Posted by dkidwell on December 21st, 2005 — Posted in Nintendo DS, Nintendogs, daughters
These guys will ship the various colors from Japan. The DS is region free, which means you can purchase a system from Japan and play US releases on it without worries. Your manual will be in Japanese…but will that make a different? It also has all the languages – Engligh, French, Italian, German, Spanish and Japanese – so that’s not an issue either.
White, teal and graphite are still available with quick shipping – pink ships in 1-2 weeks:
Buy Nintendo Nintendo DS (Candy Pink) – Play-Asia.com
If you actually need a pink one by Christmas, and don’t want a bidding war at ebay, try these folks:
Lik-Sang – Candy Pink Nintendo DS
Posted by dkidwell on December 21st, 2005 — Posted in Nintendo DS, Nintendogs, daughters, reviews
Flash » Nintendogs (Nintendo Dogs)
Check out these pups…terribly cute! It doesn’t look like it’s too difficult to toss the ball or frisbee, or even swing that jumprope.
Can’t wait for Christmas!!
Posted by dkidwell on December 10th, 2005 — Posted in Nintendo DS, Nintendogs, daughters, interface design, reading, technology
I just read an older post on Engadet theorizing about a Nintendo Communication Revolution: Nintendo DS wireless hub trick up its sleeve? – Engadget – www.engadget.com
The notion in a nutshell – the Nintendo DS has 802.11b wireless, but what if it acted as both a device and a hub? Allowing you to lilypad DS systems – creating organic gaming network? All wifi geek obstacles aside, I loved this idea for one reason…
What if you wanted to do something really visionary…
What if you…
- created a system that appealled to little girls and young women in a way that no other system had, just through it’s form factor.
[Nintendo DS doesn't simply have 2 screens - it has a whole new interaction dynamic.]
- launched a killer app that was ‘best of breed’ (forgive the pun’ of all the artificial companion, virtual pet apps. [Nintendogs is selling out in the UK and you can't buy the Best Friends Bundles in retail stores in the US.]
- bundled the app and device into hot Christmas sellers right before parents are most likely to shell out the ~$150 price point.
Suddenly you have a high density of some of the most agile communicators on the planet. A substrate for something particularly fantastic. A entrance point to a highly lucrative and as yet, virutally untapped market.
Maybe the DS isn’t Nintendo’s trojan horse into a brave new world of girl gamers. But man…what if it was?
BTW, if this post was at all interesting and you haven’t read , “Diamond Age” by Neal Stephenson, maybe you should.
Posted by dkidwell on December 9th, 2005 — Posted in Christmas, Nintendogs, ages 9-11, daughters
Every evening we open up an advent calendar are one day closer to the big event. We’ve emailed Santa, and a Nintendo DS with Nintendogs made the final cut. (Gorgo, the youngest, wants a Gameboy Advanced. Considering his age, this is probably a safe bet. Never thoughts I’d be buying previous generations of hardware, but there you go.)
Anticipation for the Christmas pup rises, and I’ve been watching Amazon and Froogle for prices on Nintendogs Bundles. There was a limited release of bundles – one in Pink sold through Target and ToysRUs, and another in teal pearl blue that could be found in most stores. Not that I’m going to buy one, mind you, Santa had the elves take care of that. But if you need to buy a bundle now, it wouldn’t be cheap. Last I saw them, you could get them for about $129. Now, Amazon has sellers that will give you the blue one for a cool $250, and the Pink for $365.
Hachi machi! It’s sold out in the UK, and very nearly sold out here. It’ll be curious to see after Christmas sales numbers.
Woof!
A nice primer on Nintendogs:
Nintendogs – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Posted by dkidwell on December 8th, 2005 — Posted in Christmas, pc games
Darwinia
Our family is tracking Darwinia, and anxiously awaiting the game on the Steam Network. It comes out December 14th – Steam allows us to purchase it now, download it and be all set to go on the 14th when it is released.
Now, this is a good thing if you have a family of excited little fellas who will want to stay up late on a school night to see the game in action. Steam’s distribution model saves us time – no trips to Fry’s, no downloading of updates after install, etc. As I recall, Venvendi (who sees to it that Fry’s get’s their copies) still got their cut of the first Steam distributed game – Half Life 2.
Early movies of Darwinia are reminiscent of Pikmin – a game we loved. We’ll post a review after we’ve played.
