The Gadgets Page

Nintendo announced their new iteration of the Nintendo DS series. It’s called Nintendo DSi.

• Kotaku: Nintendo Announce New DS: The Nintendo DSi

This version can no longer play Game Boy Advance games, but it has a huge list of new features:

• It’s thinner than the DS Lite.
• The screens are larger (3.25 inches).
• A 0.3 megapixel camera and webcam (that’s 640 X 480 for all you folks from 1992).
• SD memory card slot
• Built-in Internet browser
• The DSi Shop, where you can download games for the Nintendo DSi just like you can for the Wii.

The camera could introduce some intriguing game play. Just like the microphone and the touchscreen did for the original DS. I think I would have preferred a camera that faced toward ME while I’m playing the game. With that feature, game designers could program a way for me to see my opponents when playing online. Of course, that’s probably asking a bit much from a little handheld gaming device.

Honestly, the iPhone is seriously kicking butt on the “it’s already in my pocket” front. Since I don’t carry my DS around with me everywhere, I have found myself playing games on my iPhone a little more than on my DS.

The Nintendo DSi will be available in Japan in November and the rest of us will have to wait a while until it comes here. I’m not quite ready to give up my GBA games yet, so I’ll see what they do to entice me.

Via: OtakuBooty: Nintendo Announces Upgraded Nintendo DSi

This comic from xkcd is SO true!

It says:

The most powerful gaming systems in the world still can’t match the addictiveness of tiny in-browser flash games.

Honestly, I would far rather spend hours playing Bejeweled than stealing realistic cars in a realistic environment like Grand Theft Auto. Here are a few sites that offer free online games that are fun and addictive:

• PopCap Games – Free Online Games: Peggle and Bejeweled are the most popular.

• Free Online Games – Fun Online Games, Play Online Games from Shockwave: Collapse and Cubis are the best puzzle games on this site. They have Cake Mania as well.

• Free Online Games | Big Fish Games: Try The Hidden Object Show or Cooking Dash for some fun.

• SpinTop Games – Download Free Games: These folks have some classic board games like Monopoly, Scrabble and others.

If you have a computer, you have a wealth of free games to play. You don’t need a Xbox 360 or a Playstation 3 to enjoy the simple joy of online puzzle games.

I’ve been enjoying myself playing Mystery Case Files: MillionHeir. Remember when you were a kid and had to wait for the pediatrician to see you? Your mom handed you a copy of Highlights magazine and you spent the twenty minutes in the crying waiting room finding hockey sticks and horseshoes hidden in the photo. Maybe you liked the two pictures that looked almost identical, but there are five things that are different. Could you find all five?

Yeah, that’s what this game is all about.

There is a tenuous and poorly written storyline about a lost millionaire. You’re supposedly finding “clues” to this mystery by finding the hidden objects in a picture. For example, here I need to find a baseball, feather, bread and key. On the lower screen, I have my flashlight showing the key. All I have to do is touch it and it will be checked off the list. I have no idea what a baseball, feather, bread and key could possibly do to help solve the disappearance of the rich dude, but I don’t really care about all that.

There are a few other puzzles that are mixed in with the finding objects games, but mostly it’s looking at pictures and noticing the details.

If this description sounds unappealing to you, then know that it sounded unappealing to me as well. It wasn’t until I played with my sister’s game that I realized the relaxing enjoyment that can be had from a few minutes just looking for hidden things.

By the way, if you’re looking for this game in a video game store, it will be filed under “Mystery Case Files” NOT “Millionheir.” I went looking for it a couple of times and was unable to find it, even though it was filed under M. Of course, it’s always easy to find it at Amazon.com: Mystery Case Files: MillionHeir.

If you need a calming and enjoyable time to relax, Millionheir is a great way to get a small sense of achievement in a short amount of time.

When I talk about video games from the 1980’s, I usually wax nostalgic about Adventure or Centipede. Sometimes I even rave about Arkanoid, but I never thought to look at the Educational Games. Educational Games Research, however has listed their picks for the top ten educational games of the 80’s:

• The Top 10 Most Influential Educational Video Games from the 1980s « Educational Games Research

My favorite of the group was Sim City. I learned a lot about city planning from that game and clogged traffic makes me a little more calm when I imagine a city planner trying desperately to fix the problem without having to bulldoze buildings to do it.

Kudos to them for choosing Microsoft Solitaire for the list. That game single-handedly taught the world how to use a mouse. I remember Mike telling me how as the IT officer, he assigned people to play that game so they would learn how to click, drag and double-click. It was a stroke of genius for Microsoft to include that game with their operating system.

Via: WWdN: In Exile: some generation x nostalgia for a monday morning

Here is a project that has finally come to fruition that a lot of us old-school gamers would like to see. They have created the Super Genintari, which plays games from the following consoles: Atari 2600, NES, Sega Genesis and Super NES.

• STUPIDFINGERS – Projects (Super Genintari)

This 4-in-1 Atari 2600/NES/Genesis/Super NES combo system actually began its life sometime circa early 2002, and at the time it only consisted of a Sega Genesis/32X and Super NES. Soon after accidentally destroying the 32X (no big loss) and moving to the smaller Genesis 3 board, I decided to throw an NES into the mix, making it a 3-in-1 system. It went through a few redesigns before I finally chose to go all out and add the Atari as well since i’d already spent so much time on it. I worked on it on and off for several years (taking sanity breaks for several months at a time) and finally have a finished machine to show you! This is to date the most involved and time-consuming project I’ve ever worked on, and I’m happy to finally call it done.

You can see the console demonstrated here:

Via: Hybrid Gaming Systems: The Super Genintari – Geekologie

Just so you know, Princess Peach wears underwear in Super Smash Bros. Brawl.

• Princess Peach Does Not Fight Commando – Geekologie

Yes, someone has gone to the trouble of looking up the skirts of video game characters verifying that they have proper undergarments:

Now I could go on a tirade about how whoever the hell bothered freeze-framing the hell out of the game to get these pictures and videos is a sick and twisted bastard that’s f’ed in the head. But, well, they saved me the trouble of doing it myself, so I won’t.

You can see a video of the process here:

Yep, just as you would expect, she wears bright pink granny underwear. She always seemed like the kind of girl who would wear underwear that matches her clothing. A princess isn’t the type of girl that just picks whatever underwear that’s on top of the pile never looking at the color. She’d never be caught wearing stripey undies with a plaid skirt. No way.

To all you thirteen year old boys out there looking up Princess Peach’s skirt, there are REAL girls in your class at school who’d love some attention. Of course, their undies probably don’t match their outfits, so maybe Princess Peach IS better than the real thing.

After much anticipation, Nintendo FINALLY announced Animal Crossing: City Folk, which is the Wii version of Animal Crossing. I am STILL a big fan of Animal Crossing: Wild World, even though I have pretty much done everything that I could do in this game. You can imagine how eager I am to play Animal Crossing: City Folk. For more information about it, here is the Wikipedia entry:

• Animal Crossing: City Folk – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The primary new addition to Animal Crossing: City Folk is a new city area. Accessible to players by bus, the city offers a variety of activities. In the city, players can shop for clothes and accessories at Gracie Grace, a fashion boutique shop, and can redo their hairstyles at Harriet’s hair salon (like in Wild World). Players can even choose to replace their face with that of their Mii’s. Other activities available at the city take advantage of the Wii’s Wi-Fi capabilities, such as an auction house, where players can auction off items to other players via Wi-Fi connection, an office for the Happy Room Academy, where players can see how well other players’ towns are progressing, and a theater to learn emotions. Redd is back, but you still need to know a password like in Wild World.

Here is a video (the demonstrator and interviewer are BORING, but they show you a lot of cool stuff) that shows you a lot of the city:

Here is the Nintendo announcement about the game at E3 this month:

Here is a video of gameplay:

Here is the official Nintendo trailer for the game:

Here are some screenshots:

I’m glad to see so much of what I loved about the game has returned better than ever. I can’t wait until November when it’s available!

Did they mean for this how to play Guitar Hero: On Tour video to be so bad? What’s with the guy screaming in the background?

I had to turn it off when he screamed:

“Sometimes you can’t yell!”

I have loved playing Guitar Hero and Rock Band this past year. It has been the number one party game in my life, but this video is just EMBARRASSING! I wasn’t planning on buying Guitar Hero: On Tour, but now, I’m wishing it didn’t shame me with its sheer corniness.

If Guitar Hero jumped the shark with its Guitar Hero Air Guitar Rocker, then it is wailing its final death knell with On Tour.

There has been a lot of protesting with the release of the new Grand Theft Auto IV. The media has really jumped on the idea that the game is bad for the people who play them. It’s nice to see an article that says the opposite:

• Prospect Magazine June 2008 issue 147: ‘Rage against the machines’ by Tom Chatfield

Here’s how one video game addict describes the benefits he has received from playing World of Warcraft:

I’ve developed confidence; a lack of fear about entering difficult situations; I’ve enhanced my presentation skills and debating. Then there are more subtle things: judging people’s intentions from conversations, learning to tell people what they want to hear. I am certainly more manipulative, more Machiavellian. I love being in charge of a group of people, leading them to succeed in a task.

Adam Martin, from NCSoft, explains further:

“Computer games teach, and people don’t even notice they’re being taught. They’re having too much fun. I think the next big change will come from the use of video games in education. A large part of the addictiveness of games does come from the fact that as you play you are noticeably getting ‘better,’ learning or improving your reflexes, or mastering a set of challenges. But humanity’s larger understanding of the world comes primarily through interaction and experimentation, through answering the question ‘what if?’ Games excel at teaching this too.”

All of these articles miss the biggest issue. Video games are like any other entertainment. Just like a movie, book or television show, they can be a shared experience. Even though I’m playing a game in Utah, I’m having a similar experience as a different person in another part of the world. Video games have become part of our collective unconscious and not experiencing them can make you as much of an outsider as the kind of person who never watches television or refuses to read the classics.

Via: Mind Hacks: In the midst of the video game fury

In the early eighties, my dad bought a broken Pong game from the local thrift store. He opened it up, soldered the connections and we were the luckiest kids on our block. We had a video game before anyone in our neighborhood had an Atari. Watching the creators of Pong play their game, brings back memories of how excited we were.

Thanks, Ralph Baer and Bill Harrison, for starting the video game revolution. Without you guys, there would be no late night Mario Kart marathons.

Via: Retro Futurism: Pong Seemed So Exciting Back in the 1970s