Friday 30 September 2005

Pic of the day: Looks like SOMEONE has forgotten to fill the water bowl...

Nintendogs

Bought an electronic dog today. It is not the first time I have done so: Long-time readers may remember Dogz and eventually Catz which played on my screen under Windows95 (and, I believe, 98). Later attempts to install them again however was met with clear refusal since I did not run Windows95, which was required. Obviously it's some time since 95. The new breed is available on the handheld game console Nintendo DS. Thus the name.

The game is hugely popular in both Japan and North America, which is why I have heard about it: Some of my online friends have it already. It is not officially released in Europe yet, but the North American version is the same and my local Gamezone does import directly from there sometimes. (Actually I did not know that it wasn't released here yet, much less that shops in the US were sold out the day it came in. If I knew it was in short supply, I might have waited. "It is not right to take the bread from the children and give it to the dogs", as a better man has said. I suppose taking the dogs from the children is not much better, but don't take that as gospel.)

There are three different versions of the game, each giving 6 starter breeds. Don't worry, if you play long enough you can get access to all the breeds in all the games, so you don't need to buy more than one. As you take your dog out, you meet dogs of other breeds and your dog gets familiar with them, and eventually you can buy your own. (Though you can only have 3 at a time in your home, which seems more than plenty to me.) Likewise you can enable the wireless feature of the Nintendo DS before logging off the game; then if you pass within ca 100 feet of others who have done the same, their dog will play with yours, possibly exchanging gifts, and unlocking their breed in your game. That's a pretty wild gimmick, not very useful on remote farms but probably quite effective in Tokyo.

I haven't tried any of that. I've just adopted a Golden Retriever (because that's the kind of guy I am: Quiet, friendly and loyal. Yeah). It sure can eat. It does so more frequently than I. I have taught it to reasonably recognize its name. Now when I call: "Primus!" to my Nintendo, my dog comes running to the fore of the screen and press its snout against the glass. Probably needless to say, I don't do this on the bus. I've also taught it to sit down, and next is shake paws.

It is recommended to take the puppy for a walk at least once a day. I do it far more often, though I don't have any problem obeying the half- hour rest between walks. But something like 4-5 times a day we walk around the virtual neighborhood, meeting other dogs and sometimes finding abandoned toys which my dog brings to me and I take home. I understand that these can be sold if your dog finds more than it needs, but it doesn't seem likely that a puppy can pay his own way. And the game does not add new money each workday, you start with a fixed sum and then earn more by winning competitions or selling surplus toys. If your dog is not too full, it may also eat any scraps it finds. So far it has found one cheese Mac. Still, unless it learns some more skills we are headed for bankruptcy in a month or two or three...

Of course, my fads usually last only 2-3 weeks, so that may not be a problem. Then again, I have written this journal for 7 years now, pretty near every day. So I may have some deeper tendency to feed and jog electronic companions... ^_^