Sunday, January 21, 2007

 

Oops.

Funny story. See, I started Electric Dilintia with the intention that basically nobody would ever read it but me. I wanted to keep it open for feedback, but I didn't think it was especially weird that I never got any comments because I never really expected any.

Long story short, I just figured out that I had a setting wrong on Blogger. Non-members weren't allowed to comment. D'oh.

So yeah, if you're reading, thanks. If you've wanted to comment but couldn't, it should let you do it now.

On a more video game related note, I finished off Phoenix Wright 2 yesterday in an orgy of pointing and tapping. If you loved the first one, I don't need to tell you that you need this one.

Now to wait for Godot...

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Tuesday, January 16, 2007

 

Oh My God.

I think I'm going to cry.

"She was telling me about her family and her three kids and how she was doing it for her kids," Mr Ybarra said.

One of Ms Strange's work colleagues, Laura Rios, said: "She said to one of our supervisors that she was on her way home and her head was hurting her real bad.

"She was crying and that was the last that anyone had heard from her."


Words fail me.

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Tuesday, January 09, 2007

 

Portable Gamer and Damn Proud of It

I might as well face it. My last-gen home consoles don't get any love anymore. I have no earthly desire for an XBox 360 or a Playstation 3. I know I'll cave and get a Wii the very moment it's available to me, but it remains to be seen how much I'll actually use it. I know I want Wii Sports and Wario Ware -- I'm not sure if there's really more to it than that.

It began when I went to college, but as the years go on, it becomes more and more obvious where my heart truly lies. I'm a portable gamer. Now let me tell you why.

It Goes Anywhere

This one's pretty obvious. I don't understand how people can stand being tied to a stationary television screen for all of their gaming time. My main gaming rig fits in my coat pocket. I can set it up anywhere in my house, take it with me anywhere, use it anywhere, for as long as I like.

It's Cheaper

The cheapest new home console on the market, the Wii, weighs in at $250 in the US -- just a hair beyond the impulse purchase threshhold for new technology. The DS Lite on the other hand, at $130, left hardly any financial scars. Even better, a lot of the games debut for $30, making it just that much easier to justify picking up a new one -- or two -- every month.

It's Free to be Underpowered

There's something about handheld gaming that makes it easier to justify purchasing a game that doesn't try to shift the laws of space and time with the power of its technological mass. There are a lot of terrific portable games that I'm not sure I would have given a second glance if they had been put on an equally-powered home console. Who would have bought a Game & Watch Gallery on the Super NES? Or a Sudoku game on the Nintendo 64? Hell, how many games with 2D graphics ever made a serious dent on the market during the N64's lifespan? And yet, when the portables got the power of the home systems, these ideas thrived.

The Technology has Grown

On the other side of the coin, the power is there for the games that need it. Super Mario 64, possibly the best 3D adventure game ever made, can now be taken with you wherever you want to go. An entire library of Atari 2600 games fits on a single GBA cartridge. Elite Beat Agents comes stuffed with 19 complete songs. We can jump on the internet to play parlor games against people from all over the world in Clubhouse Games. The DS may not stack up to the home systems for sheer muscle, but it gives developers a whole new chance to mine the untapped potential that we lost when the 64 bit era ended.

There's More Original Ideas

Funny thing about the portable systems is that you get a lot more new and unique ideas for them. Somehow, there's just more room for them there. I'm talking about games like Survival Kids, Phoenix Wright, Pokemon, Nintendogs, Brain Age, Electroplankton, Wario Ware, and on and on. Something about the limitations that the systems present, or the lower barrier for entry, makes portable systems the perfect breeding ground for fresh and exciting ideas.

It Breaks From the Crowd

Somehow, the homogenization of the video game industry never quite stuck with the portable gaming scene. It attracts a different audience than home console gaming, and with a different audience comes a different set of rules. While many publications and gaming circles dismiss portable game systems as some sort of stunted offspring of a company's home system, portable gamers get to enjoy an entirely different world of interactive entertainment. It's a world where puppy simulators can outsell Grand Theft Auto, and the coin of the realm isn't raw horsepower, but superconcentrated fun. It's a world that console gamers don't "get". It's a world they fear, and a world that I thrive in.

As the rest of the gaming world swoons over the new Zelda and whatever killer aps Sony and Microsoft are flailing about, damned if I can bother to care, I'll be rocking with the Elite Beat Agents and looking forward to a new chapter of Phoenix Wright next week. And I can't help thinking that I got the better end of the bargain.

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