Nintendo DS

My mom won a Nintendo DS a few weeks ago. Since she had no use for it, she said she'd give it to me when I came home this weekend. After playing with it for the past few days, I am very impressed.

When the DS came out last November, it sounded interesting, but I was also worried that the dual screens and touch screen were a bit gimmicky. This was reinforced by the fact that all of the DS launch titles either didn't really take advantage of any unique DS features, or were more like technology demos than full-fledged games. [1] But, even though I was a little skeptical of the DS, I was still happy to receive one for free. Before I went home, I read reviews of all the top-rated games for the DS and decided to pick up Kirby: Canvas Curse, since it was being praised as the first truly complete DS game that wouldn't be possible on any other platform. I was also excited to learn that a new Advance Wars for the DS was in development, since the original Advance Wars was an awesome game.

When I got home on Friday and saw the DS, I quickly started marking out . It wasn't as bulky as I thought it would be, the screens seemed bigger than I remembered, and the prize package that my mom won included a really nice carrying case. Then I started playing Kirby and was amazed. The game is incredibly fun and totally unique from any other game I've ever played. You draw lines on the screen to guide and protect Kirby, and you can tap Kirby and enemies to produce various effects.

Although the DS had a slow launch, now seems like a great time to be getting one. Kirby: Canvas Curse is a great game and was released in June. Advance Wars: Dual Strike comes out tomorrow, as does Nintendogs. Mario Kart (featuring Internet play), New Super Mario Bros. (working title), and Animal Crossing DS are all supposed to be out by the end of the year. Also, Nintendo just dropped the price of a DS from $150 to $130. I recommend picking one up if you are at all intrigued by the DS. Definitely get one by November, so that I'll have some people to play Mario Kart with on the Internet. :-)

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[1] I also thought it was stupid that Nintendo was positioning the DS against its own Gameboy Advance and confusing the market, but that's not a criticism of the DS itself.