Nov 14
Gaming Upgrade
| About a year and a half ago, more or less, we outfitted everyone with Gameboy Advance SP systems and Thomas scored a Nintendo DS for Christmas. All these systems got heavily used and over time we amassed a far collection of games.
Fast forward. After some hard times, things have improved… we were in need of a treat. What better than to upgrade our gaming platforms. So Nancy suggested that we gather up our SPs, along with most of the games we had collected and trade them in at EB Games. And so we did. Throw in a bit of cash on top and we walked out with a DS Lite each. Mine is “Onyx”. See the pic to the right. |
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| The DS Lite is a totally sweet piece of hardware. The unit is nice & tight, with a pleasant heft to it, but not so much as to be tiring to hold. The screens are brilliant, far brighter than the original DS screens. Sound is fabulous, with or without headphones. After the GBA SP, I’m very impressed. MarioCart DS is great fun, especially multi-player using the wireless connectivity.
On the more practical side, the chat application is nicely done, supporting freehand drawing as well as typed text (Japanese as well as English.. cool). Nintendo truly rules the gaming world. Ya.. I’m a fanboy.. so what. Hmm… I wonder what it would take to run Ruby on these things… I’ve already installed the C++ toolchain for it on my Mac… Maybe we should try our hands at game development. |
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Something else we bought were clear protective cases.. much like our Agent 18 iPod cases. They’re made by Mad Catz and are quite nice. One touted feature is the ability to put a piece of paper (ideally a photo or some other image) inside the case, and so personalize the look of your DS Lite. The case comes with several alternatives, as well as a template for cutting your own inserts. They even have a free application (alas Windows) to generate custom inserts.
I’m a fan of things Celtic and Norse, especially art, and I enjoy putting pen to paper in attempts of creating something of interest. So it was natural that I make my own insert. The result can be seen to the left. I’m happy with it as a version 1.0. Once I get darker, glossier paper and a finer tipped ink pen I’ll try it again. |