For so long now, Europe has lived beneath a cloud, with a populace that is served by Smart Black, Crystal White, and Platinum Silver DSes. Where's the color, Nintendo? We know all about Noble Pink, but some of us are manly men, and it would hurt our fearful reputation to be seen with such a gentle shade of DS! Across the Atlantic, our North American friends have enjoyed those lovely two-tonemodels.
But no longer must our portable consoles lack vividity! Following much rumor and speculation, Nintendo has started e-distributing the advert you see to the right, featuring a rainbow of DSes (kind of an ugly rainbow, but a rainbow nonetheless). We've suspected this was real for a while, but it's nice to have some confirmation -- and some cheery color back in our lives.
In case you forgot, the Ice Blue, red, and green will all be here June 13th.
Back in March, Dutch website Nintendo Only claimed that Europe would be receiving a trio of new DS Lite colors on May 1st, including the (previously Japan-only) Ice Blue model, a mysterious green version, and the quite gorgeousJapan Post red DS Lite.
Alas, May 1st came and passed without incident, but now the exact same models mentioned by Nintendo Only have appeared in the database of a German retailer ("hellblau" is "light blue," while the others are obvious), complete with listings for red, green, and turquoise (?) styli. Oh, and there also appears to be serial numbers -- serial numbers make everything look more official.
Suddenly, this same speculation is looking far more credible, and we're way too excited again. Skip past the break for the full listings.
The BBC's Watchdog consumer report program has discovered a shocking issue with Brain Training: apparently there are some problems with the voice recognition! The game doesn't always understand you when you say "blue" or "yellow!" Have you guys heard about this?
What you may not have heard about is that this is now being interpreted as discrimination against people with certain regional dialects. "I'm going, 'yeller' and everyone's saying to me you need to be a bit posher. You need to say, 'yellow' and as soon as I did, it picked it up," reported Michelle Livesey. HostNicky Campbell then suggested that the game was discriminatory against people with Northern and Scottish accents.Nintendo responded to the report with a statement explaining that they recognize the issue, and that voice recognition in the Stroop test is only a small, optional part of the game.
Yet again we find ourselves taken aback by the mainstream media's treatment of gaming. Had Livesey done even the most casual of Googling, she would have learned that the Brain Training voice issue is the "Take my wife, please" of DS game jokes (meaning it's ancient). It's not enough that they presented a well-known problem with a two-year-old game as news, but they seem to have attempted to ignite some sort of controversy over it, without actually doing any research or knowing what they were talking about. People across the United States have the same problem, but to our knowledge nobody accused Nintendo of discriminating against most Americans. We're just going to choose to believe, without having heard the program, that Campbell's comment was facetious in nature. For our sanity.
Rumors surfaced earlier this month that a cobalt blue DS Lite might be in the works, and now a page at Circuit City has popped up confirming the new model. It's not quite as we expected, however; the new model is blue and black, much like the crimson and black Lite that got our blood boiling last year.
Thoughts on the new color combo? If you're willing to shell out the cash for a new Lite, we want to know. It's a bit darker than we expected, put part of that is surely the reflection of the black backing. Overall, we're pleased.
[Update: The Circuit City page has been removed.]
[Via GoNintendo]
We don't know if it's possible to be as excited about the return of Brain Age as the Japanese public continues to be, but we eagerly await the return of our teacher, friend and constantsource of Photoshopinspiration, Dr. Ryuta Kawashima's Disembodied Polygonal Head.
In this corner, we have the one, the only, the talking, taunting head of DOCTORRRRRRRRRRR KAWASHIIIIIIIIIIMA! And in the blue corner, it's the reigning heavyweight champion of the world ... your complete inability to speak your own native language! READY? FIGHT!
Which one presents more of a challenge -- the mocking Dr. Kawashima, or those tricky phonetics?
Formerly exclusive to Japan, the Ice Blue DS Lite is coming to Australia at some unknown time, according to a Nintendo of Australia press announcement. Perhaps realizing that ice is quite rarely blue, the Australian unit will be called "Sky Blue." We can verify that yes, the sky is blue.
There's no word on release date or price, but we'd expect it to be $A199.95 (US $165) like other DS's in Australia. You know, unless Nintendo of Australia is just a bunch of jerks. Oh, and speaking of jerks, there's still no sign of the lovely Ice/Sky Blue DS Lite being released in the U.S.
Update: Go Nintendo is confirming that the handheld will be available come July 19th and retail for $199.95RRP. Also, it would seem this is going to be a one time limited release.
We really weren't fans of Mario's blue shell ability in New Super Mario Bros., because it tended to steer us inexorably into a lava-filled grave. But we want to hug this plush Blue Shell Mario. And then maybe toss him into lava.
Play-Asia is selling these adorable NSMB toys, produced by Banpresto, for about $11 each. You have your choice of the aforementioned Mario, a Mega Mushroom, Boo, Luigi (in casino minigame regalia) and Toad. Does anyone else find it odd that Luigi still wears his green hat, even when he's in formal attire?
Modojo's Ryan Morgan took a trip into the underworld of DS games, finding the meanest of the mean villains and delivering stern warnings about them. These aren't the everyday spiny, cloaked, "NOOOOOOO"-bellowing villains we know, the kind that telegraph their evilness to the world, but some more insidious cads who, while they look innocuous enough, will strike and attempt to force you to feed their twisted, evil obsessions.
The biggest offender? The color blue, who Nintendo seems to have collaborated with to render Brain Age players hoarse or even mute from repeated attempts at the Stroop test. Bluuuuuuuuuuuue!
Posted Feb 27th 2007 2:30PM by JC Fletcher
Filed under: News
[Update 1: The announcement was about Bone for the PC and not for the DS. It mentions that the publisher is "focusing on the PC and Nintendo DS markets", not the game. We apologize for the misunderstanding. Thanks to eric c for the correction!]
Before the episodic Sam & Max games, Telltale Games were known among adventure game holdouts for their adaptations of Jeff Smith's Bone comic series. They followed a similar business model: periodic, bite-sized chunks of delicious puzzle solving, set in cult comic book trappings.
Now publisher Xider is bringing the Bone games to the DS PC and unidentified games to the DS in Europe in 2007. We hope that they decide to bring them stateside as well, and that they don't decide to shoehorn weird touch screen/microphone puzzles into what is supposed to be a pretty good adventure series. It's still possible, but the identities of the DS games have yet to be announced.
We're so proud of our little DS, bringing back two of our favorite long-lost game genres: the graphicaltext adventure and the 3D adventuregame.
You can have a pink one, or a pimped out black one. You can go with phat or sleek. You can turn it into a turtle shell or a tank. You can tattoo it or you can go for plain, sparkling white. With the DS, the choice is yours ... and some people like to go for multiples. For DS owners, it seems less is definitely not more. So what about you? Are you packing more than one DS? Was it the lure of a new color, or did you yearn for a special edition? Did you make the transition from phat to lite? We'd love to know if you have more than one DS lying around the house.
And while we're on the subject ... anyone else just itching for the blue ones to make their way outside Japan? Import costs are just no fun.
The adventure genre peaked in the early to mid 90's. And then it crashed. Hard. As it trudged along through the years, essentially dead but for rare gems like The Longest Journey, it slowly faded from the minds of modern gamers.
The point-and-click capabilities of the DS have certainly given the once-zombified genre a much-needed jolt. We've seen excellent offerings, including the superlative Phoenix Wright series, the soon-to-be-released Hotel Dusk: Room 215, Trace Memory, Lost in Blue, and a few others (let's not even mention the ScummVM homebrew project). But the DS gives these games something they could have never had in the nineties: absolute portability. It's almost as though these games compete directly with the classic novel, something which has never really been seen even amongst the myriad of gadgets anyone can go out and readily purchase.
Our question is this: how does a DS adventure game compare to that of a classic book? What would you rather whip out on the way to work? Phoenix Wright2 has had our hearts and minds in a legal grip for days on end. You may not look as smart as those punks reading Vonnegut, but that's okay. You look cooler.
It's embarrassing, I know. To be so thoroughly destroyed by yours truly in Mario Kart DS is a humbling experience. Still, any master such as myself still wants a bit of competition now and then, and thus this video, posted by the folks over at Nintendo of Europe, highlights some of the games' numerous shortcuts and tricks. There are even one or two even I didn't know about (Delfino boardwalk jump!), so with this video in mind, perhaps you'll all fare better in the future. MK:DS won't be back in the rotation for a few more weeks, but the day will soon come. Train, young warriors, and perhaps you might stand a chance.
Oh. And that blue shell dodge at the end is a thing of beauty.
DS-x2 got a hold of some screens for the upcoming sequel to Lost in Blue. What's the most surprising about them is the confirmation that the game will take place on a desert island. We totally didn't see that coming! Now, we never played the first game, so we have no frame of reference on whether to be excited or disappointed at the idea of a sequel, but that's why we have you, fine reader!
Continue past the jump to catch the screens and leave a comment telling us how you feel about a Lost in Blue sequel. What did you love/hate about the first game?
With my undying love for Age of Empires: Age of Kings and good impressions of the small build I saw for Panzer Tactics at E3, I'm full of anticipation for Blue Byte's The Settlers. I feel it my duty to report to you fine readers that a new batch of screenshots for the game have been posted up at Gamespot. The images show several different locales and some of the stat-tracking of the game through its graphs.
So while The Settlers is a real-time strategy game where Age of Empires and Panzer Tactics are both turn-based, some fans firmly aligned with one side might not be so willing to see what the other has to offer. Regardless, the DS, with its touchscreen capabilities and wonderfully-portable nature, is perfect for these types of games and we would love to see them keep on coming.
For so long now, Europe has lived beneath a cloud, with a populace that is served by Smart Black, Crystal White, and Platinum Silver DSes. Where's the color, Nintendo? We know all about Noble Pink, but some of us are manly men, and it would hurt our fearful reputation to be seen with such a gentle shade of DS! Across the Atlantic, our North American friends have enjoyed those lovely two-tone models.
We don't necessarily make a post about the box design for every new game, but we pretty much had to for Brain Age 2, for the following reasons:
Modojo's Ryan Morgan took a trip into the underworld of DS games, finding the meanest of the mean villains and delivering stern warnings about them. These aren't the everyday spiny, cloaked, "NOOOOOOO"-bellowing villains we know, the kind that telegraph their evilness to the world, but some more insidious cads who, while they look innocuous enough, will strike and attempt to force you to feed their twisted, evil obsessions.
You can have a 
The adventure genre peaked in the early to mid 90's. And then it crashed. Hard. As it trudged along through the years, essentially dead but for rare gems like The Longest Journey, it slowly faded from the minds of modern gamers.
It's embarrassing, I know. To be so thoroughly 
DS-x2 got a hold of some screens for the upcoming sequel to Lost in Blue. What's the most surprising about them is the confirmation that the game will take place on a desert island. We totally didn't see that coming! Now, we never played the first game, so we have no frame of reference on whether to be excited or disappointed at the idea of a sequel, but that's why we have you, fine reader!
With my undying love for Age of Empires: Age of Kings and good impressions of the small build I saw for Panzer Tactics at E3, I'm full of anticipation for Blue Byte's The Settlers. I feel it my duty to report to you fine readers that a new batch of screenshots for the game have been posted up at Gamespot. The images show several different locales and some of the stat-tracking of the game through its graphs.
