This morning’s highlight was an email in my Inbox from Play Asia, saying that Gyakuten Saiban 4, a.k.a. Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney has shipped!
To me, the Ace Attorney series is, by itself, more than enough reason to buy a Nintendo DS. I just can’t praise these games enough, with their quirky humor and old-school point & click adventure gameplay. It also helps that the western localizations are absolutely brilliant.
Now for one of the longest weeks of my life. 
For the last few days, the only cartridge inside my Nintendo DS has been this game: Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords, by Infinite Interactive, authors of the Warlords and Warlords Battlecry series.
From everything I’ve seen, this game has had very little promotion, and has been relatively hard to find. But most reviews have been quite good (either 8/10 or 9/10), and most people online speak highly of the game as well.
If I was to concisely explain to someone what the game is like, I’d say the following:
Sorry about the recent lack of posts. I’ll try to post more in the future.
I’ve been playing mostly Nintendo DS games, these days. My PC is too old to play any recent PC game (I’d love to play Medieval: Total War 2. 
), so there’s nothing new there. If it wasn’t for the DS, life wouldn’t have meaning.
On my own, I’ve been playing Gyakuten Saiban 2, also known as Phoenix Wright, Ace Attorney: Justice for All. I bought it from Play Asia, as the Japanese version includes a full English translation. I love these games, by the way, and couldn’t recommend them more, especially if you love adventure games with a great sense of humor. You shouldn’t be afraid of reading, though.
Multi-player-wise, I’ve been spending my time with Mario Kart DS, 42 All-Time Classics (called Clubhouse Games in the U.S.) and Big Brain Academy. All those are fantastic with 4 players or more.
I have to say that I’m quite enthusiastic about the Nintendo Wii. Everything I’ve seen about it has been great. I’m in Europe, so it won’t be released until December 8th… well, it’s just a couple of weeks. Hopefully, I’ll be able to buy it on launch day, because unfortunately I live in an ignorant, Playstation-obsessed country, and the Wii will probably be less successful that it’s been everywhere else.
If all goes well, I’ll get Zelda: Twilight Princess on day one as well. And, who knows, some Virtual Console games, too…
Hmm, there surely have been a lot of “first impressions” recently… I really must get back to this blog’s original theme, “the games of my life”. I have a bunch of them in the queue, but with the new DS, then Christmas, then the New Year, I haven’t had any free time.
Anyway, Konami’s Lost in Blue is a very unique experience. To put it simply: you end up on a deserted (so far, at least – I haven’t gone far in the game, yet) island, and you have to survive, and eventually escape. Of course, easier said than done, as you have to rest, eat, drink, take care of yourself, and those are certainly not easy. In fact, I bet that you’ll starve to death a lot, when first playing.
Eventually, you begin to get your bearings in the island, and learn some ways of improving your situation – for instance, it wasn’t until I used a stick and a sharpened rock to build a crude spear, to use for catching fish, that I stopped being almost starving all the time. Of course, the situation still isn’t great. Plus, on the second day a girl also washes up at the island – while she offers a few suggestions, and can cook (much of the food can’t be eaten raw), she also has quite poor eyesight, and has lost her glasses, so you have to take her by hand even just to go to the nearby river and let her drink some water. In short, you have to take care of her as well.
From the manual, I see that there are other things I can do, such as lay traps, or even hunt animals. But I haven’t done that yet.
Still, the game is quite intriguing. And it uses the DS’s capabilities well – for instance, you have to use the stylus to dig in the sand and look for clams, and to build a fire, after you use the L and R buttons to turn a stick around, you then have to blow into the microphone. It works better than it sounds, trust me.
Hopefully, I’ll be able to play it more, in the following days. But I got Nintendogs as a present, 2 days ago… and there’s still Mario 64, and Meteos, and Mario Kart, and Metroid Fusion, and Advance Wars, and… so many games, such little time.
Bought it last night. Still haven’t had much time to play it. Got 4 stars so far (all of them in the “Bob-omb Battlefield”), out of 150, and I played the 8 mini-games which don’t need to be unlocked.
I’ve never played Mario 64 on the Nintendo 64, only in emulators, but the DS port is technically excellent – the characters, in particular, noticeable have more polygons than on the N64, and the game is perfectly smooth and fast. Even though graphically it’s not a game on the same league as modern ones on “big” consoles (after all, the original is 9 years old), it’s still considered by many people (just google for it) as one of the best platform games of all time, if not the best. The game’s design is brilliantly original, and the game takes us to another world in a way almost nothing else can.
For Portuguese-speaking readers: I’ve just created a new phpBB forum, Nintendo DS – Portugal.
It’s still in the beginning, but I hope it’ll be successful – and I hope that I don’t own the only Nintendo DS in Portugal.
So, if you speak Portuguese, and have a Nintendo DS or are considering buying one, you’ll be welcome there.
Bought it yesterday, and played it for an hour or so. Here’s a few random thoughts:
So far, I’m happy.
Played a lot of it this weekend.
I’m getting better at it – better than I ever was in any previous version (including Double Dash!!, which I’ve had for almost 2 years).
The sense of speed is amazing, especially in such a small screen. No matter what happens in the game, I have yet to experience a slowdown.
I’ve unlocked all tracks in the 50cc difficulty, and will focus on 100cc races next. I’ve also played several games online, though more than half were against just one opponent – it seems that Nintendo still has a few wrinkles to iron out. Also, most people out there seem to be better than me, though I’ve noticed that some of them don’t do the turbo dash at the beginning of a race.
Unfortunately (warning: incoming rant), I live in a country where the idea that “Nintendo is for kids” is stronger than in about everywhere else, which means that I don’t (personally) know anyone else with a DS (I probably would if I was a kid, but I’m 31). I really wish I could play 8-player matches using short distance wi-fi. But Portugal is all about the PS2, and now the PSP. (though most people I know with a PSP don’t use it for games…)
Anyway, this game is more than worth buying – it’s one you’ll be playing for a lot of time, and if you’re lucky to have friends who can see that there’s life beyond Sony, you’ll be in heaven.
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