casual games are huge, even on home consoles and portable gaming systems. The Nintendo Wii and DS are famous for a slew of quick, easy to play games that take about three seconds to get into and are good for half an hour of play at a time.

Coming to the DS (and one to the Wii as well) are two enormously popular casual games from the PC world: Line Rider and Cake Mania. It's interesting to see titles of this nature migrating to gaming systems, as one would think the market is already saturated and potential buyers would be harder to find. Looking at it from the developers' side of things, however, it makes a lot more sense. Porting games to the DS and Wii take a lot less time, resources, and labor than creating an entirely new property. On top of that, these games are already established and have a name for themselves, so the teeming masses of fans will at least see the new incarnation of the games. And in the case of the DS, who wouldn't want a portable version of their favorite casual game?



As you probably have guessed, both Line Rider and Cake Mania are available to play on the web or download and play at your leisure. Line Rider is a completely free flash game, while Cake Mania features an online demo and downloadable full version, both of which are well worth playing.