Review: Nintendo DS

James and Ferda dropped by to pick up some French language test books (you shall rock that exam Ferda!). But the true gem last night is I got a taste of what my youth.

Back in the day, I was a hardcore video gamer. I knew it all, I played it all, but more importantly, I knew the secret codes to the Konami console games. 😉 I don’t feel that I lost out on my youth because I was inside playing video games all the time…that’s the way I was and I think I turned out alright. Hogwash to all these people saying kids should get outside…as long as I’m not stuffing my face while playing video games, things are good! Heck, we all know I was a think stick of a man back in the day. Hmm…I’ve gone off on a tangent but now I’m wondering if there was a correlation of my sleek physique and my video game playing…

Anyhow, back to last night. Ferda mentioned she was a Tetris champ so we had a challenge and she was pretty good. Although I don’t think any of us in the room are of Carrie/Annie calibre. They are Tetris masters. Definitely.

But then while playing James pulled out his Nintendo DS (Dual-Screen) and showed it to me. At first I was thinking “Alright, I’ll give this a look since James is really into this.” but I didn’t think I would be super impressed since Benoit had showed me one before and I really wasn’t impressed.

Well.

Was I wrong.

The Nintendo DS is the latest in an evolution of the Gameboy. Gone are the small black and white screens of the handheld generation of video gaming. This screen was huge, it was colour and the graphics were magnificent. I played a little Tetris which had a few new features (which I consider cheating features but who’s counting, right?) and then checked out some Super Mario Kart which was amazing.

But the truly mind-blowing feature was that it could connect to the Internet so you could play certain games (like Tetris and Mario Kart) against somebody out there in the world. AWESOME! Let’s think back to those days where you’re sitting down alone in your room playing some game and thinking “Dang, it would be great to have someone here to play against at this moment.” and see the lone controller sitting next to you so then you start up a two player game thinking that you can manage one with your set of hands and then one with your feet…alright, no one as actually tried this, right? 😉

Anyhow, I thought that was the greatest part of the DS…multiplayer via the Internet. Incredible. I had heard about it, read about it, but never really tried it out.

Plus, the other good point about it all is that it seemed like the games were simple…they went back to the old school type gaming – side scrollers in particular. Gone were the ‘Doom/Quake’ style games where you just hunt everything and kill them. We’re talking Mario going around kicking some Goomba ass! That’s what people love. At least, that’s what I loved. I gave up gaming a long time ago because I just didn’t find the new games interesting. They were more about their special effects, their spectacular moves, but rarely about their gameplay.

Is the Nintendo DS cool? Definitely. Is it cool enough to bring Ryan back into the gaming world? Unsure. We all know I’ve travelled down this path before when I got the Xbox for Christmas and sadly, didn’t find it all that interesting. It turned out to be an amazing media center though that I use every day, but the games on the Xbox sucked. I don’t think I’ll be rushing out anytime soon to pick up a DS, nor do I want it as a gift (as Vero thought I was hinting towards after raving about it last night on the phone and she said “Are you saying all of this because your birthday is coming up?”), but I will try one out a little more and see if I’m interested.

So far, I give the thing 2 thumbs up, but I’m sure if I have third thumb and the Game Boy Advance Adapter for it, there would be three thumbs up just for the coolness of backwards compatability. I dig that kind of thing.

This post is dedicated to Carrie and Philipp who I know would love to play this…especially Mario Kart, and ESPECIALLY the fact that they could play Mario Kart against each other in different cities via the Internet, or if they were in the same room together.