In classic "first post to the forum" style, I solved the problem mere hours after posting. It occurred to me finally to try switching the text entry format from keyboard to graffiti, and of course on the graffiti setting there is a "home" soft key which does in fact work as escap...

Hey guys, I can get Monkey Island and MI2 to run on my palm tx just fine, but I do not have Escape key functionality. This makes it very time consuming to start the games, as I cannot skip the intros. First hard key changes to wide screen, second changes resolution as expected. I can bring up the me...