A hand-held game apparatus comprises a pointing device, such as a touch panel or the like. A predetermined program including a letter recognition program is transmitted from a stationary game apparatus to a plurality of hand-held game apparatuses. Players perform handwriting input using the touch panels or the like of the respective hand-held game apparatuses. A letter recognition process is performed in each hand-held game apparatus. A result of letter recognition is transmitted to the stationary game apparatus. In the stationary game apparatus, a game process is executed based on the result of letter recognition received from each hand-held game apparatus.