used with the four free games that you can download from Kraft's Active Gaming web site — there's a dance game, a soccer game, a "whack-a-mole"-type game, and a martial arts game. All four of the games are pretty good (for Windows only.)

But the cool part is that the $6 dance pad works perfectly with StepMania — and not just on Windows, but on MacOS X, too. (I haven't tried it with StepMania for Linux, but have no reason do doubt that the pad will work fine with that version too.) The pad has a standard USB connector — just plug it in and it works. All I had to do was configure the pad one time in StepMania's options page.

I received my dance pad about a week after I ordered it. (And although Kraft says there's only one pad per household, I've just ordered a second one, because StepMania has a two-player mode.)

This unique shooting game has been described by its developers as "part Asteroids, part Robotron, and part Paint Shop Pro." Rightly so, since the player’s objective is to change the color of the entire screen from black to white (or white to black) by shooting blobs of red, green and blue at other larger blobs that appear on the screen. Once you hit a blob, it splits into smaller particles, and the part of the screen the blob hit is painted the same color. It looks senseless at first, but after a few games you will eventually experience a relaxing yet exciting feeling as swirling colors combine with funky dance music to create an LSD-inspired trip (but much more legal). Though this freeware will push your graphics card and CPU to the limit, Mono is one addicting game that shouldn’t be missed.

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You've played Pong before, but never like this. Plasma Pong is a whole new take on the classic video game. The gameplay takes place in a fluid-like plasma environment — the colors swirl and flow as the ball pings around the screen. There's a whole new angle on the gameplay, too: your paddle can magnetcally attract and repel the ball to confound your opponent. You can play against another human or the computer, and there's a global online high-score chart. And if you want, you can turn off the game and just play with the game's fluid dymanics.

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Think it's a no-brainer to work in the fast-food industry? How about running the fast food industry? In this highly addictive, easy to learn, but very challenging program, you become the person responsible for all aspects of the McDonald's corporation.

From hiring employees, making sure that customer service is efficent and smooth, making sure land production for cows is available, and marketing the product, deciding whether or not to use genetically modified products, to how you process the beef, this entertaining game allows you to see beyond the fast food counter. It's clear even before you download the game that the makers are not fans of McD's. Despite (or perhaps because of) their bias, it's an interesting game.

This game is available for PC and Mac download, as well as being playable online.

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Advanced Strategic Command is a free, turn-based strategy game: players can battle against other humans in multiplayer mode over the Internet or through a LAN. Or, you can go solo and duke it out against the computer in a single-player campaign. This freeware is heavily inspired by the successful “Command and Conquer” PC games, where players can manage various types of soldiers and tanks as well as build factories that produce new units.

Distributed under the terms of the Gnu General Public License, the future of this game has been left in the hands of, well, the general public. As a result, graphics are a bit outdated and there is no game demo, tutorial or tech support whatsoever. Nonetheless, almost anybody can get the hang of the game pretty fast and enjoy the experience. It is svailable for both Windows and Linux.

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