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23 Nuggets of Nintendo

Posted: July 8th, 2008, by Marceline Smith

While I was in Bangkok (did I mention that?), I purchased a handy memory card for my DS from a nice man in a shopping centre. To my complete and utter surprise, officer, it came complete with 23 full DS games! It was almost like I’d chosen a bunch of games I liked out of a book and then other similar games had been added til the card was full. Amazing.

Anyway, I thought I would give my opinions on these games in a series of posts. Probably not all 23 as a) some I already own and babbled about ages ago, b) the chances of me ever getting bored enough to play Nintendogs or The Urbz are pretty slim, and c) one of them is Tetris.

Pokemon Link
There’s a DASTARDLY PLOT afoot and only you can save the poor Pokemon by using a scientific breakthrough known as ‘lining up 4 matching Pokemon so they disappear into the transporter’. Yeah yeah, it’s a puzzle game featuring Pokemon in a sickeningly cute style. However, this is my favourite kind of puzzle game – one that has an Endless mode that you can literally play until your fingers fall off. And then some – after reaching even my limit of repetitive task fun, I stopped pressing any buttons and it still managed to play itself for a good 5 minutes before the screen filled up. It also has a cool RULES MODE where you have to clear the stages in the correct and logical way, not just by randomly stabbing the stylus around in a panicky way until it all eventually works out, as is my normal method. It’s never going to replace Zoo Keeper but it’ll make a change sometimes.

Mario Kart DS
Okay, who feels like an idiot now. Yes, me. Why the hell didn’t I buy this when it came out? This is literally the best Mario Kart ever. Not only does it have ace new tracks, actually cool new items and a fun mission mode but it also has a full set of 16 retro tracks straight from the SNES, GC, GBA and N64 games. I nearly cried. I pretty much unlocked the whole thing at 5am the other day with jetlag. SO YAY! Wifi play anyone?

Sonic Rush Adventure
Fascinating fact – the first console I owned was a Game Gear and I only ever needed 3 games for it – Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic 2 and Sonic and Tails. I could play those over and over and over.  Sonic Rush Adventure is clearly no Sonic The Hedgehog but it’s still fun running around levels doing exactly what Sonic always does. Sadly the developers seem to have decided this was becoming too much fun and so they broke it up with the lamest “adventure” story I have ever frantically button pushed my way through in my entire life. I just spent about 30 minutes tediously flamethrowing rocks only for Tails to pipe up that he can’t see any island out here and we should just head back to the village where he can tell me I should really get on the boat and go look for that island. ARGH.

Bubble Bobble Revolutions
I got confused and thought this was Bust-a-Move. Boy, was I disappointed.



Marceline Smith

Marceline is the fierce, terrifying force behind diskant.net, laughing with disdain as she fires sharpened blades of sarcasm in all directions. Based in Scotland, her lexicon consists of words such as 'jings', 'aboot' and 'aye': our trained voice analysts are yet to decipher some of the relentless stream of genius uttered on a twenty-four hour basis. Marceline's hobbies include working too much and going out in bad weather.

http://www.marcelinesmith.com

2 Responses to 23 Nuggets of Nintendo

  1. Jason Graham

    I’m officially on the Nintendo bandwagon with the Wii – anyone got any recommendations of games to get for it

    Marceline do you remember my friend Mark? he’s been doing translation for DS games including Hotel Dusk, Tingle and that new cooking game. in my mind that makes him one of the coolest people I have ever none

  2. Jason Graham

    “ever none”?

    ouch, I must be drunk. obviously I meant to say “known” obviously (lol)