Ta daa!

My first Club Nintendo purchase... it's so shiny and promptly delivered! Good job, Nintendo! You don't suck all the time after all. And there's reflection in my picture, I know, but that's because the game is still all sealed and beautiful! There's even a "Not for Resale" label on the back... I feel like I'm in a cool members-only club that has dues and things. And all I had to do was buy $800 worth of Nintendo stuff! What a deal.

More neat stuff from the future

At E3, Natal was the big hit of the show. But there was also some surprising technology going on over in the DS section. I'm talking about Scribblenauts, a new action puzzle game with a twist. When you reach an obstacle, you write a word on the DS screen, any word, and the thing you wrote manifests itself in the game world, as usuable in the game as it would be in real life. Check it out:

Video Game - E3 2009 - Videogames

The guy said no copyrighted or vulgar words, but you can be sure that everyone will try to get it to draw a wang right off the bat. But once that novelty wears off, you will discover the thousands upon thousands of words that materialize, whether they have a purpose in your particular puzzle or not. With 220 levels, it will be interesting to see the creative YouTube videos that come out of solving puzzles in incredibly weird ways. In the video, the hero encountered two different dinosaurs. One, he fed a salad. The other, he hit with a crowbar. I want to hit it with "evolution" and make it turn into a man so it can be my sidekick. That would be super awesome.

A few game sites noticed Scribblenauts, but not nearly as many as it looks to deserve. If it works, (Big if? Maybe a medium if.) it will be the coolest game/thing to ever hit the DS. Its simplistic nature combined with an incredible amount of replay value will have many gamers hitting the dictionary in an attempt to stump it. It even has "plumbob." Hope I can go Kiss-style and equip the guy with a guitar and huge amp and slay dinosaurs with the power of rock! I'm giddy already. Please do everything you promise, Scribblenauts!

A baby seal walks into a club...

Since the early days of the NES, there has been some form of the current Club Nintendo. The Super Mario Fun Club, My Nintendo, Nintendo Power Club, I'm sure there's more. Today, they offer special gifts to people who join the club and earn a certain number of points. The catch: you can only get points from official Nintendo products. First party games only. With the Wii, that's not so bad. Who's buys third party Wii games anyway? You get 30 points for registering a DS game and 50 points for a Wii game. At 300, you achieve "gold" status and at 600 you are "platinum." Also, with more points, you can cash them in for Nintendo cards or DS game cases or, the motherload, a Club Nintendo-exclusive Game & Watch Collection game for DS.

A number of months ago, a Tingle (the fruity elf guy from Zelda) game was made available to Japanese Cllub Nintendo members. Since then, the value of the game has basically skyrocketed. Hopefully, this game will do the same, because I have nearly enough points to order it. Still, it takes an awful lot of loyalty to afford it. 800 points = $800 spent on Nintendo products. And, since the Nintendo fiscal year ends on June 30th, I am fairly sure that Nintendo will mix up their rewards at that time. And then G&W will be gone forever! And that makes me a sad panda. But I do already have 720 points, and I'm sure there are some more Wii games sitting around this house. If only I cared about my Wii, I would know where the games are! I must have the shiny golden game. I don't even want to unwrap it or play it, however. I want to sell it when I'm 60 and buy a Ferrari with the profit.

Puzzle Quest - The Hidden Addiction

When Puzzle Quest came out on DS, PSP, PC, Wii, PS2, PSN, and XBLA, I picked it up for $20. Yeah, it looked to be basically a Bejeweled clone, but it was a Bejeweled clone in which you could level up and cast spells and slay goblins! Awesome. I would play it on the toilet, where nobody would bother me, and I would often sit there until my legs fell asleep. "Just one more game," I would say to myself, "I wouldn't be able to stand up right now anyway, my feet are numb." Within days, I had already reached the last boss. It is not a short game. I was addicted. To a puzzle game. To a DS game! No way! But when I completed it, I put it away. Because it had an end point to the storyline, there was a time when it was eventually over. This is unlike other Tetris, or Lumines, or other puzzlers you can play ad nauseum. Does that hurt it as a brilliant game? I don't know...

When the year was up and I was looking over various Game of the Year awards in magazines and on the Internet, Puzzle Quest kept popping up as a final contender. I had played it (a lot) and yet had never considered it one of the greatest games of the year. This was pretty weird, because I don't want to play a bad game, no one does. Yet even though I sunk more time into it than just about any other game that year besides Oblivion, I discounted it subconsciously because of its simplicity and "casual" nature. A simple puzzle game can't be Game of the Year! But what makes Game of the Year? Is it addictiveness, a willingness to play it over all other games of its time? Because Puzzle Quest ensnared me completely, even with a simple, cliched fantasy plot and colorful yet unimpressive graphics that did their job and little else. Also, the music was just awful, and the loop was far too short for the amount of time an average person could sink into it. But I loved it. And I am hereby declaring it one of my favorite games of all time. Maybe Puzzle Kingdoms is good too...?