Posted by dkidwell on January 17th, 2006 — Posted in daughters, parenting, reviews
As I sit here blogging, Dad is showing our 9 year old daughter the various civilizations that are available as starting civs in Sid Meier’s Civilization IV. The English regents to chose from are: Queen Elizabeth I and Queen Victoria. (Interestingly, there are 5 different female regents to pick from, out of a total of 18 civilzations.)
Each monarch has a nice portrait (in period costume) with a small description of the characterists of their civilization:
Elizabeth I is recognized as Philosophical and Financial, while Victoria is noted as Expansive and Financial. Nice little stepping off point to a mini-history lesson.
They’ve just started, so we may have more actual commentary later. At the moment, my daughter’s astute assessment is that the game is likely to take ’6.5 hours, or forever.’ Is it possible that she has baby memories of the Avalon Hill board game and endless days of Civ parties? Maybe this is more an observation about her father and his proclivity for gaming?
Overheard comment:
Daughter: “Why would you want slavery? Slavery is bad?”
Dad: “Well, it has a use in the game, and later on you can also get emancipation.”
Daughter: “Oh, so it’s useful?”
From there a conversation ensues about the way people respond to slavery, and the dynamics of slavery across other civilizations.
I expect in a few hours we’ll have to force her to go to bed, but I think we’ve got a few hours of history left in us….
Posted by dkidwell on January 14th, 2006 — Posted in Electroplankton, Nintendo DS, parenting, reviews, technology
Electroplankton is a work of art. Clever, engaging, and very well designed.
You get 10 ‘plankton‘ that perform various types of musical composition. The plankton can be manipulated using the stylus in movements that created music, and each has a distinctly differently musical action. Some have predetermined musical tones, others can be recorded right through the DS (e.g., your voice, ambient sounds, actual musical instruments.)
The game has 2 modes: a perfomance mode where you conduct the plankton, and an audience mode where you can listen to pre-recorded music (you can engage and play along with them as well.)
You can listen to the plankton via the speakers on the DS, which sound reasonably good, or on headphones or external speakers.
We plugged it into the speakers for my iPod and lounged on the bed exploring the plankton’s sea. The sound was incredible – some of them could have easily lulled the kids to sleep. But don’t be fooled; it’s not a lethargic game at all. We each recorded a sound or tone into the “Rec Rec” plankton and listened to a family groove. Great fun.
My 6 year old spent about 2 hours completely immersed in the game. This isn’t a child that spends 2 hours doing any activity, if that’s any indication of the compelling nature of Electroplankton.
My daughter and I talked quite a bit about how the scale works, and sat with the keyboard to experiment with sounds and keep our own voices in key.
There seems to be some discrepancy over whether Electroplankton is a game or not. There is not a competitive model at all – no notion of players or pre-defined conditions for winning. In fact, the game doesn’t record or save your compositions.
But this adds an interesting element – if you want to reproduce your creation for someone, you will have to actually learn to play Electroplankton. That’s turned our Nintendo DS systems into veritable instruments.
We’re going to try and use the headphone jack to get the sounds onto the PC, where we could record them. Seems doable, and we’ll post the results once we’ve got it going.
For this gamermom, any device that plays both intelligent, well designed games and can be used to create creative music is well worth it!
Posted by dkidwell on January 10th, 2006 — Posted in Electroplankton, interface design, Nintendo DS, reviews, technology
The DS has to be the most innovative device to come down the pike in a while – at this point, I’m willing to declare that it’s picked up the innovation torch from Apple’s Ipod (which, while it continues to innovate, is essentially the same device it was at launch in 2001.
Electroplankton is a brilliant piece of software that has done very well in Japan. It is positioned as a media art video game, and was developed by Toshio Iwai, who created SimTunes back in 1996. SimTunes was the first of it’s kind that I’d ever seen, and was quickly installed on every machine in the house. SimTunes allowed kids to paint with music – and Electroplankton looks to be an impressive evolution.
Currently, Electroplankton holds the interesting distinction of being one of the most imported games from Japan to the US. According to the official site, Iwai “packed Electroplankton with the memories of the four devices he loved growing up: a microscope, a tape recorder, a synthesizer, and an NES” It’s worth checking out the link just to hear what else he had to say – look under “About the Artist.”
The game was released here in the US on the 9th, but not to stores. You can only buy a copy online. As of this moment, Amazon has them in stock, but can’t promise delivery until March 26th! Gogamer.com doesn’t have it and EBGames lists it on back order. I ordered if directly from Nintendo an hour ago, but haven’t gotten tracking information yet. Here’s to hoping it arrives by the weekend!
Posted by dkidwell on December 28th, 2005 — Posted in daughters, Nintendo DS, Nintendogs, reviews
My daughter got a DS too – and while mine came from Hong Kong, her’s came from the North Pole.
She got the teal Nintendo DS Best Friends bundle – came with:
- A teal & black Nintendo DS system – the teal is a lovely pearl tone and is offset by the black very well. It’s a darn good looking device.
- The Best Friends Version of Nintendogs – complete with the following breeds: Labrador Retriever, Miniature Dachshund, German Shepherd, Golden Retriever, Beagle and Yorkshire Terriers
- A DS shammie for cleaning your dual screens. Shaped like a little bone too…darn cute.
- A Nintendogs skin – subtle but cute and should protect her case.
She adores it, and commented that her Teal/Black and my Pink/White versions go really well together. Extra points for both form factor and aesthetics, Nintendo!
Posted by dkidwell on December 28th, 2005 — Posted in daughters, Nintendo DS, Nintendogs, reviews
Lik-sang sent along my Candy Pink Nintendo DS is a fast 2 day turnaround – shipped from Hong Kong on a faster turn around than anything we got from Amazon. Not only did they ship the DS, but we also got a cute little mouse pad, a teeny anime toy, and a Lik-Sang badge holder. Not bad! They threw in a $5 off coupon for our next purchase too.
Lik-sang has fantastic anime toys – animal crossing figures – you could even assemble a small pikmen army!
Now, lessons learned:
If you buy from a vendor who is off-shore, you won’t get a warranty. I don’t plan on mistreating my DS, but I don’t have a warranty during this first year like my daughter’s US version will. Take care!
Lik-sang has been involved with law suits over their international commerce service. Essentially Sony trying to keep them from selling PSPs to European customers before they could buy it local. That was in August, and things seem to be quieter. Nintendo sued them back in 2002 and won, that time over the sale of devices that could copy Gameboy Advanced games. Seems that one was a weaker arguement, and the founder of Lik-Sang published his thoughts on the suit.
I’m very happy all in all with my Pink DS – wouldn’t send it back for the warranty – as soon as I get my camera to focus on the screen I’ll start loading up some shots 
