Most people just want waiting games on their cell phonesfast-twitch titles that can be initiated, understood, and completed in a few minutes.

The one I was using, a refurbished model that had been the height of tech-chic in 2003, was about as functional as a spoon.

When I bought it, the salesman emphasized that it was made of metal.

That sounded impressive at the time; it turned out that just meant it was heavy and clinked if you tapped it against your teeth.

Second, my new phone had to come with a good selection of games.

The cell-phone game is one of the great guilty pleasures of the modern age.

Why bother thinking or socializing during dead spots in your day when you can watch a four-pixel snake eat dots (I fondly remember Snaking my way through my college graduation ceremonywhich, come to think of it, is an oddly apt metaphor for my entire undergraduate experience.).

Theyre also free, which is key for people like me, who are poor enough to have to wait in lines and ride the bus.

On my quest for a new phone, I visited retail stores for five major service providers.

Sure, they all have plenty of demoslimited-functionality versions of titles like NBA Live 07 and Tom Clancys Rainbow Six Lockdown.

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If you like the demos, you can buy the full games for a full price.

Prices for mobile games vary by developer and service provider, but most seem to cost a shade under 10.) As I searched in vain for free, no-fi games like Snake, it hit me that the mobile games I knew and loved had gone extinct.

First, if kids were willing to pay 3 for a 10-second snippet of a 50 Cent song, theyd probably be willing to pay some nonzero amount for a game.

Second, consumers arent going to buy the cow when they can play Virtual Milkmaid for free.

Its obvious where this line of reasoning leads: Goodbye Tetris, hello 7 Tetris.

Established gaming companiesimages of a potentially multibillion-dollar market dancing in their headshave bought out mobile-game studios and set to work manufacturing slimmed-down versions of full-platform games.

Electronic Arts paid 680 million for Jamdat Mobile in December 2005, for instance.) If youve felt a primal need to play Age of Empires II in an elevator (just 19.95 on a Windows Mobile Smartphone), your long and burdensome wait is over.

A Wall Street Journal piece from Dec.

North American mobile-gaming market would be worth 1.5 billion by 2008.

At least as far as America is concerned, mobile gamings Golden Age has turned out to be iron pyrite.

Revenue projections are consistently missed, and the percentage of phone users who actually pay for mobile games has stayed in preteen digits.

The only thing one needs to operate a cell phone is opposable thumbs.

But getting a game onto a phone, especially for an idiot like me, can be quite confusing.

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Although you can click a button on your phone to download certain games from your service provider, you have to take to the Internet if you want a wider selection.) Plus, despite the claims of industry hype men, most cell-phone screens are just not fit for serious gaming.

Moreover, a numeric keypad is not a substitute for a joystick, especially not for those of us with what are commonly termed fat fingers.

You can take a copy of Halo 3, plug it into any Xbox anywhere, and be turret gunning your friends in minutes.

But cell-phone operating systems vary widely by carrier and manufacturer, and every cell phone is configured differently.

A game that works for Sprint wont necessarily work for Verizon; a game that works on a numeric keypad wont necessarily work on a touch screen.

The lack of standardization is confusing for users and maddening for developers, who have to decide whether to build games for a single carrier and limit their audience, or go bankrupt and crazy trying to build 50 different Froggers for 50 different phone configurations.

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