Push Me, Pullman

I’ve sort of been a slacker this week. I traded a Nintendo Entertainment System with a new 72 pin connector and ten games for a Nintendo DS with a carrying case and five and a half games on GameTZ.com. The games are Asphalt: Urban GT, a racing game I haven’t played yet; Yoshi Touch & Go, a platformer where you use the stylus to draw lines of clouds to guide Yoshi around the stage collecting goodies and defeating baddies; Super Mario 64 DS, pretty much a remake of the N64 game with additional characters and mini games which controls lousy with the stylus; Metroid Prime Hunters Demo, a very cool preview of the first two levels of the upcoming WiFi multiplayer FPS; Feel The Magic XY/XX, a highly stylized collection of mini games from Sega put together to tell a wacky boy meets girl story; and last and most time consuming Nintendogs, Nintendo’s first true system seller for the DS. Nintendogs’s release marked the first week that the DS outsold the PSP. It’s Tamagotchi taken to the next level. You raise one to eight of twenty-six different breeds of dog by feeding, grooming, and training them to compete in three different competitions; Disc, Agility, and Obedience. All three are lots of fun but probably the most entertaining due to the use of the DS’s built in microphone is the obedience trials. By simply saying “sit” your dog will perform the action after you have taught it to him of course with some coercion from your stylus. It’s really lots of fun seeing what new things you can make your dog do by combining commands. For instance having your dog “roll over” then telling him to “turn around” performs a break dance type maneuver and if you follow that with a “jump” command he'll do a kung fu style recovery flip to his feet. And what would dog ownership be without embarrassing accessories like Mario or Pirate hats to dress them up in? There’s over a hundred items that can be purchased or found on walks with your dogs. Oh and the walking, did I mention you get to bag virtual dog poop? What more could you ask for from a game?

During breaks from the DS; that stylus can really cause your hand to cramp; I began unpacking the rest of my games being sure to watch for spiders and other such things that may have crawled into the boxes while being stored in a garage for the past six months. Cringer and Ramona didn’t make this task any easier by jumping in each box as soon as it was opened. I’m going to have to do some major reorganizing to get everything to fit since I have a lot more stuff than I remembered. I’m not sure of the final numbers, but I do know I have over 350 NES games alone. I’ll post final tallies and some pictures when I get everything put away. In other gaming related news I still don’t have my computer. I called Best Buy to check on the status. They said they’ve tried two different power supplies and neither worked. I don’t know why in four weeks they’ve only managed to try two. And speaking of repairs taking forever the part for the van is still not in.

With Amanda’s birthday on Halloween it’s inevitable that we’ll be going to some costume party to celebrate so I mentioned to her last week that we probably should start getting our costumes together. Of course we still waited until the night before the party to even begin looking. By this time every department store in the area was picked over. Only a few nappy wigs, a couple of tubes of fake blood, and some dented plastic pumpkins remained. I had planned to go as an Orthodox Jew since all it would require is a hat with curly sideburns stapled to the brim. The suit and beard I already possessed. The only hat I could find though was more of an Amish style than Jewish so I improvised. Instead of a white button up shirt with black slacks and matching vest I shaved my mustache and wore a blue button up shirt with black slacks and suspenders. Total expense: $7 and a mustache.