happylife

Mariokart DS

Nintendo Mariokart DS is much better than I had expected. I have never seen such an exciting racing game. It is so exciting that I am now annoyed with the pain in my thumbs and eyes. I have decided not to play it more than 30 minutes a day. It is similar to the the rule that mothers and fathers impose on their children, however I would waste my precious hours unlimitedly without it. The most addictive point of this game is of course the network competition in which we can race with human opponents on the Internet. Competing with machine opponents is more or less empty because their strategy is in one pattern and they wouldn't excite if we provoked them. Everyone would prefer to play with human opponents but it is rather difficult for mature people to gather in one place with the same game systems. With the WiFi connection system of DS, we can always enjoy the racing game with human opponents automatically searched on the Internet. If I made an opponent slip by putting a banana skin on the course, he or she would chase me to get their revenge on me. It's really exciting. My last 30 minutes before going to bed is reserved for the world grand prix every night.

Nintendo DS lite

As you know, Nintendo DS lite is the most successful product in portable game devices. It was put on the market almost one year ago, and since then it has always been in short supply in Japan. It is said that the demand is way greater than the supply, and if you dared to get it, you would have to buy it at a rather expensive price or get into a bundle sale in which you have to buy related software with it even if you don't like it. On the other hand in Vancouver, we can buy it at a reasonable price. To tell the truth, I bought one of them in Walmart at C$147.70 the other day. Considering the high tax rate, it is still C$20 to C$30 cheaper than in Japan. It might be a small business to purchase dozens of them in Walmart and carry them back into Japan. Fortunately, the North American model can be used in Japanese language. Anyway, what is the reason for this inverted situation? I think one of the reason is that Japanese people can easily get overheated and rush to this popular product, while Canadian people are staying in calm and mature.

Rubik's Cube's defect

Rubik's Cube is such a popular puzzle game that we can find it in most families all around the world, and I can guess that most of them are thrown out in the corner of a room, with the confused color patterns on it. Once it is scrambled, it's too difficult for beginners to arrange the same color on each face. I think this is the critical defect of Rubik's Cube. It's almost impossible for most people to revert the scrambled cubic without any technique. If he or she could solve it, it would be an accident. There are some solving technique for Rubik's Cube, and people who know one of them fight in a champion's ship of Rubik's Cube challenging the best time, which seems to be great and almost incredible for most people without the technique. However, I think they are not so great because all they are doing is following their solving method. It's no creative work and actually a robot can do it way faster. The most interesting thing about this puzzle game is finding the solving way, and to do that, we often need the cubic with the initial pattern. We had to have several cubics to find the method but with this web page I found today, we can get the initial pattern whenever we need. It is named "Rubik's Cube Solver," but I want to call it "Rubik's Cube reseter."

Panel De Pon

"Panel De Pon" is a Nintendo's traditional puzzle game. There are six-row panels coming up from the bottom and we have to delete them before they reach the top. Each panel has six or seven kinds of marks and we can switch any two panels to the horizontal direction by controlling the cross cursor. If more than three panels with the same mark are in row or in column, they vanish and the upper panels fall down to fill the space. The rule is very simple but the game is so addictive that I forget blinking. To tell the truth, I don't like playing latest video games because they are too real and their rules are too complicated. I don't like to think much while playing games because they exist for our relaxation. I prefer simple games like this "Panel De Pon."

Sudoku for Palm

As I mentioned before, I'm now addicted to "Sudoku," a Japan made, simple, numeric crossword puzzle. I bought one of the sudoku books which has 125 puzzles, and finished them. I mean I have solved all of the 125 puzzles. It's rather ridiculous because it takes 10 to 60 minutes to solve each puzzle. I did it in these three weeks while preparing for the PPL written exam. I know I had to spend all the time for sudoku to prepare for the PPL, but I couldn't. The puzzle game is so addictive. After finishing the book, I've got great software for Palm, which generates new sudoku puzzle games as many as I like. It is almost a black hole for me; all of my time and energy are pulled to it. How can I escape from this strong temptation?

SuDoku

SuDoku is an addictive puzzle game like a crossword puzzle. It was originally invented in Japan, however, it is not so popular in the country. After it was introduced in a newspaper in North America, it has won a big market not only in North America but also in Europe. It is so popular that I found a special corner of Su Doku in a bookstore in Vancouver. The name of this puzzle game indicates the rules of it. Su means number and Doku means bachelor in Japanese. There are 9 x 9 grids made of nine 3 x 3 grid boxes, and some of the cells have one digit number from 1 to 9. The object of this game is to fill in all the cells with a number. When you play it, every row, column, and box has to contain all the numbers from 1 to 9. The rule is very simple but in order to solve it, highly logical thinking is required. That is one of the reason of this popularity of this game. They are playing it to prevent senility.

Hanafuda

When I visited Seattle, I stayed in my friend's house living in Redmond in the U.S. It was after 9 pm when I arrived their house. They are now stuck on hanafuda, Japanese traditional playing cards and I was invited to their game soon after I arrived there. I was a bit tired after a long drive and thinking about the visa process on the next day, however, the game was so addictive that I was absorbed in it just like them. We played it 10 rounds and I won as a beginner's luck. It was after 1 am when I went to bed although I had to get up before 6 am on the next morning to visa process in Seattle Downtown.

Wars in a pocket

To tell the truth, I'm now addicted to a simulation game named "Gameboy Wars" running on Nintendo's pocket game machine. You may think of me as childish, but this game is well designed and fascinates a lot of adults such as me. It is one of table games just like chess or shogi. It contains hundreds of stage including special field like a city, factory, bridge, road, river, sea, plain, and mountain. The players up to four people (and any players can be replaced with the computer) fight together moving their weapons on the stage. There are more than ten weapons including, soldiers, tanks, rocket launchers, helicopters, bombers, dog fighters, battle ships, and even submarines. It takes five minutes to six hours to play each one stage, and there are about two hundred stages included in this small game machine. When I cleared all of the stages, I was surprised to find hundreds of hidden stages appeared. I'm very tired of wars.