<3 Gaming

Well Christmas is over and the new video games are here! Chrono Trigger DS is the first in my line-up of games to beat which I received over the holiday. So far so good. The game plays for the most part exactly as it did on the SNES and Playstation, minus the fact that loading time is faster than the other two platforms. As far as using the stylus goes its pretty much a feature to use if you in fact like using the stylus. Personally since its not a requirement to playing the game I just stick with the standard D-pad + 4 button usage. Also I was kinda impressed to see that they shipped the game with both a poster an a soundtrack! Regardless that there are only two titles on the CD, its still a nice little extra you don’t see too often. Another bonus to the game is that they kept in all of the extra content they added when Chrono Trigger was re-released in the Final Fantasy Chronicles version of the game. All of the FMVs are there and they actually added even more content to the game by slapping in a couple new dungeons and adding a side mini multi-player game where you raise a monster and can battle it against other monsters your friends have.

All in all the game is much better in my opinion just for the fact that it is now portable and feels just like the classic version of the game. It is a must buy for those of you who love RPGs like I do.

Next up a final followup of Chrono Trigger leading into the revamped Dragon Quest 4!

So recently Nintendo launch its American version of Club Nintendo. For those of you who are not familiar with it, Club Nintendo is basically a medium to encourage you to register your Nintendo products after purchasing them. How does it work? Well every Nintendo (as in publisher) game/console you purchase comes with a registration code. This code can be entered via internet at a place called My Nintendo, and it used to allow you access to special things like wallpapers for your computer, screen savers and other useless things. However now with Club Nintendo when you register a product you can actually earn a credit, in the form of coins, to receive free rewards in the mail. A few of those items being a DS Lite case, Wii remote holder, Playing Cards, or even a DS Game. That is not all though! As you accrue coins, you gain a special member status of either gold or platinum, depending on the number of coins you have accrued. Each year that you maintain this special status Nintendo will actually send you some surprise gift in the mail. Though it is not known what the gift is. Also Your membership level resets every year around June 1st I believe the FAQ mentions. This is done to make sure you keep on buying those Nintendo products I am sure.

As far as actually using the system goes, there seems to be a few good features, and a lot more bad bugs. My personal experience with Club Nintendo started with me signing up (hello!!! I want free stuff!!) which was somewhat confusing for me. The site was loading slowly, the interface was extremely laggy and I wasn’t sure I had registered correctly until I received the confirmation email. Part of that confusion was because I had also been a “My Nintendo” member, where I registered my games with the old system, and Nintendo was kind enough to migrate all those registered titles over for me! (Thank god I didn’t have to deal with that again.) Once I actually tried logging in is when the really annoying problems started occuring. I would be frequently be randomly logged out, and other times it would literally take minutes for pages to load. When I tried taking a few of the surveys for the games I had registered, which is one of the ways you earn coins, they would fail to submit or not even load when I tried taking them. Eventually I just gave up hoping it would be better in a couple days. As of today it has improved much more. I still have been randomly logged out a few times, however the interface is much much faster now and I was able to complete all my surveys without much hassle. Hopefully the service will only improve.

My advice to you is that if you have a Wii or DS and any Nintendo games, hop over to the site and start registering your products, after all the stuff is free and in the case of systems you can even get the warranty extended on your hardware for an extra 90 days by doing so. Which can never hurt.

<3 Gaming has moved to a new home due to the fact that the owner (me) feels its a waste of money and time to continue paying for hosting of services that he uses only for blog posting on a semi-monthly basis. As a result The new home has been moved to blogger! Yay for blogger, and cheapness! :p

Anywho, I will continue to post updates on my ongoing project MTG Inventory, which is nearing an alpha stage. Also the occasional post in regards to a video game I am playing may appear. As for current “what is Saritor playing?” news, I am currently playing a shaman in World of Warcraft, since all of my real life friends have now relocated and casual multi-player games are now only available with internet friends. *grumble grumble* Once the holidays clear I hope to be playing some Chrono Trigger DS.