With so much attention on Nintendo's Wii since launch, its little sister, the DS, often gets overlooked. But not, it seems, by gamers.
Even after all these years, the DS is still battling on and has sold 30.31 million units, up 28.7 per cent from the previous year in the company's latest
.
That's pretty impressive with healthy and strong competition in that space especially from Sony's excellent PSP.
So what's new for the robust little DS?
Advance Wars: Dark Conflict
(Nintendo. DS, M)
Advance Wars: Dark Conflict
, released overseas as
Days of Ruin
, is a long-running turn-based strategy series.
This is another game about the end of the world as we know it and so has a sombre setting. A huge meteor shower has wiped out 90 per cent of the population.
The remnants of humanity split into warring factions to fight for survival in what traces of civilisation are left behind. The focus is built on strategically defending and attacking to kill off as many enemies as you can.
You play a military cadet who digs himself out of the ruins and heads off across the scorched earth with the Laurentian military to find more survivors.
The AI is good, the two screens mean that you can get a good feel of the battle, and the camera zoom means you get a broad look at the map and control of the action. The addition of wireless internet play is exciting for your mates of the same strategy ilk. Why not take to the skies, over land and sea to defeat your friends?
There's great variety in the strategies you can employ dependant on the units under your command and a good choice of weaponry from motorcycles to anti-tank units and gunboats, which can be merged to bolster the units combined strength.
The touchscreen is perfect for moving infantry and vehicles around and map navigation seems intuitive, though I found myself playing a round quicker, in mere minutes, than by using the control pad and buttons.
I'm still enjoying bouts of the turn-based strategy Wii game
Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn
that I reviewed earlier - and have played well over 60 hours.
This DS game, from the same developer,
, is almost as fun and compelling. It's also more complex than at first looks and the missions get longer as you set into the game as well as useful tips that keep the learning curve going - there are 26 missions plus training ones and a solid range of 150 maps.
MadGamer rating: 9 / 10
Chibi Robo: Park Patrol
(Nintendo. DS, G)
The colourful
Chibi Robo:Park Patrol
is a strange niche platform-like game involving a tiny robot that belongs to a household.
Whether it's global warming or evil people to blame, parks are not the nice places they once were. The flowers have drooped and disappeared and people don't visit anymore.
Chibi-Robo is a robot that wants to spread happiness and be the best robot in the world - so he is programmed and dispatched to restore the parks to the enjoyable places they were.
Cute Chibi is charged with his trusty boom box that, when played correctly, makes the flowers bloom.
It's not a game for everyone but if you want something quirky to chill out to for a while, you'll find it does the job.
MadGamer rating: 7.5 / 10
Lessons learned with GTA IV full version
Meanwhile Auckland student Stan Calif, who runs the
site, is busy stuffing courier bags with the unedited full version of the best-selling latest Grand Theft Auto game, GTA IV and he says demand is beyond his expectations.
Calif had to import the game and then spend at least $1400 of his own money for the New Zealand censor to classify it (he would be billed more if the censorship office spent more than four hours playing it: it is then an extra $100 per hour).
In New Zealand, game maker Rockstar provided stores with the same version Australian gamers got - which was cut because Australia's highest game rating is MA15+ even though NZ has an R18 rating.
And it's an R18 rating the NZ censor has given the copy provided by Calif - in a move that will make many of my friends happy.
Calif though, is angered.
"We should now push Australia to have better gaming rating laws as we can't afford to have this again in New Zealand especially for such a game we've all been waiting for ages.
"Even though it cost me money, I thought the people of New Zealand deserved a choice and should have got what they wanted in the first place."
Calif says he wasn't given a breakdown of what was edited from the version on sale in New Zealand and Australia but was told it was two minutes of sex scenes.
Forums have talked about the differences involving mainly scenes with prostitutes which comprise only audio in the edited version.
Some local gamers have already imported the game from the US.
Calif says he will be disappointed if other local sellers piggyback on his censorship efforts and import the game for sale without having to have gone through the effort and expense of paying the $1400 for the censorship rating.
Calif says he won't say how many he has sold but he has been busy the last few days packing courier bags.
All this means local shops have missed out on some sales and many local gamers are now angry they have an edited version when they could have had the full original.
Hop over to First Games and take a gander at the resourcefulness of a good Kiwi bloke. Kudos Calif.
Visa and Mastercard push back.