Hey, don't copy that floppy!

A PSA from the early 90's about software piracy. Hopefully this will keep you would-be pirates out of trouble now that you've learned something important about the damage you're doing to the games industry!

Neat trinkets from gaming #2: Wobbuffet and Lego DSi

As my struggles with finals continue, it's nice to spend an afternoon with friends in the ole' City of New York. Even better is when you find a bunch of new doodads to write about for your video game blog about video games.

First up is one of the new releases from Jakks Pacific line of Pokemon toys. Previously, I thought the high of Jakk's talking plush line would end at Piplup, which every girl I know is inexplicably transfixed with. Little did I know that during a stop at Toys R Us with friends yesterday that I would find one that is superior in every way (and if you disagree with me you are a liar and a communist): Wobbuffet.

For those of you less-than-familiar with the Pokemon franchise (why are you reading my blog, then, though, since that's all I talk about), Wobbuffet is well known both in the Pokemon anime cartoon for its appearance alongside Team Rocket as a kind of comic relief to the already comical trio (its name in Japanese is based off of the expression, "I don't think so." which is why when he pops out of his ball after Jessie and/or James say something in the cartoon to quip "WOOOOOBBBBAAAAAFFFFEET," it's a lot funnier in context when he's saying it in Moonspeak, where his name is Sonansu). Also it is known in the competitive battling community for being one obscenely broken mother, bringing games to a standstill through stall in the 3rd Pokemon generation when it gained the ability Shadow Tag (which prevented your opponent from switching Pokemon) and battles between Wobbuffet would never end because the "Struggle" matches would never deal enough damage to either Pokemon to make up for the Leftovers recovery.

Anyway, in case you haven't seen my full Twitter picture, it's me wearing a Wobbuffet shirt and I'll be damned if I don't love that endless-battle making miscreant. For $15 at TRU, I got to take the lovable lump home and cuddled with it in lieu of a Jenni (insert Pokemon police officer joke here). It's roughly 15" tall, so it's rather large, adorable and says its name when you squeeze its hand.

Second on my list of things is something you cannot buy but maybe with a fortune and a lifetime of Lego collection you could possibly make: the Lego DSi at the Nintendo World store. Let me tell you, I didn't even play with Legos when I was a kid but I was taken aback by this construct from the future or space or from space future.

I wish I had stolen a shot when my friend was standing next to it just to establish the scale of this thing. Also I wish the Lego DS stylus that was crafted appeared in my picture, but then again I'm taking pictures for my blog using a 1.3 megapixel camera phone on low battery, so that should be some indication of how quality I am.

Needless to say, this thing is huge and very good looking. The detail given to all of the minute aspects, be it screen graphics to lens on the internal camera (yes, they included a Lego bit that resembles the DSi internal camera lens), work of art, waste of time, welcome distraction while ambling through Rockefeller Center, the Lego DSi is an important piece of video gaming paraphanelia that should be seen at all costs if you're in the area.

Back to back. This time about war time.

To make up for the fact that I'm uber abgestoppt and have not been updating regularly (also winning 12 hour, multiple Magic limited events), here's a double dose of vidya gaiman news.

Konami has recently come under fire for their now canceled title, "Six Days in Fallujah," a first person shooter that looked to recreate a 2004 Iraq war skirmish. To clarify, the title was cancelled due to the antipathy from those for and against the war and not because Hideo Kojima sneezed or something crazy like that.

While I'd like to have something snarky to say about taking video games too seriously, being able to fight in scenarios in recent history with people you may even know/have known and how cool that would be, or people's tendency to jump all over various forms of media just because it's entertainment that doesn't sit right with them and "people" have this ridiculous sense of entitlement to not be offended by anything ever, I think I'll have to call this one on a count of "too-soon syndrome."

The game was only announced a few weeks ago and was handed over to military simulation makers Atomic Games. The press release expounded the necessity to convey the heaviness of war rather than, I'd assume, running around as some kind of steroid-bound super soldier with a regenerating health meter and automatic gun/chainsaw combo that would easily overheat and probably kill you and any immediate soldiers in your vecinity before it could be used for actually shooting the opposing force. From the description, it just seems like the game would be handled in a tasteful manner as possible. Guess people just can't embrace alternative venues storytelling outside of the History channel or children's books.

I just shot a Poland Springs bottle in my recycling bin from my bed, I'm pretty sure I'm the best sports anything ever.

What swine flu doesn't kill video games will.

You know how I generally stand at a blazing pulpit preaching against the video game nay-sayers who bemoan video games as a potential source of violence? Well, sometimes, video games do lead to violence. Sort of. I guess.

Two recent instances (ONE HAPPENED BACK IN DECEMBER, INCREDIBLY RECENT, I TELL YOU WHAT) of murder occurred in and around playing video games. While the nature of game (though game system XBox 360 was identified in the more recent of the two altercations) is unspecified, apparently people are shooting each other over video games.

Bear in mind, of course, that these two outbreaks occurred with older gentlemen who owned guns and these are not the Columbines of yore nor the "whoops, I left my pistol out and my kid took it to school and tried to play Grand Theft Auto on the jungle gym at lunchtime," "we"'ve been worried about. Grown men. Shooting each other over video games. Thanks, poverty-rich apartment block housing.

Neat trinkets from gaming #1: Metal Gear Sound doodads

Rather than fish through studies about whether or not video gaming increases your riboflavin consumption, I've decided to expand a bit into the simpler realm of "really cool things from video gaming I just happened to run into" and see if it takes off. Which is to say I'm going to post this until you like it.

Today, I ran into Toy Tokyo while out with a friend and in the midst of her being enamored with their selections of Extremely Expensive But Well Crafted 12" Figures, out of the corner of my ear (THIS IS HOW HEARING WORKS I SWEAR) I heard one of the most beautiful sounds known to man: a Codec ring.

Behind me were two peg racks near the register filled with 6 different noise-making octagons labeled with either "Snake" or with other game-related symbols (the Codec ring was labeled with the screen prompt "CALL" from the Metal Gear Solid games) in different colors, signifying that each made a different sound. I don't speak moon-speak so well, so it's not like I knew what any of the Japanese Snake sound-a-gons said (though the one I bought WAS familiar, Snake's "Gojira Snake." - what he says while responding to a Codec call), but even without the three Snake-speak boxes, you have Item Pickup sound effect, the afforementioned Codec call and Alert (!) sounds.

I have no idea how new they are, but they're MGS4 related items and I love the heck out of them. I picked them up for $7 a piece because I'm that much of a Metal Gear nerd. Be on the lookout if you are too! Or just head over to Toy Tokyo.

Rotom Forms: Yeah, I'm still talking about Pokemon.

This past Sunday began the Secret Key Pokemon Mystery Gift event at Toys R Us stores in the U.S. and Canada. But the real story here isn't that it's just another event, but what comes after this week: the Secret Key will be available as a WiFi Mystery Gift giveaway if you can't make it to a Toys R Us store during this week.

In line with recent giveaways in Japan, now Mystery Gift events will be available for download over WiFi connection, such as Oak's Letter and ... whatever it was that got you access to Dakrai, allowing players (at some point in the future) to catch legendary Pokemon using techniques available to capturing other legendary Pokemon in-game (and once the Wild Pokemon Random Number Generator is broken, like the breeding and Shiny Egg RNG have before it, this will open up capturing perfect IVed legendaries in events).

The WiFi event/s are currently limited, both in Japan and America, to item giveaways. Future Japanese giveaway of a level 100 Arceus and Pikachu-colored-sprite Pichu for the next Pokemon movie are limited to theater downloads and will likely be the same for Toys R Us stores in the U.S. when the event comes overseas.

The Secret Key event opens access to a locked room that allows the Pokemon Rotom to change forms into one of 5 electrical appliances, enhancing its stats and allowing it to learn a special move based on the form it's taken. The download is only available for Pokemon Platinum carts and not for Diamond or Pearl. More on the form and event at Serebii!

Unrelated to video games, but worth mentioning either way:

Blogger has just set up Mobile and Email posting. Whether this is a move to one-up upstart technologies like Twitter (though 20 160 character posts vs. 5 substantial, edited and HTML-enabled blog entries... which really is better?) or if it's just some new experiment to see whether this technology can integrate with existing writing formats is both interesting and something of note.

Clearly my Twitter feed (as bland and infrequently updated as it is, it being a jumble of inside or context relevant information/jokes and only about 4% of it relevant to anything else) is an element of this blog, but what if I could merge the blog itself into Twitter or vice versa? Does this expand my reach or create too much cross-tension?

An interesting topic of debate (please don't let me say interesting anymore this post), surely one relevant to the video game blogging world as a whole, as many developers and other company members tend to have blogs (and Twitters?), why worry about a lengthy blog post when you can just update from a meeting what's going on with the game? Or make notes in the middle of coding a sequence? The possibilities are pretty open, though I'm sure this is the same discussion that was had when people first started Twittering and figuring out ways to post to blog via Twitter.

Clearly if I can update this blog via DSi, updating it via phone is certainly a step in a similar direction.

H/o, updating from my DSi.

So now I know what its like to be in the 21st century, what with making this update from my portable (gaming) device.

I was under the impression that Dr. Mario would be available on release. I would try the eyetoy WarioWare game, but lol, no.

Still getting used to typing with a stylus. Not too too slow though and the response for fast typing is better than the old ds, which is a huge plus.

All hail our robot overlords!

DSi: The Internet Conundrum and error code 051300-1

So, it's already 16 hours into Easter Sunday. Around 12 hours in, I finally acquired my DSi and charged the sucker. However, that 15th hour was when the battle began.

See, my house has Verizon FiOS, possibly one of the most unfriendly non-computer wireless internet access points I've had to fight with (and even when friends visit with laptops in hand, I often am bombarded with "WHY CAN'T I GET ONLINE? WHY DO I NEED TO MAINLINE YOUR ROUTER?" fits).

While preparing to write this update, I tried in earnest to find my WEP key and log on. Only to find that my first router instance gave me a giant middle finger, between connection quality and allowing me to actually connect, whenever I'd test the connection settings. 051300-1, you're on my list.

After going to Nintendo's service page (not helpful, though the people who are on their phone lines are extremely so, to the point where I emailed the support staff at Nintendo after one of their representatives helped me with their WiFi USB connector last year to thank the service member who'd helped me through the process), calling to find the offices were closed for the holiday and basically giving up hope, I tryed resetting the connection. And found the scroll menu had my router listed twice. Oh.

The second connection was also A+++++++, causing my internet connection to somehow supercharge itself and load pages before I even went to them. Ok, that's an exaggeration, but updating my firmware was now possible to do and an enjoyable thing to do.

Still don't have anything downloaded, but hopefully this tidbit helps anyone who has a DSi and may be confounded by finding error code #051300-1 stopping their gameplay and internet dreams.

Edit: Because apparently The Internet is sending people to my blog to fix this error and my advice of, "I had my router appear twice in my available WiFi hotspots and I clicked the second one, which allowed the problem to fix itself," isn't helpful, here is the link to Nintendo's official fix for the error.

Two notes from the official page that may be helpful (particularly in one commenter's case):
"Did this connection used to work but has suddenly stopped? 'Power cycle' your router and modem. To do this, unplug both the modem and the router from the power outlet. Wait a few minutes, and plug the modem back in. Wait a couple of minutes for the modem to initialize, then plug in the router. Try to connect the Wii, Nintendo DS, or Nintendo 3DS online and test for proper response."

The official Nintendo page on router access breaks down troubleshooting by router brand. Hopefully this helps people still getting sent to my blog looking for a fix; it didn't work for me, but apparently my problem was not the one advertised.

DSi Review prior to internet

So out of the potential good ideas I've had, walking around New York City with an injured back is probably not at the top of the list. But the good news is the Nintendo World store in Rockefeller Center had the DSi available for some hands-on demoing. Additionally, I got one of my friends No More Heroes (without the Red Steel +$10 dual packaging. Buy it if you see it and don't have it because it won't be around for much longer!) and myself a pair of really comfortable Wii pajama bottoms.

Anyway, the DSi. The DSi is just... a lot of new fun things in a portable console. Will all of it seem relevant a month from now? Maybe not. Let's explore.

One of the new features on the DSi is its camera. The camera is about as simple to use as any cell phone camera, just minus the one-button activation on most phones (or at least on my LG Verizon whateveritis). The interior camera is only 0.3 megapixels, but the exterior one is a full 3.0. Funnily enough, the interior camera is actually really good, with photos showing up very clearly, probably even better than pictures I'd take on my phone (I SMELL A NEW PORTABLE NON-CAMERA CAMERA-ING DEVICE TO USE ON THE BLOG!!1oneforty). The menu allows you to toggle between cameras, meaning you can take pics of whatever's outside your DS or whoever happens to be playing with your DS.

From there, you can play around with the images, adding filters, morphing pictures, throwing in effects and other neat edits that won't be giving Photoshop a run for its money, but does give you a surprising number of options for photo editing software you use 100% on the fly. In fact, I had my handsome mug transformed by pulling my lovable kisser all-about using the touch screen.

Aside from the photo taking and editing capabilities, you also have a sound recorder using the DSi's microphone (or the DS headset, sold separately), which allows you to record sounds, slow them down, speed them up, change their pitch and not a lot else. Reviews say you can use this software in conjunction with your sound media files saved to any SD card, but since I was using a display model and don't randomly carry SD cards filled with AAC sound files, I couldn't be asked to actually test this feature out.

Needless to say, if I can entertain myself for a good 20-30 minutes playing a sound file of me saying, "Hey dad, can we get on sites? Nope," forward and backward in various speeds and pitches, adding the potential to mix and record your own audio files seems like a pretty sweet endeavor. And hey, why not throw on a beat AAC and sing over it for recording studio...ing on the go? If you're an aspiring singer, songwriter, or rapper, you could do worse if a flash of insight hits you while in the middle of an Ace Attorney trial.

In my previous post, I touted the DSi's ability to function as its own EyeToy peripheral from the PS2, as demonstrated on the DSi Store game download WarioWare title. Since it was available on the display systems, let me say that you wasted your money on an EyeToy without the WarioWare title, but the downloadable game (basically free if you buy the DSi during its limited time "Free 1000 Nintendo WiFi Store Credit" offer) just cements this fact. It's Smooth Moves but on the DS and, therefore, anywhere.

Finally, the Opera web browser. It wasn't available on the store DSi-s. So.
:D

Guy waits in line for DSi for 15 minutes, gets it

The guy in question is me. I got up at 7:30 this morning hoping I'd dodge the PS3 bullet for video game hardware releases. Turns out I was the only one in line this morning, questioned by another guy who was up with his 11 year-old son whether I was there for the PS3 bundle or not.

I would link now to the NYT DSi review, but it's so bland that it may as well be about generic-brand mouth freshener as it just sort of lists DSi peripherals and then says that it's like an iPhone. Yeah, it's the iPhone minus phone you'd hoped it'd be, but the iPhone doesn't have the Nintendo WiFi Store backing it, with an entire history of titles, liscenced or otherwise, going back to gamings glory days. Why download Super Monkey Ball when I can get Dr. Mario and Pokemon Platinum in the same system.

I think the best review of the device is a San Jose Mercury News article highlighting what the DSi is, what it does and what to expect from it, particularly that in addition to all the relevant games and such, the portable system easily emulates the capabilities of the EyeToy from the PS2, as seen in the download launch title WarioWare: Snapped!

Sony didn't take the release lying down. On Wired, we can see a response to some outright crazy statements made by Sony about the PSP's relevance to the non-kids market of gamers (ignoring, of course, that an unholy amount of DS owners are adults that could care less about Rock Band or Hannah Montana and would prefer some Brain Age or Spanish Instructor).

I don't have a lot to add right now because, even if my DSi was opened, charged and ready, I don't have WiFi access at school. So. Hopefully next Sunday I'll have a full review for you!

Video Gaming Improves Vision

Yeah, I'm just as shocked as you.

According to a University of Rochester study, playing action-oriented video games increases fine-contrast vision.

Normally the eye cannot discern between slight differences in shading easily and scientists had believed that increasing one's ability to see such minute differences would not be possible.

The study shows that the gamers had become 58% better at distinguishing between the shading as the result of their video game play by showing "action video games decrease visual crowding and increases visual attention," which, when translated, means that your eye is able to pick out individual elements of things that are packed tightly together or have a lot of detail to them and that your eye is able to attend to more objects in its visual field.

tl;dr - You see more and see more details.

The study was reported in March's Nature journal.