Nintendo DS

[Guest]

[Geek Boy]

Great news!  Now you can tell me how to play it properly  

Seriously though, it was good to meet up with you both yesterday.  I didn't buy the lightsaber though.  I went and had a mooch around the celeb signing area, spent ages deciding whether to join the Anthony Daniels queue, took a picture of David Carradine for my Mum by which time it was home time.  I had a bit of a headache as well, it was so warm in that hall.  I tried to take a picture of Mr. Daniels but the "heavy" that was with him kept looking over and deliberately blocked my view.  It's bad enough that he doesn't appear all that often in the UK but people go to these events to see him and if you don't want to queue then it shouldn't preclude you from getting a picture.  Actually, AD was going up and down the queue having a quick chat with people, talking on mobile phones like Tom Cruise does and he looked straight at me for a couple of seconds.  He was only a few feet away too.  I didn't realise it was him at first!

Overall a good show but not much to buy.  The merchandise all seemed the same as November apart from all the Episode 3 toys.  And it was nice to see Gazza although he didn't look well.

You can tell Mark I've opened up another class in Wipeout - the first track looks like it stepped right out of Tron.  Very cool...

[MakTheYak]

I concede on the PSP - it's a very nice piece of kit, although I think I'm going to wait for the first price cut - there will be one.

Yoshi's Touch and Go is great! It's short but it's dead hard to beat properly (ie with a high enough score to unlock other modes) and has a lot of replay value. On the first half you draw clouds in the sky to steer baby mario away from enemies and towards the coins. You can draw circles around coins and enemies to catch them in bubbles and then 'throw' the bubbles at baby mario to collect them and to affect his direction slightly too. If you make a mistake you can clear all the clouds away by blowing!

The second stage is similar but this time you're on Yoshi's back and you draw bridges over gaps. Also tapping the screen makes yoshi fire eggs at enemies, or to collect coins). Tapping yoshi makes him jump and tapping him while in mid air will make him hover for a bit.

Multiplayer is great fun too!

[Roz]

I'm enjoying Yoshi much more now but I haven't got that blessed 300 points I need !!!

It looked great - I wonder what things they will iron out before the price drop and what games they will release. The only things that worry me are reports that they throw out your games cartridge if you twist it slightly - and that you have no come back if there are any dead pixels on your screen (which I think is unfair) but if we buy one in the shops I guess we can ensure there are none before leaving - GB you don't have any dead pixels do you? It looked fine to me but lots of people have been complaining.

I wish I had got the chance for a try - I have no idea why I dissappeared during that :S there seemed to be so much going on on Saturday (and not so much on Sun)

[Geek Boy]

No I've been extremely lucky with the PSP - no dead pixels at all.  I haven't had any "disc eject" problems either although I did read somewhere that one or two people had claimed a problem with that.

The manufacturers of all these TFT/Flat panel screens do say that there is an "acceptable" limit for dead pixels.  We bought 32 new Acer computers for the office around 18 months ago, all with TFT screens.  Some of them had dead pixels and we returned them but we got them back with a note to say that after testing, they were found to be within acceptable tolerance for the type of screen.  I think they have to have 10 or more dead pixels for it to be considered a problem and it also depends on the concentration of pixels and where they appear on the screen.  I might be wrong but I think they have a card they overlay on the screen to count the pixels and where they appear.  It's a manufacturing issue that affects data projectors as well.  And because you concentrate your vision in the middle of the screen, any dead pixels on the outer edges are not considered to be an annoyance.  So Sony are only saying what every other flat panel manufacturer are saying.  Plus the fact, the games are so fast moving that you probably wouldn't notice anyway.

The problem seems to be biggest in the USA where they've had a very high return rate but Sony did change the screen manufacturer from Sharp to Samsung (or vice versa, I can't quite remember which) not long after the Japanese launch so maybe the earliest batches were the best ones to get.  Even if they came at a hefty price!  Having said all that I think I would be pretty bummed out if I'd spent the money and not received a "perfect" product.  But it's still an amazing piece of kit despite these technical issues.

[MakTheYak]

Yeah GeekBoy - sounds like you have been lucky I will get one for sure but will wait til there's a few more games out and I'll buy it in a shop to avoid falling foul of the dead pixel issue.

You are also right that once you are playing the game you would hardly notice it but the problem with me is that I am a bit of a perfectionist, once I knew it was there it would drive me mad  

Roz is turning out to be pretty talented at Yoshi after all and we have got into the "real game" after that 300 point unlocking fiasco. I'm still holding out judgement on it - gaming legend magazine "Edge" gave it 8 claiming it was revolutionary - I've not quite agreed yet but as I say we haven't played it THAT much.

[Geek Boy]

Just got a new DS game - Kirkby's Magic Paintbrush.  And you get a nice pink coloured stylus with it too.

I have to say it's way better than Yoshi but a similar principal.  You have to guide Kirkby around the levels to get to the exit by drawing rainbows.  Depending on the direction you draw the lines determines which way he goes so it's not a continuous left to right scroll like Yoshi.  You can go up as well as down and there are power ups such as lightning bolts, flamethrowers etc.  At the end of each world there's a boss encounter and you choose 1 of 3 to compete in.  The one I tried was a join the dots drawing type thing but you had to complete a series of simple pictures before Kirkby got squashed.  All in all a good game and fun to play.

[MakTheYak]

Sounds good and is definitely one I'm interested in (and have been since I saw the screenshots).

Just wondering about Yoshi though... having got it in English and with English instructions, I could get what was going on a bit easier than when I played your Japanese version. Have you managed to unlock the mode where you do the (boring) falling bit and then the bit on Yoshi's back is sort of infinite / randomly generated?

Cos I was getting bored of the one where it's a limied distance quite quickly but that mode I thought was really fun and quite different...

[Geek Boy]

I haven't played it since Memorabilia!  Been quite engrossed in Meteos and I've since found out that the various levels have different conditions such as low gravity which affects the speed at which you can clear the blocks.  You also "mine" the blocks and spend the ore on unlocking new special effects, new power ups etc.

I've just ordered Elektroplankton which looks utterly wierd yet typically Japanese.  You can talk to the game and make sounds - just not sure if it understands English!

[MakTheYak]

That 'game' looks like a lot of fun, although I'm not sure if I want to shell out for it... I might have a quick play with it next time we bump into each other

Actually I'm currently playing Yoshi's Universal Gravitation (did I mention this somewhere else?). It's for the GBA and you play the game by tilting the console. If you tilt it the gravity is affected in the game and is totally cool! I want to see more innovative ideas like this from Ninty... if they can keep it up people will be so fascinated by all the new things that they will almost forget about traditional games....

hehe I'm just kidding of course, but I think it's totally cool all the same!