My 27 year old brother has a DS grafted into his brain and some sort of super Hax0r chip that will play cracked warez. He will like this.

I liked advanced wars:dual strike

Sort of off-topic, but since this is the Nintendo DS thread, I figure it's actually right on topic.

I stopped playing video games when I was 14, and I never really started again until my boyfriend came home with Animal Crossing on his DS. Then I got a DS. And Animal Crossing. And then I got a DS Lite, and a second Animal Crossing cartridge. It's kind of nutty, I must admit, but it's also very relaxing: I play for about a half hour before I go to sleep each night.

I realize no one even plays this game any more, but I'm determined to earn $100 billion bells and get the town hall model. Plus I want to fill my mansion with pictures of my animal friends.

Right. So, umm, if anyone on MeCha also plays ACWW and isn't ashamed to admit it, post your friend code and we'll be MeCha WiFi buddies. ::grin::

I think I might have to check out this Etrian Odyssey....hmmm.

I'm glad to hear positive remarks about Etrian Odyssey. After Riviera I was willing to buy any portable RPG Atlus put out, but then they burned me twice with Contact (cute but boring) and Yggdra Union (crummy balance and were the interface designers on drugs or something?). So I'm holding out on Etrian Odyssey until the mass of positive opinion is a bit more critical.

Until then, it's Pokemans for me.

(I also really, really hope that Luminous Arc doesn't suck.)

Is Touch The Dead any good? I'm not big into RPGs these days, but I want a new DS game while I wait for SimCity to come out.

aparrish: I was willing to buy any portable RPG Atlus put out, but then they burned me [...] with [...] Yggdra Union (crummy balance and were the interface designers on drugs or something?). [...] So I'm holding out on Etrian Odyssey until the mass of positive opinion is a bit more critical.

Agreed that Yggdra Union was horrible--beautiful graphics and music, but terrible gameplay. I put the game down after a while, possibly because I landed it in an unwinnable state--I don't remember.

My only caveat about Etrian Odyssey is that along with the old-school mapping comes old-school difficulty: it's fair, and I haven't found any balancing issues so far, but it can be punishingly hard. Like The Bard's Tale, you can only save while in town (not in a dungeon), so in order to save you'll have to either burn an expensive one-time-use warp device or fight your way out of the dungeon the same way you came in (assuming you don't get lost when escaping because you screwed up making the map). Money's hard to come by, and levelling up characters requires an unusual amount of careful consideration when compared to RPGs of the Final Fantasy variety (for reasons outside the scope of this discussion). It's definitely more suitable for hardcore than casual gamers.

cmonkey: Touch the Dead isn't getting very good reviews, unfortunately--something like a 60% at Gamerankings, last I checked. A friend of mine picked it up and said that the need to drag a clip to the gun with the stylus to reload is a dealbreaker.

Damn, that's too bad. I was hoping for a decent zombie game for the DS :-(