Hurry Up Hedgehog is the sort of thing I want to see more of. It's simple, challenging, and perfect for the Nintendo DS.

This port of a board game is like a cross between checkers and backgammon. Each player starts with four tokens on the far left. Every turn, a random row is chosen. The player whose turn it is moves one token vertically, and then one token horizontally along the chosen row. Along the way, the tokens can be shoved into pits where they're trapped until all the other tokens have caught up. First player to get three of his tokens to the far right wins.

The game is so simple you'd think maybe the Egyptians played it when they were building the pyramids or perhaps it was invented in Ancient China or Assyria. But it's actually a German board game from 1990. It's got a hedgehog motif that gets annoying quickly, but on the DS, it's shoved onto the top screen where it won't bother anyone. It's a shame the funky artwork from the boardgame was thrown over in favor of the more modern animated look. It went from these guys:

...to these guys:

Hurry Up Hedgehog might be too basic for the $20 price tag -- this really is the sort of thing you'd expect to download to an iPhone for $4.99 -- but it fills it function admirably. It's a challenging time fritterer, elegant enough that it's easy to learn and complex enough that it bears repeated playing. And although this is a no-frills port, it comes with plenty of variations to make it play like a different game. Do the tokens stack or do they push each other? Do you roll a die before each turn or do you pick which row will move? Do the edges wrap around or are they walled?

As I've said before, here's hoping more German board games make the jump to videogames. This is how I want to waste more time on my DS.