Lets start this off on the wrong foot: I am a dirty pirate.  One of my most treasured acquisitions was the DS M3 cart I got for Christmas, which lets me play *ahem* DS game backups.  Because of that I’ve been exposed to a great number of DS games and have even gone and subsequently purchased one (Soul Bubbles, which everyone should own).

As part of being a dirty pirate, I went for the volume strategy and downloaded a truckload of DS games and have been playing my way through them while on holiday or away for long weekends.  The latest Castlevania, Soul Bubbles, all the action platformers and new release games, I’ve played them all.  However I’m quite bemused by the game I’ve spent the most time on.  The original DS Phoenix Wright.

For those who haven’t played it, it’s the DS equivalent to a choose your own adventure book.  Choose the right question to ask, choose the right time to interject, keep a save game where you’re going to make a choice that may have bad consequences (the new-wave equivalent to not losing track of the page you originally came from).

So, on paper not all that entralling.  Then why is it that with all the other DS games I have, why have I spent by far the most time on that in recent time?

In essence, I think it’s because the simplicity allows me to actually relax while playing the game.  The characterisations are quite  good (albeit cliched in a fun way), the interface is simple, there is no real way to actually lose but it can provide a few challenges in lateral thinking.

Oh, and I can also stop playing it and watch the TV for half an hour and step back into it quite easily.

In summary, it’s gaming without the huge investment of time and effort that is required for most games nowadays.  A perfect choice for a handheld, I would say.

As it’s the start of the new year, we’ve already all been through the “best games of 2008″ spiel and are moving forward with what is to come in the new year.  Seeing as I’m rapidly approaching 30, it’s also an appropriate time to look at where the bloody hell all that time went and what games are the main culprits for eroding my youth.

This list would probably look pretty familiar to a lot of people, being your lives were probably decimated by some of these as well.  Also, you’d probably notice the pretty heavy Nintendo bias as that was my poison of choice until I had enough cash to start buying every console.  After that stage, well, I did buy every console and in a lot of cases I put a lot of time into rather old consoles and games.  I’ve poured weeks into Gex on the 3DO and various fighters on the Neo Geo CD, and spent a very long time playing Super Metroid on SNES in my 20’s after having never played it while in my teens.

For this list I haven’t listed every “generation”, only ones where I poured an immense amount of time into them, often to the detriment of my sleep, studies and sanity.  For example, amongst the 16-bit handhelds (of which only the GBA counts with the PC Engine GT a possibility if you stretch it), I played the GBA an absolute tonne but all the games I have were played somewhat equally.

The generation namings are something I’ve included as taken directly from Wikipedia.  I’ve been used to referring to generations via the bit count (ie 8-bit and 16-bit) but that falls down once you go past the 32-bit generation of the PS1 and N64.  Wikipedia’s one is nice and so I’ve used it (even if bit-era gamers won’t recognise it straight away)

Soo.. The list.. (more…)

Two recent events have caused me to look more closely at my home contents insurance: The terrible bushfires now destroying a huge part of Victoria, and the fact that my insurance is actually due to be paid.

Looking at the value, I thought it looked decidedly low for the amount of crap I had.   I got on my insurer’s site and went through their semi-automated estimato-tron in order to work out how much cash I’d need to replace my shit if under some bizzarre circumstances the bushfires spread to inner-city Melbourne.

Firstly, I’m under-insured.  This is not a surprise and it’s probably a good idea that my apartment didn’t get destroyed in the last year as I’d be seriously out of pocket.  Secondly, I was quite shocked at one of the few caveats in my insurance:

CDs, DVDs, tapes, records, game cartridges and discs were only covered up to $2,500 under general insurance.  If I wanted total coverage, they’d have to be listed individually.

Now, as someone with an arseload of games and games consoles, this poses a bit of a quandary.  I’m assuming that games consoles fall under this category as well, as there were no sections for replacement estimation in their form.  If that’s the case, should I be individually listing my XBox 360, Wii and PS3?  Those three would take up a large chunk of the $2,500.

Then we get into the retro stuff.  What about my Virtual Boy and Neo Geo CD?  Should I list my boxed Vectrex?  Some of the stuff I had is worth a few hundred dollars, and the likelyhood is that even if everything else can be replaced with new stuff, if I want to protect my games and consoles I’d have to individually list each and every single one of them or have a separate policy.

This seems to be a common thing across all collections, not only gaming collections.  The page specifically lists coins, curios and other collectables at values lower than the max given for the entertainment goods.  I wonder how other people have dealt with this..

Most of us like video and computer games, from big blockbuster set piece extravaganzas to playing solitaire to while away the time.  They’re a fun diversion.

Then there’s games which should be played because of their importance.  Passage is one such game.

Created by Jason Rohrer, Passage is about.. well.. life.

It would be a disservice to describe it.  What I will say is that if you wanted an example that games could be art, well this is it.

Get Passage.  Play through it once.  You won’t really get it.  Then go and read the Creator’s Statement (it’s on the page linked above, I won’t hyperlink it so you won’t cheat).  Like art, Passage should be looked at, examined and interpreted based on your own personal viewpoint before noting the author’s explanation.

Jason Rohrer is a very very clever man.  I’m very late to the party on this, but it deserves being noted and celebrated.

I grew up in a country area of Australia in the 80’s and had most of my videogaming education during the 90’s, when I was in high school and myself and various friends had pretty much every gaming console that you could find.

Note that this was in the country, where gaming consoles that you could find were limited to what you could get in Target and the one independent gaming store in the district, so you’d be fed on a diet of Nintendo and Sega.  A friend nearby had a NES, I got a Game Boy, we both graduated to the SNES and it went from there.  Friends and relatives had the Sega consoles and so our gaming educations were complete (in the teenage console-warish model of that generation, decrying the opposite faction but appreciating a good game when it came along)

Then something interesting came along: the Gamate.

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An article from the internets today about a new study that’s shown that playing Tetris in a certain time window after experiencing something nasty may help reduce flashbacks.  FTFA:

Researchers at Oxford University took 40 healthy volunteers and showed them a film that included traumatic images of injury from several sources, including drink driving advertisements.

After waiting 30 minutes, half the people played Tetris for 10 minutes while the others did nothing.

Those who played the game had far fewer flashbacks to the film over the next week.

Of course, the only way to make this practical is to issue every person in a warzone a DS and Tetris.  Imagine whipping our your portable console and clearing some lines after just seeing your squad get blown up.  Surely that’ll help.

Sarcasm intended.  The power of gaming is awesome but this is just a bit weird.

I came across a Slashdot article today (diverted from this original piece of writing) about how being in an urban environment impairs our basic mental processes due to excessive stimulii and we need to be around nature to recover from this.

Being from the country originally, I always find a brief break in an area with a bit of nature does wonders for relaxing me, and I try to get up to the country whenever I can.  However if you want anecdotal discussion about whether or not this is accurate, Slashdot has plenty of that (as per usual).  What I’m more interested in is tying it back  to the chosen relaxation methods for the modern generation, which are based on electronic distractions.

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Seems like a strange choice.  Monochrome pinball game (note, not a pinball sim) released on the original grey brick that handheld gaming was built on.  Released in the early 90’s, where gaming progressed to a highpoint in purity with the late 8-bit early 16-bit generation.  Not a big seller, rarely seen on the shelves, and even I acquired it by chance.

Yes, it  is good.  Very good in fact and apart from various notorious time-suckers over the years it’s been by far my most constantly played game.  I’ve had it since the early 90’s and have played it on the original Game Boy, Game Boy Pocket, Game Boy Color, Super Gameboy, GBA, PC emulator, emulated on PSP, on my eeepc while on holidays and now on an M3 cart on my DS.  What is it that makes it so good?  First, a bit of history.

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