Tap Tap Revenge: Basically a Guitar Hero clone although in addition to hitting the “notes” (there’s only three here) you also have to tilt the ipod like you are drumming. A great game that is surprisingly addictive and best of all its free.

Labyrinth: Remember those mazes with the holes in it that you had to navigate a small metal ball through as a kid? Well this is basically the same thing only on the iPhone. Pretty fun although it responds “slower” than a real one - which actually makes it harder. Best of all it’s free.

Dizzy Bee: An other great game that uses the accelerometer. Basically you twist and turn the iPhone to change gravity which moves a bee to gather flowers through a maze while avoiding enemies. Sort of a throwback to the 80’s while making use of the new innovations in controls. It does cost $3 but is well worth it.

Mr. Shuffle: This one is a tad overpriced for what you get. It allows your kids to drag various eyes, noses and so forth onto a face. Think of it as an electronic Mr. Potato Head. The downside is that there just aren’t enough facial parts. It also is supposed to allow you to use the iPhone’s camera to take a picture of someone’s face to use. (Which my son loved) Unfortunately there’s a bug in the program there as that never worked for me. But you can take the picture separately and then import it. If you have a kid you sometimes need to entertain this has been most successful for me.

Moonlight Mahjong: If this wasn’t free I’d not include it. But it is so… It’s problem is that the pieces are just too small to work well. It is good about how you can use gestures to move the board around but it’s much harder than Mahjong programs on a computer to use. There are several other Mahjong versions ranging from $.99 to $4.99 but I’d lay good odds they suffer the same problems.

I picked up mainly really, really simple games for my toddlers. Things like bubbles or pop the bubble wrap. They love it. The Guitar Hero one I’m still getting into and think I may really like it. I haven’t decided yet. I was really hoping for more circa 80’s styled games. There are a few now - PacMan - but all overpriced.

The game I think would be great was the old Broderbund one from the AppleII days where you ride a giant worm and eat other ones from behind in a PacMan like maze.

There will probably be many DS games ported to the iPhone, primarily because they have the touch screen in common.

However there are differences between the devices which should be considered. One is that the DS has physical buttons, enabling traditional arcade type controls. Another is that touch screens are different. The DS uses a stylus while you touch an iPhone with your fingers. Also the iPhone can sense multiple touches as once and games that are designed for it will tend to take that into account. Finally there is the accelerometer which the DS lacks. Of course whether the accelerometer is sensitive enough to be fully useful in gaming remains to be seen.