benjarvis.org

The Nintendo DS Time Sink.

A while back I mentioned getting a Nintendo DS. In general, I love video games but I’m pretty fucking picky when it comes to video games that I actually like. Well since I made that post, I’ve bought a DS and a bunch of cartridges. Corin was so envious that she had to buy one too.

The Game List

• The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass
• Professor Layton and the Curious Village
• Pokemon Diamond
• Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney
• Lunar Knights
• Advance Wars
• Cooking Mama (Corin got this with a Best Buy card she won at work!)

I’ve been totally hooked on Curious Village and I was really impressed by Phantom Hourglass. At first I thought the stylus oriented play in Phantom Hourglass would be annoying, but actually it’s really intuitive. You point where you want Link to go and he goes there. You want to fight a guy? Click on it with the stylus and Link charges. Draw a quick circle around Link and he does a spin attack. My favorite part is that when you look at the map on the touch screen, you can draw notes on it. That’s really helpful.

Curious Village has a lot a of theme for a game that could have just as easily been a list of brain teasers. You have to solve mysteries, puzzles, and look for clues. It reminds me of a series of children’s books that I would love to collect again called “Usborne’s Puzzle Adventures”. Every two pages is a question and you have to answer it by studying the illustrations on the two pages. There are codes, hidden clues, and plenty of brain teasers. The best part about Curious Village is that there the puzzles can be REALLY maddening, but solving them makes you feel really accomplished and proud.

Since Corin is playing Pokemon Diamond, I’m going to have to get Pokemon Pearl as Diamond only allows you to save 1 player per cartridge. Not to mention you can’t “catch ‘em all” with only one cart. Some future game purchases are Harvest Moon (probably the regular DS one, but maybe the Fantasy) and the Brain Age games.

So yeah, lots of gaming going on. This is one of the reasons I haven’t been updating too often. When you work 40 hours a week, you realistically only have 4 hours of free time a day. So after a little bit of cleaning up, some TV, and maybe a few video games and I’ve got to hit the sack.

I hope to make some progress this weekend. I need to get some content up on DeathbyDVD and optimize the Google page rank. I know Google Ads won’t make me a millionaire, but I’d love to have them make me some cash. I also hope to put together an actual podcast. It’ll have to be a monologue because I don’t have anyone that wants to do it with me, but I gotta start somewhere. It’s just as well because I only have one microphone and it’s crappy to boot. I also need to finish organizing my Magic the Gathering cards. I really miss playing Magic and my various board games. Any one up for a game of “El Grande”?