Flash » Nintendogs (Nintendo Dogs)

Posted by dkidwell on December 21st, 2005 — Posted in daughters, Nintendo DS, Nintendogs, 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!!

Don’t Open Until Christmas: Nintendogs

Posted by dkidwell on December 9th, 2005 — Posted in ages 9-11, Christmas, daughters, Nintendogs

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

Gamermom Watch: Darwinia

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.

Review of Nintendogs from a design perspective

Posted by dkidwell on November 26th, 2005 — Posted in Christmas, Nintendogs, reviews, technology

Found this today on my hunt for info on Nintendogs. Had a surly experience with a very aggressive shopper at Gamestop while trying to get a Nintendogs bundle – which led to a better deal at Fry’s so all is well…

But, I wanted to find out more about the game itself and found this review. I’m sure you’ll hear more post-Christmas regarding our Nintendog journeys. This article does a great job of showing how Nintendogs tapped into a underserved need in the Japanese marketplace – dog ownership. Dan talks about this as a key element in good game design. I might extend that to a key element in good Product design – a marketing lesson for every product manager.

Lost Garden: Nintendogs: The case of the non-game that barked like a game

Not too early for Christmas Shopping- Pirates of the Spanish Main

Posted by dkidwell on November 14th, 2005 — Posted in ages 9-11, Christmas, reviews

My kids are already creating lovely illustrated lists with grandiose color coding schemes to inform me of each toy’s priority and suggested gift giver. Not that I asked, but I now have lists I could pass out to everyone in the family.

One of the best stocking stuffers this year has to be the collectable card game, Pirates of the Spanish Main. I supposed ‘constructable card game’ applies too; you actually build a little ship out of each card. They are made of a nice plastic stock and are very well produced. Upon creating your little armada, the game begins.

We’ve only got a few decks, and currently play the intro rules – but the advanced rules look very good and I expect that post-Christmas will bring a large enough navy to properly play.

Your local comic or game store likely has tournaments, but we’ve bought ours at Target.
They followed up the Spanish Main collection with “Pirates of the Crimson Coast” and “Pirates of the Revolution”

WizKids – Pirates of the Spanish Main

or more immediate shopping at
Amazon