Top 5 Apps Based On Original Board Games

Here's gaming over the last half-century: Baby-boomers played board games on boards, and liked it. They were saddened to see Generation X sucked up into newfangled video games and computer games, playing board games to make their parents happy, then disappearing to play Airborne on the computer all alone for hours on end. A few year after that, computers were all connected and if a game wasn't multiplayer, it wasn't worth playing. "Millennials" might be best summed up by E.M. Forster's famous exhortation, "Only Connect." And that brings us back to the original board games. They're back, they're on your iPhone, and we know the 5 best!

Conquest, Sean O'Connor; $1.99. Predictably, a RISK clone is on our list. Less predictably, it's not the popular $4.99 app Lux. Conquest plays faster, is designed to look and feel like the classic board game, and gives you scads of maps and options to choose from. After playing Conquest, Lux and other RISK clones look like kludges.

Monopoly, Electronic Arts; $4.99. There is no amazing animated sequence of a guy in a top hat and monocle taking down Godzilla, and there is no 3-D camera tracking the progress of a housing development under construction. There is no flashing screen urging "Finish Him!" when you foreclose on a property. It's Monopoly, just like you remember it. This is a good thing.

Scrabble, Electronic Arts; $4.99. Confession time: Scrabble makes the list because bad Scrabble is better than good Chutes and Ladders, or a variety of other choices. But EA has dumbed the game down to the point where more competitive Scrabblers will be frustrated at their inability to challenge and be challenged, and it suggests words to make you smarter than you are. If you don't know that Xi is a Greek letter and Xu is a currency, Scrabble has no business telling you. That said, if you're not a purist, it works great and looks like the real thing

Shredder Chess, Shredderchess.com; $7.99. If you're a casual fan of the game, get one of the many free apps available. Shredderchess is for serious chess buffs. It offers a variety of pleasing board/playing piece graphics, and more importantly has the strongest chess algorithm on the app market. But don't be scared; it scales back to any playing strength. It tracks your rating and allows you to set the engine appropriately, provides for coaching options, and includes virtually endless chess puzzles to solve. Worth the price whether you're serious about chess or about learning chess.

The Game of Life, Electronic Arts; $4.99. EA has updated life for the iPhone, tweaking it to play faster and adding a lot of 3-D perspective in the movement. What the heck, it's a video game now, right? But just like the original, you and your friends or family will be amused and entertained by this classic until it kills your battery (the usual way a "Life" session ends.)

Whether you played the original board games during your "wonder years," or are just discovering the naked aggression of Risk or the cold heartless capitalism of Monopoly, these apps give you a way to play them at a safe distance from family members or friends-a feature that may have come in handy for some families the first time through.