WITH Sega, Nintendo and similar electronic games invading Malaysian homes, traditional games seem to be taking a beating. Old-timers like yours truly can still remember those games compendiums, where you get a host of games in a single package: Ludo, Checkers, Snakes & Ladders and others wrapped up in one. The ultimate in economical gaming.

Well, Syarikat Permainan Malaysia (SPM) has come up with two packages that make it easy for any household to have these games on their shelves, whether the family prefers traditional games, or only as a backup in case Tenaga Nasional starts load shedding again and you can't play your electronic shoot-em-ups.

Both games have sacrificed some quality in the materials they are using, but they're still worth their prices. Playing pieces are made of thin, hard plastic, while the different playing boards comes in a variety of cardboard types: some very thin and soft, others durable enough to stand the ravages of regular gaming.

The Compendium of 15 Games includes well-known traditional games like Ludo, Snakes & Ladders, Tic-Tac-Toe, Chinese Checkers, Solitaire and Draughts, as well as a variant of the last called Diagonal Draughts. Games that may be new to most Malaysians include Salta, a kind of checkerboard version of Chinese Checkers; and Go-Moku, possibly a Japanese (it sure sounds Japanese, doesn't it?) version of Tic-Tac-Toe which uses five squares instead of the traditional three.

There is even Telaga Buruk, a boardgame for two players. The aim of the game is to restrict the movement of your opponent's markers. Sounds familiar? There are two versions of an intriguing game: Nine Men's Morris and Six Men's Morris.

Another Japanese game, Hasami Shogi, is an interesting version of Draughts, where you don't capture your opponent's markers by jumping over them or moving into their space but by squeezing them between two of your own markers. And there are a couple of bestial games as well: Fox and Geese and Wolf and Goats. Don't cry "wolf" yet, we didn't mean "bestial" in that sense.

The first is a game where one person plays the fox and the other plays the geese. The fox player gets one marker representing the fox, while the other gets 15 markers. The whole point for the geese player is to trap the fox by surrounding it. Wolf and Goats is pretty much the same, using different, er, animals.

The Compendium of 30 Games has all the games in the 15-game version, plus 15 more. Right, I know that's obvious, but I thought I better mention it, just in case. Among the new ones are three different versions of Backgammon: the traditional one, plus a Greek and a Dutch version, which would introduce interesting variations for the jaded Backgammon player.

There are also a series of dice games. The first, called Cross-Out, is simple enough. Each player takes his turn to roll two dice and cross out boxes numbered one to nine, until he can't do so anymore. The remaining boxes are totalled up, and the player with the least amount of points wins.

Other dice games are Rotation, a game of pure luck, and Wipe-Out, a variation of it. There are two versions of craps (again, a word used in a different sense), one called Even and Odd and the other Round the Clock. A dice-version of "21" or Blackjack is also there, plus other dice games, most of which depend on pure luck and would be suitable for the young 'uns.

What conclusion? They're both of great value, so what are you waiting for?