Why I love my Nintendo DS
SO I spent the past 5 days on a trip to Gainesville to live away from my computer and my little brother's Gamecube and other such gaming conveniences. As good little survival-minded adventurers, my little brother and I packed our Nintendo DS's and all of his new holiday games and prepared for a lot of button mashing (and stylus tapping) on the road and anywhere else. It was time well spent.
The DS has been my exclusive console since I sent my Gamecube back home from college a year ago. All the gaming I do lately in college is either with MMO's and casual Flash games on my laptop or with a few games that I have for my DS. Occasionally I get to borrow someone's Gamecube or PS2, but I usually don't have the time for that. Interestingly enough, though, is that I am perfectly happy with the DS and I don't miss the Gamecube at all. Unlike the gray monster days of the early Gameboy, where mobile gaming was a drastically reduced experience from its console counterpart (with that horrid dark blue on light green screen), gaming on the Nintendo DS is top quality and that whole touch-screen thing makes it all the more better. So let me tell you a few things about my vacation that reminded me of how much I love my Nintendo DS.
The games are great. I spent most of the time totally hooked on Megaman ZX, which has proven to be my favorite Megaman game since Megaman X (which also happens to be the only other Megaman game I cared to play through). My little brother was hooked on Kirby Squeak Squad, which happens to be a stellar Kirby game in both the adventure itself and the features it has. I also played me some Sonic Rush, Mario vs. Donkey Kong 2 and Metroid Pinball, all of which surprised me in how original and fun they were. Sonic Rush is possibly the best Sonic game ever, MvDK2 is like Lemmings Mario-style with 100% touch screen action, and Metroid Pinball is a really nice virtual pinball game with the occasional UNROLL SAMUS AND SHOOT ALL ALIEN CREATURES ONSCREEN moments. Hot stuff.
The battery lasts forever. The Nintendo DS is like a little engineering wonder. It's kind of like a Macbook but all of the hardware features actually work well and the whole package isn't the least bit pretentious. One of the great things about it is that if you are in the middle of playing and you suddenly have to pause and put the game down for a while, you can just flip the thing closed and the screen will shut off, putting the whole unit into sleep mode. In this mode the game is still running paused and you can be certain the buttons won't be accidentally pressed, while the battery is hardly wasted. You could leave a DS in sleep mode all day and the unit will still work without a need for a charge by evening. Considering that my little brother forgot his charger on this trip (he still has a few things to learn about survival) and we were sharing mine, it's a good thing the battery lasts so long.
The touch screen just makes sense. There is the occasional game that abuses the touch-screen functionality of the DS by expecting you to switch between screen-tapping and button-mashing on the fly while BEING SHOT AT (I'm looking at you, Mechassault), but most games actually put it to really good use. One example would be Sonic Rush, which only uses the touch screen for the special stages. The special stages are a lot like what one had to deal with in Sonic 2 (running down the half-pipe and collecting as many rings as possible), but it's so much better with the stylus. It's also highly challenging, as I still haven't managed to beat the last special stage… there's just too many spikes and enemies on that stage to avoid!
WiFi is really cool. My brother and I didn't do any WiFi gaming with each other this past week, but we did visit a Walmart at one point and gravitated to the electronics section like moths to a lamppost. There I happened to notice, while trying to figure out which DS game I would like Foxy to buy for me, that there is a thing called "DS Download Station" there. I flipped on my DS which happened to be in my pocket that day (nerd, am I not?) and sure enough, there was a WiFi signal for this download station. I connected to it and I was able to download a handful of game demos and movies on the spot. I gave Cooking Mama and Elite Beat Agents a go (and convinced my little brother to play Cooking Mama, since cooking is also a part of survival), and I have to say that it was the most effective bit of product sampling I've ever found. I want Elite Beat Agents; I knew I wanted it when I was just halfway done with the demo… and my little brother said Cooking Mama is fun. Good job Nintendo, please send more demos, okthxbai.
So it was a good week of DS gaming indeed, and now I'm off to look up a guide on Megaman ZX so I can find the energy tanks I'm missing, which I really really need in order to beat the final boss.
4 Comments
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Wholeheartedly agree about the DS. People will complain about how the DS doesn't have this or that, but the gameplay with the touch-screen is top-notch.
Side note: E.B.A. is a really great game. I got it for Christmas, and I'm pretty sure I played for about 10 hours over the course of the last two days (I finally managed to put down the Wii controller). You wouldn't think that tapping on the screen over and over would be fun. Yeah, it is.
I love my DS, too! I am totally addicted to Final Fantasy III, which I started playing last week. The battery life is great (makes the PSP's a joke). I take the DS with me everywhere.
I play mostly on my Xbox 360 but my son couldn't live without his DS and my little girl got a DS Lite for Christmas this year. He's about through the Mario vs. DK 2 (on the roof level) and I like the whole touch-screen only approach of the game. He just finished up Avatar recently which is a game I got hooked on as well. There's a great part where you have to blow air into a lock to open it. So how do you do it? Fiddle with the touch-screen or d-pad? Heck no! You actually blow into the mic to get the air flowing. Great interactive experience!
Great post. I definitely agree with you. The Nintendo DS is awesome…especially the DS Lite