Animal Crossing: 0473-1233-9375I got a new DS, as you all know, and so of course I have to update my friend codes. Why? I don't know. Nintendo's retarded. u_u But yeah, you'll notice I got Metroid Prime. Just today, in fact. And I'm hooked. Nintendo had made a pretty sweet FPS. I'd bet it's prolly the best first-person-shooter on a handheld. I'm sure that there will be more to come, and I await them with open arms. I'm enjoying my DS. For those of you not in the loop, here's the list of games I have for it.
Mario Kart: 0859-6704-4842
Metroid Prime: 2491-7580-3075
Advance Wars: Dual StrikeSO MANY HYPHENS!
Animal Crossing: Wide World
Kirby: Canvas Curse
Mario Kart DS
Metroid Prime: Hunters
Sonic Rush
And that doesn't even cover the myriad of GBA games I can play on it, too. Currently, Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories is lodged in there, and I'll prolly get some Pokemon action going on again. I still need to beat Emerald.
Sigh... I realized earlier at work today that the DS has sorta painted itself into a corner. It's not the replacement for the Game Boy series. And it's home to a lot of really creative games. Two screens, a stylus, built in microphone.... It's got it all. And realistically, there's not gonna be anything coming along soon to have all that again. If DS were to magically drop off the face of the planet, there would be literally no way to play Kirby, or the special stages in Sonic... True, you could use a mouse for the stylus, but it's just not the same. The DS is special. That's truly what sets it appart from the PSP.
With the PSP, all you get is handheld ports of games that you can play on your PS2. There's really no reason to get a PSP game if you already have the "big version." It's the same problem that the UMD format has with movies. Why buy a more limited version of something you could buy for cheaper and play on your PlayStation? There are a few gems for the system (LUMINES!), but really, it's mostly just more of same, hand-held sized. (Note: I just now stumbled on the existance of a Katamari game for PSP. Semi-Portish, but since I never actually got either PS2 version, I could spring for "Me and My Katamari.")
What made the Game Boy popular and successful was that its games weren't just micro-sized ports of home console games. Tetris sold the system to begin with, yes, but after that, classics like the somewhat quirky Mario Land moved on, and eventually the Game Boy found itself a home for slower, less graphics- and speed-intensive games. Role-playing games, like say... Pokemon. Here's a game that literally came out of left field to be a smash hit, and really, it saved the system. The Advance systems, and probably the DS, too, owe much their existance to Pokemon's ability to make portable gaming exciting. And yes, a great deal of the Game Boy Advance's success was on drawing on Nintendo's older games (being able to play Super Nintendo games) for a sort of a retro feel. But that's not what hte PSP is doing. It's not being "retro." In all fairness, it's somewhat forced to compete with both the portables AND the home consoles for titles. It's getting a version of all the major releases, at nearly the same quality of the PS2. Somewhat diminished, granted, due to hardware specs, but it's very close. It's above PSONE, definitely.
Anyway, this ran on a while longer than it should. By the way, I still like the PSP as a piece of hardware. I'll prolly spring for whatever update Sony releases, since mine's all dinged up. (Please make the PSP2 more resilient, Sony.) I love the wireless Internet access (much easier to set up wi-fi connections than on the DS), and it really has become my own personal MP3 player, in addition to storing movies and images I may have collected from the Internet. ^_^
Enough blabbing. I just wanted to say how much I enjoyed my DS. And it's a lot. Definitely enough to replace it when I lost it. Not enough to spring for a DS Lite, though... Too small for my hands.
Grar... I was gonna show you all an image, but it's too late now. I have work at 8-4:30 tomorrow.
No comments:
Post a Comment