Helium Party Balloons

Nintendo DSi XL image copyright Nintendo

Around this time of year, I look around my house and try to decide exactly what tech needs updating and what will last another year.

That includes consoles that might be obsolete e as well as games that my kids have outgrown.

When Nintendo offered a package of the new Nintendo DSi XL and several new games for me to review, I jumped at the chance to try them out and see if they were something we needed and that I could recommend to other parents.

My big question when the Nintendo DSi XL came out was whether it was worth spending the money.

I’d already shelled out funds to upgrade from the DS to the DSi. That was worth it, as my youngest son had great fun with all the new features, particularly the camera. But it seemed like the only advantage offered by the XL was a bigger screen.

Nintendo DSi

It turns out that bigger screens are worth it.

Both my sons said the graphics were far better on the larger screens and they enjoyed their games more on it than the smaller DSi.

If you have a DS right now, I’d say skip the DSi and go straight for the DSi XL.

It’s a tougher call if you want to move from the regular DSi to the XL. A quick check of Amazon showed the DSi available for anywhere between $145 to $182. The XL seems to sell for a more solid price of $179.99.  If you have the DSi, you might not want to drop that much money for a larger screen and instead wait for the new 3D version which is supposed to be coming in March of next year.

I also received a new DS game to review for play on the XL, Pokemom Ranger: Guardian Signs.

My youngest son, who’s played nearly every Pokemon game including several made for the Gameboy Color, pronounced it a “pretty good” game. As in other Ranger games, Guardian Signs is based on protecting Pokemon from outside threats rather than out and out duels. With this game, you can now capture Pokemon with your stylus. My son said he enjoys that part very much but pointed out that it’s impossible to play if you lose the stylus. Having back-ups available is a good idea.

I also received two new games for the Wii system, PokePark Wii: Pikachu’s Adventure and Wii Party.

The main fun of the PokePark game is that you get to play as Pikachu, the most popular of the Pokemom and the face of the franchise. (He’s my daughter’s favorite Pokemon and I suspect that’s not at all unusual among Pokemon fans.)

You must save PokePark from having the land above fall down on it. The problem, my son said, is that most of the game consists of various mini-games, many of which he didn’t find fun. “It’s all mini-games, dialogue, and walking around,” he said. My son and his twin sister got stuck on a game involving steps and eventually quit rather than finishing it.

If you child really loves Pikachu, this could be a game for them but be warned that you might have to help out now and again on the more challenging mini-games.

Official Screenshot of PokePark from Nintendo

It’s a struggle to find Wii games that everyone will play in my house. My kids range in age from seventeen to eleven and I have two boys and two girls, so their tastes do not often mesh.

We all gave Wii Party a try. I hoped that it would have something for everyone. It did. We all didn’t like every game but it was definitely fun and with over seventy games available, one of them is likely to be the right fit for your family or circle of friends.

Our consensus favorites were two version of hot potato. In one, you pass the controller around, holding a specific button. If you shake the controller or miss the button, your character blows up. In the second one, which was a bit less challenging, you pass around the controller and state words from a specific category supplied by the game. We had to state a vegetable, then pass it on within ten seconds. Players can challenge each other’s words, too, and refuse to take the controller. When that happens, you blow up on-screen. That’s literally, as a big bomb goes off.

My son added to his amusement by playing the game as Mii Jesus. His younger brother had found it on the Mii Channel. Mii Jesus never did get blown up.

Just Mom.

That somehow seemed amusing to my children. Go figure.

The Touch Pad Pencil by Suck UK

I think it’s safe to say that winter is upon us once again, and for us geeks that can make using some of our favorite gadgets a bit tricky. I’m talking of course about trying to operate the touchscreen of your iPhone/iPad/Android etc. outside in the cold. At the beginning of the touchscreen revolution you had two choices — have cold fingers or put it away until later – but now there are many more options to help us keep twittering whilst waiting for a train on a freezing platform.

Several companies are now making gloves with special conductive fingertips — my favorites are Dots Gloves, and more recently North Face have joined in with their eTip range. Grathio has a great Instructable on how to make your favorite pair of old gloves work by sewing conductive thread onto the fingertips. And then there’s a whole bunch of companies making styluses that will do the job just as well as your finger, but leaving your hands snug and warm inside your gloves.

I’ve always thought of a stylus as an evolutionary regression for the iPhone, harking back to dim and distant days of Palm Pilots or even the Newton, but this one from SUCK UK might have just changed my mind. Styled like a chunky, worn down, retro school pencil complete with an eraser (but no chewing marks), the Touch Pad Pencil is made from a special electro-conductive rubber to work perfectly with the capacitive screen on your touchscreen gadget, and for only £7.50 it would make a perfect stocking filler. Hint, Hint…

The only downside I can see is that if the little one spots me ‘drawing’ on my iPhone, she might pick up any old pen and do the same!

(found via imjustcreative.com)

Are video games more than just a way to blow off steam to you? Do you get tired of talking with people who don’t know their Gran Turismo from their Mario Kart? Do you have a stack of games you’re done with, but that you can’t bring yourself to trade in at your local game store because they give you so little for them? If that sounds like you, you ought to check out Gamervision.

Gamervision’s tagline is “How gamers see the world,” and you can tell that they don’t just talk the talk. The site has reviews, articles, discussion forums, and even videos — some informative, some downright silly and occasionally hilarious. The site’s been up for several years, but they’ve only recently added a feature that should appeal to serious video gamers everywhere: a place to swap, sell 0r buy games from people who care as much about them as they do. And all features of the website are absolutely free.

Gamervision was founded by Fred Bauer and Edward H. Cohen, who’d been in the entertainment industry a while (and who made the awful film Under the Rainbow, which inexplicably has little cult following). Bauer and Cohen dreamed of making a TV show that, like shows that highlight music videos, would highlight video games, but when the Web 2.0 “revolution” happened, they changed strategies. The website has picked up a bit of a following from word-of-mouth (or word-of-keyboard) between gamers and from several of their videos going somewhat viral — see below for their brilliant “Inglorious Plummers” trailer.

As I mentioned, the newest (albeit still in beta)  feature of the website is “Swap and Sell,” which provides a board with a dead-simple interface to allow gamers to post things they’re willing to part with and what they want in return — either in the form of games or money. Gamervision only makes the connection, leaving it up to the users to complete the transaction (they will have a feedback form to allow people to build good or bad reputations based on others’ experiences dealing with them).

I spoke with Sean Curran, Gamervision’s creative director, about their vision for the site. He told me they’re striving for “more social network than troll community,” which should be music to anyone’s ears who’s participated in gaming forums elsewhere. Sean and the other executives are themselves participants in the forums, since they love the games as much as the other users do. He told me they consider being a gamer (though not necessarily a hardcore one) a requirement for working there, and it shows in the content. He also told me that the company is working on forming a partnership with a bricks-and-mortar game store to provide a place for gamers to meet in real life as well as online.

The company isn’t quite at its destination, “to make sure that the site is a place where gamers can express how they see the world and what they want to see in the world.” But it’s got a good start on it, and I think all it really needs now is for more gamers to try it out. If you enjoy video games, and I don’t know why you’ve read this far in the article if you don’t, you owe it to yourself to give Gamervision a shot.