02 July 2007
24 May 2007
04 October 2006
Help Cure Cancer, Buy a DS Lite
Help Cure Cancer, Buy a DS Lite
This week Target is donating 100% of sales of Coral Pink DS Lites to The Breast Cancer Research Foundation.
03 October 2006
Lefty Gamer: Mario Hoops 3-on-3
Earlier worries that Mario Hoops 3-on-3 would be unplayable for lefties have been put to rest. The game, as with most DS titles, offers an option to flip controls for left-handed players. The default control scheme involves using the stylus in one’s right hand to dribble, shoot, block, etc., and using the D-pad to control your player. Switching to left-handed mode lets you hold the stylus in your left hand and use the A, B, X, and Y buttons to move players around the court. It works pretty well, though not as cleanly as using the D-pad. All stylus-intensive DS games have the same problem, whether you’re left-handed or wrong, which is that you have to support most of the weight of the unit with your offhand. Mario Hoops, unlike Metroid, understands this and doesn’t require too much use of L or R. Also, it’s built that you’ll only use the same shoulder button you use to move your character, so you don’t have to figure out how to hit L while holding the stylus in your left hand, for example.
The game itself is pretty fun so far. I found the tutorial so be a tad overwhelming. You’re quickly taught how to run, shoot, dribble, block, steal, dunk, jump, dash, use items, and so forth all with various taps or flicks of the stylus, and it’s a lot to take in, but once you get playing you realize that they’re all basically the same commands. An upward swish can be a shoot, a dunk, or a jump block, but it in practice the game works out the proper context and provides the appropriate verb pretty well. One review I read expressed frustration that when you try to pass to a teammate who’s too close to the net you’ll often shoot instead. The game designers actually did anticipate this, so if you want to pass into that zone you need hold R (for lefties).
Worry set in when my trio of Mario, Luigi, and Yoshi were able to breeze through the first tournament with little idea of what I was doing. Penny Arcade indicates quite clearly that the game gets harder as it goes along, and as soon as I started the Flower Cup I began to see the other team doing some better block and ball handling. Nothing I couldn’t manage, but I’m guessing things will get trickier from here on out.
12 September 2006
DSicons.com | Fresh Nintendo DS Icons
DSicons.com | Fresh Nintendo DS Icons
Too lazy to draw your own icon for yourself on your Nintendo DS? Here you go.
15 August 2006
14 August 2006
International Lefthanders Day
It fell on a Sunday so naturally I never checked my calendar and didn’t realize it, but yesterday was International Lefthanders Day. How did I (unknowlingly) celebrate? I bought a copy of Metroid Prime: Hunters for the Nintendo DS, and got frustrated enough learning the controls that I almost returned it. In fairness, this isn’t a left-handed/right-handed issue, as the game designers included control setups for both, but if you’ve played this game and been frustrated by the controls, it’s similar to the clumsiness lefties experience elsewhere in life.
The controls of Metroid DS are similar to a PC first-person game, except that you use the stylus to look around where you’d use a mouse on a computer. The problem is that means you have to support the entire DS with your other hand, and you have to hold it on the edge, which is not its center of gravity. In doing so it makes it hard to support the weight of the unit and be able to read the L/R buttons to fire your weapon while also moving. Eventually I figured out how to support the other side with the pinkie of my stylus hand, but it’s not quite strong enough for the job.
03 August 2006
22 July 2006
Miyamoto Is Left-Handed
From an interview with IGN about the Wii:
The dialogue turned at one point to, of all things, left-handed and right-handed gaming. Miyamoto is left-handed, and he said that he’s recently been trying to get used to using the remote/nunchuck pair in the “reverse” way — that is, the remote in the left and the nunchuck in the right hand. While he’s been getting used to playing like this, he feels lefties who’ve grown accustomed to playing games the current way will have an easier time of playing Wii games like everyone else.
In practice, regardless of game, you’ll be able to play with either device in either hand. Miyamoto actually expects kids who’ve never played a game before to hold the remote in their left hand and the nunchuck in their right hand.
So I guess that’s good news, which allays some of my fears about lefty gaming in the next generation.
12 July 2006
Sinistrals
Brain Age, for the Nintendo DS, has two remarkable features that don’t get a lot of press:
- Before any puzzle that requies voice recognition, the game first asks if you’re in an environment where it’s appropriate to be talking to your handheld video game system, lest you look like a crazy person on the bus.
- When you set up your profile, it asks if you’re left- or right-handed. If you’re left-handed, whenever you log in it flips the screens for you so that you can write with the touchscreen on the left and not have to cross your hand over the other screen, which is awkward.
On the first, point, I’ll just say that it amazes me how fast Bluetooth headsets have caught on in DC. Do none of those people walking around and talking on them not see other people doing the same thing and notice how crazy they look? It’s not uncommon for me to actually pass by a person talking on a headset who’s standing right next to a real crazy person talking to himself. Oh, wait, the people with those headsets are the same staffers with their Blackberries who walk around looking as uncool as one can look, thumb-typing away emails that certainly could have waited until they were back at their keyboards.
Fact (well, a Wikipedia fact): 8-15% of the world’s population is left-handed. The Brain Age people were smart enough (heh) to realize that if 1/10 of their customers were going to be inconvenienced when trying to play their game, it was worth the time to engineer something to make it more pleasant for them.
At least a few DS games require you to control your character with the directional pad, which is on the left of the console, and use the stylus to interact with the game’s environment. This is very difficult for a lefty to do. You can either try to figure out a way to use the D-pad with your right hand (and not drop the DS while you’re doing that), or learn how to hold a pencil in your right hand, like a 19th century child being forced to act against his nature.
I like that the DS has a cool user interface, and I like that game designers are having fun and experimenting with new ways to interact with their games. The Wii will take this even further, and I’m very excited by the idea. Still, I don’t like the idea that these new ideas, which are, as stated by Nintendo itself, intended to make games more accessible to more people, are creating an accessibility problem for able-bodied left-handed gamers.
(I’m using a bit more hyperbole here than maybe is necessary, but seriously, if I got a game that I couldn’t play well because it made me hold the stylus in my right hand, I’d have to return it. The level of precision required is relevant here of course.)
12 June 2006
DS Lite (un)branding
Something that strikes me after playing with the DS Lite for a few days is the lack of branding anywhere on the thing. The top has the little double square logo, but even that is understated, molded in white plastic the same color as the rest of the enclosure. With the machine open in front of you, as you look at it when you’re playing, there’s no “Nintendo” stamped or written anywhere, except on the splash screen when you boot up. Only on the bottom of the unit do you find branding information along with the requisite electronics specifications. I guess this is true of the iPod as well, but I think it’s interesting and bold of Nintendo to leave this stuff off where they could have easily stuck their logo on somewhere.
11 June 2006
Nintendo DS Lite
After quite a while of debating the matter, we picked up a DS Lite on Sunday. Acquiring it was a bit of a journey. After bagels we walked over to the mall to check out the EB Games, which of course wasn’t open at 11:00, so after killing an hour I went back at noon only to find out that they only had enough in stock for people who had pre-ordered them, which I strongly suspect was simply a lie designed to protect their ability to get people to pre-order. I’m sure that Nintendo won’t be able to meet the initial demand of the Lites, but I doubt that supply was so limited that major retail chains weren’t able to get more than a one-day supply of the devices, which would have to be the case if they only had enough to fill their pre-orders. I slapped the games I had picked out back on their counter and walked off, called Katherine, got disconnected (thanks Sprint), walked home, took the elevator upstairs, and suggested (in person) that we go to Best Buy or Target. A few minutes later, plus a few more minutes to find a sales rep to open the locked case, I had a DS Lite in hand along with a copy of New Super Mario Bros. and Brain Age.
I’ll keep the review short here, but do go read what 1Up and Ars Technica have to say and definitely watch Cabel Sasser’s three videos: first, second, third.
The Lite is a joy. It’s sleek and the screen is beautiful. I kind of don’t like how blatently Apple-inspired the design is, but it works so well that I’m not sure that’s a complaint. In a few years someone will come along with some new idea for what electronics should look like but, until then, shiny white is still very nice. New Super Mario Bros. is lots of old school fun. Super Mario World has always been one of my favorites and, while this one has no Yoshi, it captures the spirit of the original games and the nice cartoon look of the later era Marios. (See how Mario’s look has been updated over the years.) Brain Age is as innovative as I’d heard, and also a suprising amount of fun. Right now my brain’s in its 50s, but I’m sure as I exercise it each day I’ll get it down to a spry young age soon enough.
04 May 2006
U.S. DS Lite Price and Date Announced - Kotaku
U.S. DS Lite Price and Date Announced - Kotaku
This looks pretty cool. I’d get one, if I weren’t saving up my 2006 game system budget for Wii.
27 January 2006
cabel.name: On Brain Training
Apparently this game is super popular in Japan for the Nintendo DS, but it’s not a game. It’s designed to make you smarter.
26 January 2006
Revolution Report - news - New DS Design: Lites Way for Nintendo Revolution?
Revolution Report - news - New DS Design: Lites Way for Nintendo Revolution?
Size comparison of new Nintendo DS Lite.