I’m loving my DS. I wasn’t sure if I’d like it or not, so I waffled on buying one for months. Now that I finally have one, I wish I had gotten it sooner. I picked up Animal Crossing: Wild World and Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time as the first two games. I enjoyed both greatly, but have now moved onto Advance Wars: Dual Strike.

Mario & Luigi was similar to the GBA version, but with less funny dialog. Fawlful’s speaking is the mustard on the sandwich of your doom. Oh well, the game was still enjoyable, if slightly less so. However, I still find it fascinating how they mixed the jumping strategy of Mario brothers with RPG turn styled combat. Or maybe I’m just impressed that they seem to have pulled it off. Either case, it was worth getting.

I picked up Animal Crossing just because of what I had heard about it. I was very curious to see how the wireless worked with this one. The way Nintendo choose to do this is interesting. It seems like everyone else is building up these massive forum/chat systems to get players together. Then having to deal with all of the trolling and what-not that goes with it. While Animal Crossing instead requires you to exchange friend codes, via some other medium, before you can connect with another player.

An exception to this however is bottle messages, which you toss into the ocean. And if there is another DS with Animal Crossing nearby, they’ll exchange the messages. This sounds neat, though as much as I tried, it never happened for me. Though I’m not fully surprised, I live out in the suburbs. I did carry it into work, but really, how many people downtown do you think also are carrying? So I had to take their word on this bit working.

Once I had messed around a bunch with the wireless, fulfilling my curiosity, I just played it a bit. I think it would have been better, if they didn’t use a real clock. Nothing like not playing for a couple of days and finding your town going to crap. I fiddled a little more after that, but all-in-all, its not really my kind of game. So I traded Animal Crossing and Mario & Luigi in for a discount on Advance Wars.

Advance Wars: Dual Strike is much more my style of game. (Yummy, turn based strategy.) Not that I’m any good at it mind you, its just what I enjoy. I’ve been looking for something similar to Final Fantasy Tactics Advance to play next. (Which I haven’t actually stopped playing; its plugged into my DS all the time.) I just started playing it, and am already loving it greatly. Though I think I won’t take it to play on the bus to work anymore. I missed my stop this morning, and then kept picking it up to play one more battle.

It isn’t like I really need anything more to soak up what little free time I have. Even so I’m already looking forward to the new Legend of Zelda game. That and I’m really interested in seeing what Brain Age is like. But those aren’t out yet, so my free time is safe for now.