First up I figured what with yesterday’s babbling about video games and then a mention of the Da Vinci Code at the end, this comic was appropriately timely. Also, clever! I do so love the clever.
Secondly, it seems like Scott is up to no good over on his site, swapping servers and taking the plunge into WordPress 2.0. This is not his fault, mind, since he is tied to me in terms of site hosts (unless he were to, like, pay for his own hosting instead of mooching off of me all the time… that kid. He is a moocher. Because he mooches). Still, shennanigans are afoot and I have no control over their outcome. At least not so you’d notice.
Third, I was informed yesterday that Dr. Mac has expressed interest in aquiring his own DS. So much so that I believe he even parted with a holding deposit in the manner commonly referred to as “Pre-ordering” but which is actually more like “Shady Accounting Practices.” I have no proof that this is the case, but I’m betting that EB Games and GameStop get to claim the accumulated monies gathered by suckers gamers who are just so hyped to get their hands on the newest game/gizmo/system that they will pay for a product they cannot take home for weeks or even months. Sure, they don’t have to pay for the whole thing, but they pay for nothing and that has to look good on a quarterly report. I imagine a spreadsheet somewhere with a column for “Cash Tendered” and an adjacent column titled “Merchandise Expenses.” A casual accountant unfamiliar with the rabid slavering generated by our hobby’s marketing machines might look at those columns and go, “Huh?” EB Games’ CEO Jeff Griffiths just grins, flashing his platinum and diamond-crusted Grillz from a cozy position in his swirling hot tub filled with the tears of 500 virgins.
I mean, if you want to figure out why Duke Nukem Forever has never been released, take a cue from Veronica Mars and follow the money. Ask yourself how many people may have, over the last decade, plunked down their pre-order deposit in hopes of playing this game. Who has most to gain? If you think 3D Realms’ CEO Scott Miller does not occasionally join Griffiths in aforementioned hot tub, you haven’t watched nearly enough X-Files episodes.
I’m just saying.
Wait, what was I saying? Ah yes, pre-ordered DSes. So Dr. Mac and I will be acquiring our devices in the next twenty days or so. What annoys is that our only options are white. Oh sure, if we hang back for a bit we can probably get a navy blue one or even a black one, but really. If I was planning on being all lacksidaisical on this I wouldn’t have lined GameStop’s coffers for something that isn’t even available in my country yet. Patience, in this regard, is not an option. So white will have to suffice. I already have machinations of hooking Nikki so on games such as Animal Crossing and Puyo Pop Fever that she requests—nay demands—her own DS. If I time it right I may be able to “begrudgingly” part with the pre-ordered Lite just in time to pick up a newly released unit of a less iPod-like hue.
Not that it truly matters. I’m sure with a bit of ingenuity and a few Google searches I could put together something to improve the aesthetic qualities. Such things already exist en masse for the DS Phat, so I have a certain degree of faith in my Internet cohorts that their lack of lives can even exceed my own.
What does matter is the manner with which I will be able to obtain the requisite games to make the purchase of such a device worthwhile. Observe the list of games I feel necessitate actual purchase:
Of course then there are the games that have me on the fence in terms of purchase but which I certainly want to play at some point:
- Meteos
- New Super Mario Bros.
- Metroid Prime: Hunters
- Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow
- Resident Evil: Deadly Silence
- Trauma Center: Under the Knife
None of which even touches on the forthcoming games like Final Fantasy III, The Legend of Zelda: The Phantom Hourglass, Children of Mana or even the games that seem like they may be worth a purchase for various reasons (multiplayer, primarily) like Animal Crossing, Tetris DS, Puyo Pop Fever and such and so forth.
What is even more unfortunate than the original letdown of not being able to get a launch day navy blue DS Lite is that, if I’m understanding correctly, there are far fewer DS games that can be used with Internet-based multiplayer than I originally thought. As near as I can tell only Animal Crossing, Tetris DS, Metroid Prime: Hunters and Mario Kart DS from the above list are WiFi enabled while the rest require… proximity? I’m not sure how it all works, although there is a lot of information over on Wikipedia. For what that’s worth. That seems to suggest that I’m right and Meteos or Advance Wars would not be compatible with the country-wide separation Dr. Mac and I suffer from (in terms of offline gaming and general fellowship; in terms of my odor, the separation is, I imagine, much more readily defined as “welcome”).
Regardless, what can you do? Take what you can get, that’s what. Until the time when physical divides are rendered meaningless by pervasive and reliable global wireless Internet and appropriately enabled devices, we must revel in the few small taste-tests of the future that we currently have access to.
