I recently got a Nintendo DS for my birthday. I have to say I really have not put it down since I got it. I say this entirely due to one game. New Super Mario Bros. I haven’t actually enjoyed playing a game this much since…well I can’t ever remember enjoying a game this much. I have already beaten it, but now I am going back to every level and collecting all the Star Coins I missed. There are three in every level. Once I have ‘collected them all’ as it were, I will be satisfied that I have finished the game. I have completed about 5 of 8 worlds so far.

But what comes after this? I am a very casual gamer. I find most games today severely lacking or overly involved. I would like a game that is thoughtfully challenging and not just something along the lines of Brain Age (which I will be picking up eventually). I want something thoughtful and fleshed out. When I was much much youger, my sister had a PC game. It was called Under a Killing Moon. I never had the opportunity to play it, but I watched her play a number of times. It was a detective style game and you played the role of a Private Investigator brought on to solve a mystery. Most of the details escape me, but I remember you investigated the crime scene thoroughly in a point and click fashion interacting with the environment. I also seem to recall the P.I. getting trapped or something and he had to figure a way out of the room with only what was present in the room as tools…or maybe he found some piece of evidence noone else found doing that. Like I said details are fuzzy to me and I very well could have added to the memory over time not realizing it. Anyway, my point is that this was a very cool cranial type of game with a story behind it. There is nothing like that out on any console, state-side, that I am aware of. I’m told God of War requires thought to work out puzzles, but at the end of the day its still a hack and slash. I, personally used to have a Star Trek: TOS game for the PC that was very similar to what I’m talking about as well. When on a mission on a planet, you went from setting to setting solving mysteries or helping inhabitants out by figuring out a number of puzzles. Granted the red shirt died on every away mission possible, but that just added to the realism of a Star Trek game.

Reading through all my RSS feeds the other day, I came across this interview. The interview is with the person in charge of localizing a Japanese game called, Touch Detective. From what I can gather, this game seems to be along the lines of what I am looking for. The pictures I have seen seem a bit kiddy, but that doesn’t usually reflect game difficulty and playability. After all Super Mario Bros. looks kiddy and everyone loves that franchise, myself included. The interview even mentions the ability to use the touchscreen on the DS to point at things in rooms to get more information about them. It made me realize that the DS is perfect for this sort of thing since it has the touchscreen. I can only hope that this will be the next extended source of entertainment for my DS and not something I’ll finish in under 2 hours.

The game comes out in early October. I’ll most likely be picking it up, assuming it doesn’t get awful reviews.

Until then, I might try to dig out that old Star Trek game and see if it will install on my computer…

This is the tax-free holiday weekend in Massachusetts. I didn’t realize this until about Thursday and on Friday, I had a brilliant idea! Its time for a Nintendo DS. I’m not much of a gamer. In fact, the last system I got was a Gameboy Advance circa 2002 on ebay. I have an SP, but I did not pay anything close to retail value for it. There was some ridiculous sale at a KB the day after Thanksgiving and I had a friend pick it up for me.

After being at Otakon, it was hard not to notice the sheer number of people toting the little device around. They would casually take it out to waste time while waiting in some of the incredibly long lines or pass time at a panel that wasn’t particularly interesting. The turning point was just before the awful Transformers panel. There were 3 girls sitting in the back of panel before us, all playing MarioKartDS against each other. I knew then that it was merely an eventuality that I would get one.

So after a night of merriment, I groggily awoke at 8:00 AM EST. I got my things together for the rest of the day including my frisbee, work pager, and suitcase to return to my parents. I knew I wanted to be at Toys R Us early because of the sheer crowds that come out for this holiday, but I also knew that TRU doesn’t open until 10:00 AM EST. So I went about the house gathering all the empty cans and bottles and put them neatly in the kitchen and wiped down the half of the table the bottles were not occupying. After I finished, I was on my way to TRU. The actual act of getting the DS was uneventful and trivial, albeit quite exciting. I picked up MarioKart DS and New Super Mario Bros. to start my gaming adventure with. I do wish in retrospect I had gotten a small padded case and some screen protectors, but in no way does that mean I regretted any part of that trip.

I put my prize in the car and headed to my parents house. After lugging the suitcase in, jokingly stating that I’d need it another month, my mother told me I should just hold onto it and I lugged it back out to my car. I then brought in the DS to show my mom how cool it was. After she looked at it, she said, “You know we still don’t know what to get you for your birthday. Can we give this to you?” I’m not sure she was finished speaking when I said, “Yes!”, but I was pretty excited.

I posted some gadget pr0n after the jump and I also added a gallery here.
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