Etch A Sketch

The reason that we dominate as a species is that we can draw. The ability to take ideas from our brains and set them down for reference has enabled us to conquer the world. And we're good at it. If someone asks you for triangle, you can reproduce one almost perfectly, and if you're talented enough the same goes for a house, an apple, a face, or even an intricate baroque design.

Given this extraordinary ability, and the pleasure that children take in it, the Etch A Sketch was always a curious toy. After all, it takes something that we can already do using our infinitely complex bodies and makes it into something we can barely do by twisting dials.

It's a good job, then, that developer Typhon Mobile has chosen to add to the Etch A Sketch formula by making it into a game, as well as a toy.

Let's get the toy part out of the way first. There are four modes in all, of which only two are playable in the true sense. Inevitably, there's a Sketch mode, which makes it possible to use your handset as an Etch A Sketch, and Photo Fun, which enables you to take pictures and send them to The Internet to be turned into etchings.

Despite not being a game, we have to admit that Sketch mode is well-equipped and nicely presented. An Etch A Sketch board fills the screen and as you trace your line with either the thumbstick or buttons '1' to '9', the little dials spin around to indicate the motion your hands would be producing on a real board.

You can choose the colour of the line from black, red, blue, and green, and once you've finished making a sketch you can save it and send it to a friend. No Tetris, but neat all the same.

It's the games you're here for, though, and in the style of all the best countdowns we're going to look at the best one last and the runner-up first.

Cut Out is a version of the classic Qix, a game loosely based on Tron's light cycle sequence in which you have to close off parts of the screen by venturing from the safety of the edge to draw a line around them. Each level is patrolled by a large rendered baddie and two small sidekicks – in one level, a toadstool and two birds; in another, an African tribesman and two ghosts; and so on.

It's a stalwart format, reproduced here with highly polished graphics, but Cut Out brings no innovation to the Qix formula.

The sub-game at number one is just as stalwart in its basic premise, but it scores points by breaking free of the template that largely forms it. Block Buster is a version of Arkanoid, the classic arcade game in which you have to use a small paddle to bounce a ball back at an array of destructible blocks, except here the paddle is a vanishing jet trail that follows your avatar around, shrinking to nothing if you stop.

Some of Block Buster's bricks take more than one hit to destroy, some yield power-ups that do things like speed up or extend your paddle, and some need to be destroyed in a certain sequence. As with Arkanoid, Block Buster's finest moments come when you steer the ball into a channel between the bricks and watch it ricochet around.

The twist – and you'll be amazed that you haven't seen this more often – is that you can move the paddle up and down, as well as left and right. It's a small adaptation, but it brings with it a rich gameplay dimension.

You can follow the ball to the top to shepherd it towards specific blocks, or steer it into a channel and sweep back and forth, fencing it in with your tail, and, if you lose control of the ball at the top of the screen, you can watch helplessly as it plummets out of view.

Block Buster may not be entirely original, but the novelty of both the shrinking trail and the vertically mobile avatar brings life to a formula that was firmly embedded in the musty closet of vintage gaming.

We know what you're thinking: a cannibalised Arkanoid clone alone isn't going hold the armies of boredom off for long. But then, Block Buster isn't alone. It has another decent game and two polished applications to back it up, and as a unit, Typhon's Etch A Sketch knocks the real thing into a cocked hat.