As part of a bento challenge, Livejournal, uh, "bentochallenge" community member mushmo made this awesome rice representation of a pink DS. Technically, it's a Phat, but we couldn't resist the pun in the title.
The DS onigiri folds up to fit in its bento box, and is joined by shrimp, broccoli, carrots, and a hard-boiled egg to make a delicious meal for mushmo's lucky son. Honestly, we don't know if we'd be able to eat such a meticulously craftedfood item. We'd feel guilty for ruining all that work, and we'd just go raid the fridge for some food that isn't shaped like stuff.
To-Love-Ru is a play on the Japanese pronunciation of the English words "trouble" (toraburu) and "love" (rabu). Unfortunately, the pun just doesn't fit native English phonology as well; to put a finer point on it, "tlovel" isn't all that funny or clever-sounding. Too bad. It's pretty neat that a pun on English words only works in another language's sound system, though, right?
Anyway, To-Love-Ru is also a manga/anime property that is being made into a DS game by Marvelous Entertainment. The manga is about a high-school boy, Rito, who gets involved with some alien princess thing and hilarity and awkward social situations ensue -- your basic manga stuff. What is interesting to us is how Marvelous has chosen to undertake this adaptation: they're calling the DS To-Love-Ru game a "2D digital comic with 3D touch action." Minigames on the DS are no big deal, but we like seeing more publishers getting the idea that the best way to adaptcomics to the DS is just to put them on there.
Import retailer Play-Asia's weekly specials are generally nice ways to get import games at good prices. This week's sale is extra-special, because the game is one close to our collective DS Fanboy heart. For the next six days or so, Play-Asia is selling Moero! Nekketsu Rhythm Damashii Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan 2 for a mere $29.90. We ordered a copy (as research for this post, of course) and shipping came out to just two dollars.
Normally, there's a period of intense waffling when we come across one of these sales. Do we go for the impulse purchase? Is an awesome deal worth disrupting our careful game budgeting? That is not how it went this time. This time we instinctively threw our wallets at the screen as soon as we saw the price.
The DS has been around for three years and boasts quite a hefty games library. What does this mean in terms of your library, though? Specifically, how many DS games do you have? And, if you can remember, what was the first game that you owned for the handheld? If you had a Gameboy Advance, has your DS games library grown larger than that of your GBA's yet?
Give us some numbers, folks, and we'll give you a shiny quarter in return.*
Each day, between now and the 26th, we're going to look at a different piece of the DS Fanswag End of the Year giveaway as a reminder of exactly why you need to hightail it over there and enter. Today? Instead of discussing anything specific in the contest -- though there are many games available in each of the prize packs -- but instead, we'll just remind you that each of the packs includes something that would probably offer a great opportunity to share some gaming time with someone else. Maybe it will give you a second copy of something for a little multiplayer fun, or maybe you can get someone else interested in the DS. Today, think about what you might pick up to share with someone else. Go on. Go enter the contest! Remember, you can enter once per day. And if you're having any trouble with the comments, check here for a handy walkthrough.
Looking for some cute Christmas music to play in the car during a family trip, Kotaku's Brian Crecente happened upon this horror: Pokémon Christmas Bash, a Pokémon-themed album of Christmas music from 2001. If you're curious, check out the samples on iTunes. If you like what you hear (for some reason), or want to give a last-minute gift of lulz, the album is available both on CD and in MP3 format from Amazon for the low, low price of $6.98.
Featuring sure-fire holiday classics like "I'm Giving Santa a Pikachu This Christmas" and, uh, "Pokémon Christmas Medley," Pokémon Christmas Bash is destined to become part of every family's holiday collection, joining favorites like Ren & Stimpy's Crock O' Christmas.
When we were cruising around flickr today, looking at pictures of folks enjoying the holiday, we came across the picture above. We then began to wonder if you were enjoying some DS with your family. And what better way to find out then to toss up a poll? So, let us know how you're doing today and if the DS is making it better.
Since we're taking it easy around these parts today, we're going to encourage you to do the same. Let us know how your gaming is going, or if you gave or got anything DS-related for the holidays. Or, hey let us know what we're missing lately that you're curious about. While we certainly don't make the news, we can always try to meet your requests. Keep us informed by sending tips or letting us know what interests you ... and this is a good day to start.
Here at the DS Fanboy headquarters, we're taking a light day in honor of the holiday. Whether you're celebrating or not, we hope that your day is one of the better ones you'll have this year. We're trying to have that sort of day ourselves, and our writers will be taking most of the day off to spend with families and friends. We'll be around, only not as much as usual ... and we expect the same from you!
As the year winds down, we hope that you'll stay with us to celebrate an all new year ... one that we can only hope is filled with as much gaming goodness as we enjoyed this year!
We've been taking our time getting through Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney: Trials and Tribulations, savoring what is undoubtedly the best game in the series to date. But, try as we may have to delay it, the game is done. And now our frothing Ace Attorneyfandom has no outlet until February -- except stuff.
Capcom has just released a set of playing cards containing character art spanning the whole series (including the upcoming Apollo Justice), called the Gyakuten Saiban Character Trump set. The best news (for us) is that it's available on Play-Asia! If you've ever wanted to spend $20 on a deck of cards, here's your chance. And we can keep those cards in the official Gyakuten Saiban card case.
(Hmm, there seems to be one major flaw in this post. Maybe we should go through the testimony again to find the contradiction.)
A handful of new screens for EA's Populous DS have hit, courtesy of the official Japanese website for the game. Each of the new screens provides a small glimpse into some aspect of the game. The problem is that machine translation isn't the best, so wrapping our head around what each screen actually shows has been a problem. Still, we can gather that the game board has been retooled to allow the player to see more of the game world at once, as well as some of the game's more powerful attacks, such as tsunamis and earthquakes. So, we're not entirely clueless. As tough as it has been to find information on the game, we'll keep taking these screens. The more we see, the more we want.
Be sure to hit up our gallery below for the new screens.
We thought that Crayon Physics would be just perfect for the DS, and apparently, we weren't the only ones. In fact, the game has even inspired homebrewer 0xtob to make a similar application for the DS, called Pocket Physics. The homebrew might not be nearly as fleshed out as the original, and it's more of a demo than an actual game, but we still love it.
To understand the gist of Pocket Physics, watch the (low-quality) video of someone playing it after the break. You can also check out the program for yourself here.
UK gamers, you've got a heck of a sale going on. Select titles from online retailer Play.com have gotten their prices slashed, with free shipping on all titles purchased. Any games purchased won't get there before Christmas, sadly, but you will get one heck of a sweet deal. Perhaps you've shopped for everyone else and now it's time to treat yourself?
As far as good games you can get on the cheap, Drawn to Life (£12.99), Custom Robo (£14.99) and Jam Sessions (£17.99) are a few of the titles that are up for grabs. Not only that, but newer games like Call of Duty 4 (£17.99) are even getting in on the price cut action.
Each day, between now and the 26th, we're going to look at a different piece of the DS Fanswag End of the Year giveaway as a reminder of exactly why you need to hightail it over there and enter. Today? The last amazing GBA title: The Legend of Spyro: The Eternal Night. Celebrate the GBA's passing out of the spotlight with this final wonder -- and we'll help you do it. Want a shot? Go enter the contest! Remember, you can enter once per day. And if you're having any trouble with the comments, check here for a handy walkthrough.
2007 is almost over, and the end of the year brings joyous tidings of List Season. It's the time for taking stock of the last 12 months of gaming, and trying to make sense of it by putting things in numerical order. Join DS Fanboy for our best-ofs, worst-ofs, and other categories-ofs.
Weasked, and as always, you guys delivered. While the top-voted game of the year will probably come as no surprise to anyone, especially since it ran away with all the votes, the other five games that topped out in our readers' choice polls demonstrate not only the wide variety of content on the DS, but the depth of taste among DS Fanboy readers, as well. While the top games were above and beyond, every title feature snagged its fair share of votes. This can only mean one thing: it was one hell of a good year to be a DS owner.
So which six games were most deserving of attention this year, according to you guys? Mosey on past the break to see the winners.
To-Love-Ru is a play on the Japanese pronunciation of the English words "trouble" (toraburu) and "love" (rabu). Unfortunately, the pun just doesn't fit native English phonology as well; to put a finer point on it, "tlovel" isn't all that funny or clever-sounding. Too bad. It's pretty neat that a pun on English words only works in another language's sound system, though, right?
Looking for some cute Christmas music to play in the car during a family trip, Kotaku's Brian Crecente happened upon this horror: Pokémon Christmas Bash, a Pokémon-themed album of Christmas music from 2001. If you're curious, check out the samples on iTunes. If you like what you hear (for some reason), or want to give a last-minute gift of lulz, the album is available both on CD and in MP3 format from Amazon for the low, low price of $6.98.
Since we're taking it easy around these parts today, we're going to encourage you to do the same. Let us know how your gaming is going, or if you gave or got anything DS-related for the holidays. Or, hey let us know what we're missing lately that you're curious about. While we certainly don't make the news, we can always try to meet your requests. Keep us informed by sending tips or letting us know what interests you ... and this is a good day to start.
A handful of new screens for EA's Populous DS have hit, courtesy of the official Japanese website for the game. Each of the new screens provides a small glimpse into some aspect of the game. The problem is that machine translation isn't the best, so wrapping our head around what each screen actually shows has been a problem. Still, we can gather that the game board has been retooled to allow the player to see more of the game world at once, as well as some of the game's more powerful attacks, such as tsunamis and earthquakes. So, we're not entirely clueless. As tough as it has been to find information on the game, we'll keep taking these screens. The more we see, the more we want.
We thought that Crayon Physics would be just perfect for the DS, and apparently, we weren't the only ones. In fact, the game has even inspired homebrewer 0xtob to make a similar application for the DS, called Pocket Physics. The homebrew might not be nearly as fleshed out as the original, and it's more of a demo than an actual game, but we still love it.
