So the thought goes that a conversion of Time Crisis would be a great idea, especially as the requirement that you duck to avoid shots adds an extra level of interaction that the iPhone/iPod Touch’s accelerometer can play a role in.

I don’t know about you, though, but while I’ve always expected on-rails shooters to be easy to play on my iPod Touch, I’ve usually found them a bit inaccurate. Because the system relies on pudgy fingers to strike at baddies – who can often be small on screen – I often miss in my urge to strike as fast as possible.

It’s all to do with the very fine pixel art that went into its graphics. They’re immediately attractive to me – I just really like the “16-bit” look (I lament that the upcoming Oregon Trail for iPhone looks to be using updated, cartoony graphics rather than the lovely pixel art for the original mobile phone version) but at the same time, they scream out “Java conversion.”

I know they’re lame and completely pointless – oh how I wish I could convert my Xbox 360 achievement points into marketplace points (I’d accept a 10 to 1 ratio) or at least clothes for my avatar (though he’s got a natty Scotland top on now, so that’s good) but they’re addictive, and Jetset ups the ante by requiring you visit 100 airports in the real world to receive all of the “achievements” (called “souvenirs”) that the game has to offer.

However, Place Your Bets reminds me of the short but glorious period of time when computing students in their final year were given their own private computing lab. It was where we spent most of our free periods — and even a few periods that weren’t free — rarely doing anything other than wasting time.

As we were saddled with Macintoshes locked up tight so we couldn’t install anything, there wasn’t a lot of gaming to be done in the lab, but we did manage to find one game that worked — a little application called Snail Race.

The title has this clever design in that when you’re turning, you can “catch” the turn by hitting a button to drift. It essentially “locks” you to a turning circle which you can then adjust ever so slightly; helpful, as in all other cases when it comes to accelerometer-based turning I tend to find myself failing wildly trying to make sure my turn is right – which it never is.

(Unless you happen to be an atheist, of course.)