The eternal joys of heaven pt. 2

When the DS first materialised, I was sceptical. Perhaps it is only a stunted imagination, but I could not picture how a stylus and touch-screen might sustain a games platform for its entire lifetime. I had a similarly unconvinced moment when the details of the Wii were first released.

It was the actuality of the Wii that convinced me to give the DS a try. The Wii controller still stuns me. It is robust enough to be flung about with force for Wii tennis, yet sensitive enough to detect small movements, like zooming in with a sighted weapon in Red Steel. Completely unable to guess at the science, I am convinced that if you were to open a Wii controller, it would be empty. Do not question it, just believe.

So I was made proselyte by Nintendo’s crazy science. However, as I hope to go to Japan next year, it does not make sense to buy a television based console. Despite this, the idea of being left behind by current gen consoles makes me feel ashamed and afraid. The portable, region-free DS seemed like a perfect compromise. And should that dirty little old-school twitch arise, I still have a copy of Doom 2 on GBA port. Boom! Head shot!

First, a quick look at the machine. Mine is a DS lite, the sleek little black number. I was warned that the black version is particularly susceptible to smudges and finger marks, but frankly, I could not care less. The stylus is a little bit of a worry; I have already lost one as I fell asleep during a Phoenix Wright marathon. But, hey, that was kind of my fault. Yes, GBA cartridges do jut out of the machine, but that just goes to show how much bigger and clunkier the original DS was all the time. The button layout is that of a Super NES controller, and is therefore as warm and comforting as the foetal position. The buttons are pretty close, but serious cramps are only incurred with control systems that combine extensive stylus/button combinations.


People moan that the DS’ power does not match up to the Sony PSP. To be honest, with two processors (each comparable to the one in the SNES) providing 2D graphics for each screen, and a third, (comparable to that of the N64) handling 3D graphics and sound, I would argue that there is quite a bit of oomph for developers to play with. It has just been organised in a different way to the macho ‘as many polygons as possible, on a tiny screen’ outlook of the PSP.

And that, for me, seems to explain Nintendo’s approach for both the Wii and the DS. The boobs in Dead or Alive on the Xbox 360 seem like a good indicator of the current state of gaming. When I was sixteen, I loved boobs. I still do, god help me, and there is a pasty sixteen-year-old in me that is overjoyed to see how the world has moved on from Chun-li’s pixelated mammaries to glorious 3D monsters that respond to gravity with unreal bouncing hyperactive joy. It is because of this part of me that developers target the sixteen-year-old misanthrope in all of us, and the graphics get nicer, the engines get tweaked, but the bigger our hypothetical girl’s boobs get, the more she looks like a cheap stripper.
Graphics as boobs - cunning metaphor or lame excuse to show this?

At the grand old age of twenty, it has already occurred to me that as much as I like boobs, they are probably not the be all and end all. (Or perhaps I have just learnt to admit that I will never find a pair of porn-star tits that are attached to a girl that will have me, but that is an argument for another day.) I would rather compromise on a kind, clever girl whose boobs are merely nice, with a good personality. And the DS has a good personality.

Those of you who want nothing more than to see once fun, now boring games like GTA and Halo get bigger and better are fated to remain forever sixteen, playing Dead or Alive and wanking. Metaphorically and literally. Stand aside, because some of us are ready to take Nintendo by the hand, and grow up with them.

The games industry has been talking about the need to expand their reach to a wider market for years. And when Nintendo is the first company to bite the bullet and admit this might alienate hardcore gamers, all the pussies who did not make the move (and the money) first start bitching about the specs.

Yes, I do worry that I might have trouble reconciling that corner of me that is hardcore with Nintendo’s new simplicity ethic. Yet to be brutally honest, I have not completed a game in some time. The last game I managed to get all the way through was We Love Katamari, and I could hardly imagine that the pwner is shaking in his pro-gaming boots. I could, like everyone else who has out-grown their games, lie, and say it is because my time is limited. Bullshit. When I was a kid, school took up nearly all my time, and my N64 was at my dad’s, who I only visited on weekends. I spent all week thinking about the Ocarina of Time and Goldeneye, and on the weekends I would play instead of sleep, and feel sick on Monday. I made time.

No, the real reason that Katamari is the last game I mastered is because it was genuinely different, the simple mechanic did not require constant practice, and it had a genuinely amusing post-modern sense of humour.

We love Katamari -nothing to do with boobs. Literally.

The DS and Wii are aimed at people who are not satisfied with playing the same fps, with better graphics, over and over. The cool thing is that by buying one of these less ‘powerful’, unorthodox consoles, you are implicating a willingness to explore other aspects of games. This is the message sent to the developers, who must be taking note of Nintendo’s all conquering sales figures. Therefore, developers working on these consoles feel free to get experimental with their games – the market has already shown that it is willing to consume products that are not simple Halo remakes when everyone bought a DS. (Forty million DS sales world-wide.)

When I first got the DS, those hardcore instincts kicked in, and my first game purchase was Metroid Prime Hunters. Despite the fact that I had bought the console in anticipation of the weird and wonderful I felt the need to ‘try the system out’ with a fps. To be honest, the game is pretty technically impressive. Also, the stylus operates like a mouse would for a PC based fps, in what is probably the best console-based fps control system I have ever seen. However, the game is a little lacking in character. The multiplayer is a really important aspect, and is initially very impressive, playing along the lines of a stripped-down Unreal Tournament. However, it lacks the gloriously tactile weaponry of UT, as the weapons are basically all variations on a laser beam. Compare the joy of the physics and timing of the UT rocket launcher with the lacklustre missiles that Samus utilises. The alien power-suit setup is also unimpressive. Where is the joy that UT afforded when you turned your opponent into a mush of bouncing, blood spurting chunks of cat food? Most of the multiplayer gaming sessions I have been part of quickly moved on to Bomberman and Mario Kart.

Metroid - Underwhelming

Which, by the way, are amazing multiplayer games. The way the DS works like a LAN match, only requiring one game for multiplayer is incredible. Remember how many of the defining gaming moments were social ones? Four people sharing SNES controllers to play Micro Machines. Genuine fights over accusations of ‘screen watching’ in Goldeneye (solved by the LAN-esque setup of the DS). Trust me, five people scuttling around the dual-screens of Bomberman is quite an experience. On the subject, there has been a lot of animosity regarding the necessity of friend codes to play online. Admittedly, this is probably largely because Nintendo are worried about unsavouries and paedos online (or more pointedly, they are worried about what cash haemorrhaging parents are worried about) but I do not find the idea of friend codes such a big problem. It is much more fun to play against your friends then against some random American geek who knows all the spawn spots, and therefore wipes the floor with you, exclaiming ‘lol! Noob! Fag!’ all the while. I think we should be encouraged to view games as part of our real social lives, instead of raping strangers in Second Life, and making up for a lack of social skills by forming guilds in WOW. (‘Basically, WOW is, like, the gay.’) I like the idea that I will be able to destroy my friends at Mario kart from any where on earth, and know exactly who it is that is crying at the other end of the world. Max.

When I lightened up and began to buy games about Doctors and Lawyers, I really began to realise that the DS is the future. More on the marvels I have found later.

(Thanks for the proof-read go to Max and Giorgio from shakebeforereading.com)