13 July 2006, late morning
I finished Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney last night. Dave lent me the game a few weeks back to play. It took a lot of effort for him to get the game, as it is way more rare than it probably should be. The game is fun, but wasn’t as good as I had thought it would be. There are 5 cases in the game you as Phoenix Wright, a young defense attorney, must solve. You’re sort of like Perry Mason or Matlock in that you normally prove your client is innocent by finding the culprit of the crime, which in this game is always murder. Part of the game involves listening to testimonies from witnesses and finding contradictions in what the witnesses say. The other half of the game is spent traveling around searching for clues and evidence, and talking to people involved with the case. It’s a very novel idea for a game, but one that can get a bit tedious at times. The story is very linear, and a few times I was unsure what specific sequence of events I needed to do to advance the plot. I also wasn’t that impressed with the dialog in the game, though there are some really funny gems here and there. All-in-all it’s a good game, but since the replay on it is essentially nill, you should probably rent it or buy it on the cheap.
[1] Video Games | Nintendo DS
26 June 2006, lunch time
Carvill and I had brunch together at the Easy, and then headed off in search of a DS Lite. She had decided to get one after playing Super Mario DS on her brother-in-law’s Lite. Elsewhere, earlier that day, Dave also picked up a DS Lite. Like myself, Dave already owned a Nintendo DS. Dave gave his old DS to Sarah, his girlfriend. Between the lot of us we had 4 Nintendo DS systems; the only reasonable thing to do would be to meet up, order pizza, drink import beer, and play lots of Tetris—which is what we did. The fun factor of Tetris seems to increase uniformly with the number of players you have. I’m still not sure if playing with items on is fun or not—it certainly is crazy anyway. The DS version of Tetris is excellent. It’s definitely a must-have game if you own the system.
[2] Video Games | Nintendo DS
23 June 2006, lunch time
Some of you may recall my annoyance with the people that play MarioKart. With MarioKart, most people are so anal about keeping their wins high and their losses low that they’ll drop out of a series of races when it looks like they aren’t going to get the top spot. Tetris DS has corrected this behaviour by assigning a loss to the player that drops out in the middle of a game. Now, this is unfair to those players who are being dropped from games because of bad connections, but I imagine this sort of thing doesn’t happen all too often. All is not well in the world however.
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[1] Video Games | Nintendo DS
14 June 2006, late evening
Yesterday I wandered around Yonge and Eglington looking for a Nintendo DS Lite. I had been informed by the Future Shop website that they had one in stock, but when I arrived at their store they were all sold out—as was the Toys R Us, EB Games, and random video game store in the area; Dufferin Mall’s Toys R Us and EB Games also didn’t have any; Ditto the Eatons Centre and the Future Shop downtown. The DS Lite is selling fairly quickly by the looks of things. I managed to find one today. Best Buy lets you order online for pick-up, which is what I did, and I picked my unit up just North of Yorkdale Mall.
Now, as you may be well aware, I am already the happy owner of a Nintendo DS. It’s probably more than a little decadent to replace it after owning for about a half year. I liked my DS a lot, but it just doesn’t compare to the DS Lite. The Lite is really what Nintendo should have put out from the get go. The original system, which is ugly in and of itself, is all the more ugly when compared to Sony’s PSP. I think one of the big things holding the DS back when it launched was the fact it didn’t look nearly as good as the PSP. (The fact it lacked some really good launch titles didn’t help matters I suppose.) The Lite still may not be quite as nice looking as the PSP, but it certainly comes close. Of course, the Lite has the advantage of not being anywhere near as fragile as the PSP.
I haven’t had a chance to play with it for an extended period of time. I am hoping the smaller and lighter form factor will make the unit easier on my poor wrists.
The Nintendo DS is a nice portable system. I think everyone should own one.
[10] Video Games | Nintendo DS
15 February 2006, lunch time
The first time I got a hair cut in Animal Crossing, I ended up with this blonde surfer-dude type of haircut. It was really ugly. I knew there was a chart online that told you how to answer the hair dressers questions to get the cut you want, but I thought it’d be more fun to just do it at random and see what I turn up with. It wasn’t more fun. A week later, sick of my blonde hair, I got it cut again today. Learning nothing from past experience, I decided to answer the hair dressers questions at random and see what happens. I now have super short hair. And it’s blue. So, in Animal Crossing, as in real life, I can’t get a good hair cut.
[3] Video Games | Nintendo DS
26 January 2006, lunch time
Shima is getting a used Nintendo DS in the near future. I am not sure if she wants one or not. If she doesn’t, I’ll give my Nintendo DS to Krishna I suppose. I must have the new, white, smaller, lighter Nintendo DS. This new DS won’t be out in Japan till some time in March, so I have some time to save up my moneys. I’m not sure when it will make its way over to North America. It looks very similar to the old DS, just lighter and smaller. I’m hoping the ergonomics of the unit are better this time around, though it looks like it will just be more of the same. (The lighter weight may actually help a lot, we’ll have to wait and see.) It seems a bit cold, announcing a new Nintendo DS so close to Christmas, but in Japan there has been a serious Nintendo DS drought, so this news will probably be recieved well.
[14] Video Games | Nintendo DS
14 December 2005, the wee hours
There is a cat that lives in my Animal Crossing town called Monique. She collects pink furniture. She was feeling sick today. I was going to get her medicine, but the store in my town was closed for renovations. Luckily, you can play Animal Crossing: Wild World online. I logged into Animal Crossing Live and informed the web site I was looking to travel to another town. A few moments later I was visiting Joebilly in Lattleto. (I am very impressed with how well Animal Crossing Live works; it is a shame the site is so ugly.) I wandered around her town for a bit, talking to the other animals and grabbing some new fruit, and then bought myself some medicine before I left to go back to my town. I visited Monique, who was still feeling ill, and gave her the medicine I bought. She perked right up and thanked me for my troubles. Animal Crossing is strangely engrossing.
[3] Video Games | Nintendo DS
10 December 2005, lunch time
I have two Nintendo DS games you can play online, Animal Crossing: Wild World and Mariokart DS. Mariokart will let you play with anyone you please online, but Animal Crossing limits you to people you tell it are your friends. This is done by entering your friend’s friend code; keep in mind that your “friend” may be a complete stranger you met on the internet. Nintendo offers no means of exchanging friend codes, so it has to be done through other channels—for example, Chris and I exchanged codes when I first mentioned I owned Animal Crossing. The problem is that this really isn’t enough to start playing with your friend; you also need to coordinate when you are playing your game for the friend codes to be of any use. If I log into the Nintendo WiFi Connection to challenge my friend online to a game of Mariokart, he also needs to be online. The only way I can determine he is online is to either: try and challenge him and see if I get a response, or communicate with him through some other channel and tell him to log on to the WFC as well. I’ve seen people posting their friend codes online all over the place, but this is really only solves half the problem of playing with your friends online. You need a means of communicating with all your friends that you are playing online. Since in many cases your “friends” are in fact random people you are meeting on the internet, you may not have their telephone numbers, email addresses, or IM names. Communicating when you are online in a simple manner is just as important as exchanging friend codes; I will need think about how to do that more.
[5] Video Games | Nintendo DS
8 December 2005, the wee hours
Rambot lives in Robotica. (I’m still not that good at picking names.) Although my copy of Animal Crossing for the Gamecube is only a month old, I couldn’t resist getting Animal Crossing: Wild World. My big problem with the Gamecube game is that I’m hardly at home to play it, and when I am home I don’t feel like hogging the television, since my roommate isn’t one to surf on the net when she is bored. A portable Animal Crossing is perfect for someone like myself.
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[150] Video Games | Nintendo DS
5 December 2005, the wee hours
Advance Wars DS is another great game for the Nintendo DS. I’ve been playing it non-stop for the past week and change, putting aside Mario Kart DS and Meteos to do so. Advance Wars is a turn-based strategy game, similar to the various Tactics games available for the Playstation and Gameboy Advance. You control an army, and face off against a rival army. The game is really addictive; I usually play it whenever I have a spare moment. By far the best thing about Advance Wars DS is the absolutely horrible dialog. I’m not sure if the translation team did a bad job on purpose or not—I think they must have, because some of the lines in the game are classic: “You got dropped like a phat beat!” and “Get the plates, ‘cause you just got served!” Bad dialog aside, the game play is great. The game is highly regarded by the people at 1UP. If you have a DS, the game is definitely worth checking out. All it needs is a mode that lets you play over the Internet and it’d be a perfect time-waster.
[1] Video Games | Nintendo DS
24 November 2005, lunch time
I have pretty bad RSI, the result of years of very poor posture while using the computer. Keep this in mind when I bring up the following criticism of my Nintendo DS.
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[1] Video Games | Nintendo DS
21 November 2005, lunch time
Toys “R” Us had a sale last week; all the Nintendo DS games they sold were selling for $10 dollars off. I bought two games, AdvanceWars DS, which Ju-lian had recommended, and MarioKart DS, which most everyone on the planet had recommended. I hadn’t planned on getting MarioKart DS so soon, but $10 off a $45 game is a pretty big discount. I played a few rounds of the game on the subway ride home. The game plays pretty much like all the other MarioKart games that have come before it. MarioKart is like Grand Turismo, but without the spinning out all the time.
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[5] Video Games | Nintendo DS
16 November 2005, lunch time
With Nintendo rolling out a free world-wide network to play games over, I think the built in Wi-Fi of the Nintendo DS could turn out be its killer feature. First, and probably most important, the network is dead easy to connect to. Second, and perhaps even more import important, you can play MarioKart DS over the network. To say everyone is going mental over the game would be an understatement. Over at Penny Arcade, Tycho gives a very favourable review of the game and the DS’ Wi-Fi capabilities. One of my favourite Nintendo blogs, Hello Nintendo, offers up a similar opinion on the game. Reviews of the game have been stellar, 1UP’s review pretty typical of the scores the game has been earning. Joystiq thinks the release of MarioKart and the new network may cement the DS’ place in the market. They are probably right on the money. The game comes out in Canada today.
[3] Video Games | Nintendo DS
15 November 2005, the wee hours
After reading a few reviews, I went out and bought Meteos on Friday, before heading off to Heather’s rocking birthday party. (I should mention in passing that Dufferin Mall, where I bought my game, reminds me an awful lot of the Scarborough Town Centre circa 1999.) Meteos is produced by the same company that made the super-awesome Lumines. They are also the company behind the infamous psychedelic shooter Rez. Meteos is fun, and definitely worth owning if you have a DS. It is similar in a very trivial way to Bejeweled. I picked up my copy used for $32 at Electronics Boutique. There are videos of the game play over in the Meteos Strategy Guide you can view to get a taste for how the game works. The reviews at 1UP gives a much better overview of the game than I have here.
[1] Video Games | Nintendo DS
11 November 2005, lunch time
So I’ve had my DS for less than a day, and I haven’t really had a chance to play anything on it. I’ll just briefly say something on the form factor. I’ve played with the Nintendo DS a couple times before, clamped down inside a Future Shop and an Electronics Boutique. I never really got the impression it was huge. Big, yes, but nothing like the mammoth PSP. Let me tell you, for those who will also be buying a DS blindly, the thing is a brick. It’s bigger than my old-school GBA. I think it is about the same size as a PSP, only a little less wide, and a little more fat. The thing is pretty ugly. All that said, I didn’t buy the thing for it’s visual appeal. I look forward to trying out my GBA games on it when I get home this weekend.
[4] Video Games | Nintendo DS
