I don't grok Mario Kart

(tags game, Mario Kart, Dual Screen, Gameboy Advance)

I finally finished the Cups in Mario Kart DS. On the last track my first power up was a Mushroom Boost, and after clearing the first shortcut it was an eeriely uneventful hair-raising ride. Not even a blue turtle shell broke my concentration. The fear of one, well that's the story.

Kart fever struck. I then dug out my old copy of Mario Kart Advance, because hey that has even more maps. I was not impressed. The 2d is so flat, so hard to see. Drifting seems to be blind, requiring rote memorization. I can't believe I played this game and like it. And of course, it's too difficult. I have not yet unlocked the 100cc Retro tracks. Give me Mario Kart DS any day, I need my 3D.

And on a slighty off-topic but still relating to Mario Kart, Steve Yegge on my blogroll wrote about dealing with programming unknowns, and he used Mario Kart as an analogy for a system. I still don't understand the "One-Way Wall". Perhaps I was totally stuck thinking about how to drift through the next turn. But I understood it when he mentioned meta-programming and reflection.

I want to fold spindle mutilate Mario Kart

(tags game, Dual Screen, Mario Kart)

I made some progress. I completed the 150cc class after some midnight game binging. I thought I was done, but no. Mirror mode. Well that's all fine and good but the last bunch of retro tracks are proving to be a horrendous loss of time. Stupid AI, rubberband position, and the slap in the face dumb weapons. I think I retried a cup 10 times.

One last class and I'm done, I hope.

What do I do with my DS now?!?

(tags game, Dual Screen, Chrono Trigger, Kumatanchi, Mario Kart)

It's old news to me, so this will sound like a diary entry.

I finished Chrono Trigger's DS extras about a week ago. Now I need to tackle the different endings and the crazy extra boss for the full unlock. It feels like work though, so I'm not actively playing this. I keep wondering why I felt this game was so good. After playing it for 40 hours, I am convinced that its lack of difficulty is what keeps this game ranked so high. I do like the music though.

Kumatanchi is almost totally complete. I unlocked and collected everything. Time travelling felt kinda sad though. Now there is just one more drama bit to be unlocked and I am totally finished. Then we can pull the battery out of this Tamagocchi forever. 2008-12-23 08:00. Never forget this date because I need to set my DS to this in order to keep Kumatan alive.

So I'm playing Mario Kart on my DS now. Copyright 2005, but I am still trying to unlock stuff because I rarely put any time into this game. 150cc is pretty hard for me, though. I never did clear 150cc on the SNES or GBA versions. On the DS version though, 150cc isn't too much of a death march. I hate how unfair the game is. Oh and I still don't understand how to power-slide. Right. Oh I totally forgot about the missions. Stuff to do.

All this racing is making me think about my PSP again, and how I wanted to get Wipeout Pulse and a new PSP-2000 series hardware. Hm, maybe over break I'll think about it.

I got Guitar Hero DS for cheep because the store is getting rid of non-DSi softs. Music games. Which reminds me of the Rhythm Tengoku Gold I haven't started yet. The original soundtrack for this game and the GBA version comes in one package but is about 5000 yen. Gotta play the game before buying the CD, right?

Re-exploring the DS: Nintendo first party titles

(tags game, Dual Screen, Animal Crossing, Mario Kart, Super Mario)

So I bought Chrono Trigger recently and I've only been through a couple of time slips.

This DS gaming has gotten me interested in the other software I have so I pulled out Super Mario 64 DS, a week or two ago. I keep thinking about making a seperate blog post titled "Crackdown before Super Mario 64", but then again, I've already played Super Mario Sunshine (still not cleared though), and I suppose that's similar. I can't believe how basic it feels. I rather be playing Spyro from the PlayStation 1.

And then, the whole advertisement wave going on with the Wii version of Animal Crossing (どうぶつの森) made me pull out my old copy of Animal Crossing: Wild World DS. I thought there would be the granddaddy of weeds, but I just have lots of the easy weeds. Anyway I spent some time cleaning up the place, picking fruit and generally checking out the game again. It crashed on me twice while I was trying to get online (I was hoping Nintendo would send me some status messages or something). All in all it's just as fun as I remembered it. Well, fun as making up some boring tasks like "pick all the fruit" and doing them. I checked out the Wii version's and it seems as if you can import your DS stuff into your Wii. It's only one way, though, and it's really limited. You gain your name, face, and catalog, but that's it. Of course you don't lose anything on your DS though. Also, you can't push anything from your Wii to your DS. 

Finally, I started unlocking Mario Kart DS courses. I've had this game for ages but I still haven't unlocked them, even the easiest 50cc ones. I hate Mario Kart's game system, though. Get ahead too much, feel the power of the blue Koopa shell, over and over again. Ugh. Sometimes I just look at overhead map instead of the pursuit view because its easier to see.

Anyways, I'll keep these games along side my daily dose of Kumatanchi (yes I'm still caring and feeding this littl' Tamagochi twice a day) and Chrono Trigger.