I was surfing about Amazon when I noticed that there was a Nintendo DS bundle with the new Mario Kart DS. Upon research of the game, I found out it supported online play (the DS has Wi-Fi). Given my recent rediscovery of all things Mario, I got very interested, very quickly.
So I stopped at Target for a few things this morning, and there it was. I haven't bought anything for myself in many moons, so I figured it was time. I also picked up Warioware Touched as well.
After f'ing around with my router settings for a half-hour, I finally got the DS to talk to Redmond, or where ever Nintendo parks their servers. My first online match, I kicked the guy/girl's ass. When it showed the career win-loss, they were apparently a n00b at well. Next match, I got hooked up with two winners. It all went down hill from there!
Still, it was so much fun playing with other people from all over. The single player game is pretty sweet (32 tracks, including some from previous versions!), but the fun of the game has always been multi-player with humans. It turns out that it's even fun with strangers from all over the world. It's a bit slow finding people to play with, but maybe that's just the time of day, or the fact that the game is still fairly new. I bet Christmas day there will be a ton of people. It's really a lot of fun!
I also got Touched, because Stephanie got addicted to the GBA version. I tried the DS version in the store, and found it to be a ton of fun. I've only played a few rounds, but this one if fun too! The part about blowing into the microphone is a little weird, but the various mini-games using the stylus are very clever.
Opening up that box, I noticed the old familiar Nintendo labeling, and remembered that the first game machine I ever bought myself, with my own money, was the original Nintendo Gameboy, the very week it came out. In fact, it even cost the same as this DS bundle ($150). Prior to that I had an Atari 2600 that my parents bought years earlier. So I feel a certain amount of allegiance to Nintendo. God knows they still make some of the most fun games. I sure hope they get their next console right, for their sake.