Wednesday 8 April 2009

I Heart my Nintendo DS!

I've had my clunky Nintendo DS for a good two years now, and I can happily say that I'm in no way bored with it at all! I've long been a fan of videogames (I got my Spectrum ZX when I was 8) and I think the DS is one of the most versatile little consoles out there. I'm still a huge fan of the PS2, pine for my Amiga and Mega Drive and long for an XBox 360, but the DS really has some awesome little games. The inventiveness and originality of a lot of them is great and I never fail to be impressed by some of the gems that Nintendo come up with, not just because of the playability of the games, but also the design and execution. Here are a few I'm obsessed with at the moment...
San-X is a series of characters in Japan not unlike Sanrio (of Hello Kitty fame) but for me, has a much better range of characters and is so cute you could puke. The same goes for the two San-X DS games. Chara Sagashi Land is pretty much just a spot-the-difference game under time limits and with a few gimmicks thrown in. It's pretty obvious it's just an advert for the franchise but it works for me! Theme Park de Asobou is a bit more varied, with tons of mini-games including rhythm games, block puzzles and the like. The games are only available in Japan and are probably only worth getting if you like lots of twee characters and plinky-plonky music. Personally, I think they're awesome!
Ah, Bomberman; how I love thee! I've been a die-hard fan of the Bomberman franchise since I first played it's incarnation on the Amiga called DynaBlaster. I love that the series is still going strong and I adore the two Bomberman Land Touch games out at the moment. As well as being able to play the original blow-'em-all-up, multiplayer original (I have DS WiFi if anyone ever wants a match!), the main bulk of the game consists of a story-mode and dozens of awesome mini-games. The games are pretty inventive and a couple of hours will fly by before you know when you play this. I still drool over the character design and treasure my Bomberman figure that hangs apont my DS; one of the only bits of merchandise I've ever been able to find of the game, and that was found in Japan!
Zoo Keeper is a simple yet highly addictive game. Kind of like Tetris but not, basically you have to get vertical or horizontal rows of 3 or more animals on a grid and score as many points as you can. As well as the "just one more go..." level of playability, the game is a colourful treat with the top screen of the DS home to cute blocky animations of the various animal characters. Many an evening have I burst a blood-vessel in my eye playing too much of this one.
Gabu-Gabu Planet: Prey the Starts is one I took a chance on because it looked pretty! And as it turns out, it's not a bad game at all. You play as Gabu; one of a set of strange alien dogs wgo have come to Earth to eat everything. Each level sees you trying to out-eat your opponents, using an arsenal of strange and wonderful weapons at your disposal. The look and over-all design of the game is gorgeous (the main reason I went for it) but it's a surprisingly fun game once you get into it.

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