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Portables (Games) Businesses Nintendo

Review: Animal Crossing and Electroplankton 117

Posted by Zonk from the well-it's-not-really-a-horse dept.
When is a game not a game? Because it's software designed to run on the Nintendo DS, Electroplankton and Animal Crossing: Wild World are packaged and sold as traditional games. Despite that, they don't have many of the elements we normally associate with games; Electroplankton has no measure of progress, and Animal Crossing is more Sims than SimCity. Neither of them have a win condition. While they may not be your normal Friday night rental, both of them are potent tools for having fun. Read on for my impressions of these distinctly different titles.
  • Title: Animal Crossing: Wild World
  • Developer/Publisher: Nintendo
  • System:DS

Most games present you with clear goals, give you the means to complete your objectives, and set you loose. In good games these short-term achievable mileposts are accomplished in entertaining ways. What separates game activities from real life tasks is the entertainment value; If being a file clerk had a snappy tune and involved matching colourful patterns, it would probably be a more enjoyable position. Animal Crossing blurs the line between entertainment and some of the boring parts of real life. Through your little virtual avatar you work for a living, maintain social contacts, and live without save points if you screw something up. How does a game where you have to pay off a mortgage end up being fun?

Every player who starts a game of Animal Crossing is actually creating a miniature world. By answering some simple questions on a cab ride into town, you establish your identity and your little avatar's personality. Dropped into the town in front of the establishment of one Tom Nook, you're immersed into a reality that exists just for you. If you asked me to describe to you what you 'do' in Animal Crossing the answer would be something like this: "The player works to get out of debt to real estate tycoon (and raccoon) Tom Nook by performing odd jobs for the town's citizenry." Jobs include fossil hunting, bug catching, and fishing; All of them are accomplished through simple mini-games.

That's what you do, but that simple description belies the reason you'll want to play Animal Crossing. The mortgage hanging over your head is a very kind one. No one will break your kneecaps if you don't spend your every minute working towards a debt-free life. As such, you're free to explore the world you've created. Complete with a 24-hour clock that matches day and night cycles to the real world, Animal Crossing is a place you'll want to visit for a number of reasons.

In my town (Madison), the humorous animal citizenry were a huge draw. Besides the owl running the museum, Polly the Postmaster, and anti-RIAA music-dog K.K. Slider, my neighbors included a big jovial bear, a scatterbrained kitty, and a surly penguin. Each of them had very different personalities, with their own tastes and hobbies. The penguin liked to go bug collecting at night, for example, while the kitty was always camped out by my house with a fishing pole. Even while you consciously understand these are just figments of your handheld console's imagination, you can't help to connect with their goofy avatars. I honestly found myself wanting to make sure they were cared for. We'd send letters back and forth, often giving each other little presents that would help us personalize our homes.

The customization element in Animal Crossing is another draw. You can design T-shirts for your little avatar to wear, collect furniture and ornamental pieces to spruce up your home, and make deals with Tom Nook to expand your floorspace once you''re completely out of room. Shops only sell a given selection of items every day, and so you'll find yourself coming back to the game for short sessions every day. A typical play session will see you hopping on to check Nook's for a piece of furniture, running a quick fossil digging sweep for Blathers the museum owl, and returning some correspondence to a well-wishing neighbor.

Therein lies the fun. Instead of boxing you in with quests or time tests, Nintendo gives you the chance to live in a fully realized place. The longer you're in a town, the bigger impact you'll make. Fossil turn-ins will improve the museum, chores done for neighbors lead to civic improvements; Play long enough and you'll see some friendly faces move on to other towns and new animal-folks move in to take their place. Via an online component you can even visit the towns of friends, meeting their animal buddies and checking out what they've done for their community. Overall the online element is underwhelming, though. The joy of this game lies in being a member of a tiny, cute, furry community.

Animal Crossing is not for everyone. Even folks who played the original title on the Gamecube may not appreciate the re-envisioned Crossing; the collectable NES games are missing here, for example. If you can get past the seemingly absurd nature of the game, you'll find a kind of calm warmth can be had from participating in this goofy little neighborhood simulation. The portability of the DS makes interacting with your town during a spare twenty minutes an ideal way to play. That bus trip or waiting room interval is just long enough to make a few bells, file a mortgage payment, and send a dirty letter to your next-door neighbor. I loved it. It has everything that the usual gaming experience doesn't offer. Animal Crossing is all about community as a reflection, and in the commitment you make to some tiny animal buddies you may just find out something new about yourself.

  • Title: Electroplankton
  • Developer/Publisher: Nintendo
  • System:DS

Where Animal Crossing pushes the boundaries of what can be considered a game, Electroplankton leaps them easily. You're left wondering where exactly you've found yourself. Consisting entirely of interfaces you can use to manipulate musical elements, Electroplankton is as much a game as a guitar or a keyboard. The fact that it happens to be on the Nintendo DS means that a lot of gamers are going to end up encountering it at some point, poking at the swimming plankton in amusement and confusion.

This unique offering from Nintendo is a new way to experience music. There are several different types of music-making tools, referred to as plankton. Each plankton is a type of tiny 'living' creature that makes sounds as it moves about the world. The sounds are greatly varied in nature, and travel the gamut from remarkable recreations of instrument noises to digitized version of sounds that the players makes into the DS microphone. Making music is a matter of manipulating the plankton in new and different ways. The Hanenbow creatures are probably my favorite. They're launched from a small leaf-tube at a plant. The plant itself can be in various shapes, and each of the leaves on the plant can be oriented in 360 degrees of movement. When a Hanenbow plankton strikes a leaf, the chord is not unlike a harp being plucked. When it strikes a leaf, it ricochets off of the surface and (if other leaves are oriented to catch it) can continue to sound notes as it bounces from surface to surface. By orienting leaves appropriately beautiful melodies can be created. The Electroplankton site (flash) has flash movies of the Hanenbow and other planktons, and can give you a better idea of what the experience is like.

Some plankton are more one-trick ponies, but most of them have enough variability that you'll enjoy seeing what sort of musical experience you can get out of them. Playing with the plankton is an oddly soothing experience, as you watch the little guys moving about the DS screen while your musical arrangement echoes from the tiny system. There's something very Zen about the act of composing via plankton, a simple quiet that you don't get with more typical games like Mario Kart or Kirby.

The actual experience of play is something that should be experienced at least once. Younger people, who many never have been able to create their own music before, will be awed by the power the simple tools offer. Older players will appreciate the quality of design and the calm the experience exudes. Frustratingly, that moment of peace will not last forever. As sublime a design as Electroplankton offers, the lack of practicality it shows is infuriating. When you wish to return to real life, plankton-less, you'll be disappointed by an inability to save your compositions. There are no goals, no unlockables, nothing to goad a buyer into playing more of the game. It's absolutely nothing like a game at all, and in the United States that tactic is going to lead to lackluster sales. Without the power to save your work, working with Electroplankton is an entirely transitory act.

For me, my time with Electroplankton was introspective and enjoyable. I enjoyed the opportunity to make music, to experience something on a gaming system that wasn't reward-driven or fast-paced. In truth, I hope we see more experiences like Electroplankton in the future. Burnout is a wonderful game series, but gaming for the quiet moments is a worthwhile endeavor as well. That said, this is not a title I'd want to take on the bus and will not be something I'll be glued to months from now. As therapy or Zen-inducing music experience, Electroplankton is without equal. As a game, the title just goes beyond what I'm looking for in a software purchase.
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Review: Animal Crossing and Electroplankton More

Review: Animal Crossing and Electroplankton

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  • MMORPGs (Score:4, Insightful)

    by HTL2001 ( 836298 ) on Wednesday February 15, 2006 @01:53PM (#14726175)
    MMORPGs generally don't have a win condition either.
    • I always thought it was "pkill [insert_enemy/guild_name_here repeatedly" until they can no longer play the game

      Though, my MMORPGs I've played all included a death penalty, making the above very possible.
    • This one does, but only when you successfully create an egregious Human-Animal Hyrbid.

    • Re:MMORPGs (Score:2, Funny)

      by subl33t ( 739983 )
      "MMORPGs generally don't have a win condition either"

      Not for the subscribers anyway. The vendors definitely have THEIR win condition... $$$

    • Re:MMORPGs (Score:3, Insightful)

      by packeteer ( 566398 )
      This isn't entirely true. There are many "mini win conditions". Clearing all the way through a dungeon, or getting the perfect set of gear are current wint conditions. Just becuase you win though doesn't mean you need to stop playing the game. There are many non-MMO games with replayability factors that keep you coming back even after you have killed the hardest boss in the game. Back to MMO's however i believe you need to enjoy the game when you play it, not just after you beat it.

      • Re:MMORPGs (Score:4, Insightful)

        by EggyToast ( 858951 ) on Wednesday February 15, 2006 @03:06PM (#14726642) Homepage
        You raise a really interesting point, because Animal Crossing also consists of "mini win conditions." Paying off your house to Tom Nook is one, finishing up museums, or visiting friends to get different fruit trees, or collecting the various sets, or making lots of money on the stalk market... They're all ways to "win" in the game.

        I suppose the one major difference is that it's a lot easier to see how to "lose" in an MMORPG. You can die, have your stuff stolen, and be in a situation where it's more work than fun to progress. In Animal Crossing, your ability to progress is based on how much time you put into the game -- there's no way to die, and it's quite hard to lose money.

        • Your ability in an MMORPG is 100% based on time spent in the game too. In Animal crossing is there a way to "mess up". That is to make a mistake that leads you to do something over again therefore wasting your time when you mess up?

    • Re:MMORPGs (Score:5, Funny)

      by orthogonal ( 588627 ) on Wednesday February 15, 2006 @03:20PM (#14726747) Journal
      MMORPGs generally don't have a win condition either.

      Not true!

      First player to stop playing MMORGs, successfully escape his mother's basement, and get a real girlfriend wins.

      Unfortunately, the winners are very few....

    • Re:MMORPGs (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Yaztromo ( 655250 )

      Neither did Pac Man for that matter.

      I guess the "young 'uns" around here forget that having a definitive end state in a game hasn't always been the case. For a very long time, video games were simply set-up to see how far you could go, and who could get the highest score in a repetitive system that simply became more difficult as time progressed (usually by simply running faster). Games were often as much about concentration and a test of reflexes, with a bit of path planning here and there, and rarely h

      • But Pac-Man did have an end of a sort, as in the original game, if you managed to hit level 256, the byte that stored the level would roll over to 0 and it would become unplayable as the game tried to draw too many fruits.

        Pac-Man page on Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]
  • "Electroplankton has no measure of progress, and Animal Crossing is more Sims than SimCity. Neither of them have a win condition."

    And Sim City does..?
    • Of course it does! Just go below -100,000 in your treasury, and the game ends!
    • AFAIR it did. You need to have the city to stable and prosperous enough to bring enough profit without extra attention to sustain itself, and generally "run by itself" (or something around these lines) plus 98% or more popularity. Then the game displays something about you being the most likely winner of the country's presidential elections, and then you're free to continue playing :)
      (quite a few games dump you into a world "after victory" letting you explore, play minigames etc. You won but you can still p
      • Actually, you needed to get a score of 1000 to win, but it was impossible to get a score that high.
        • hehehe, a game with an impossible winning condition? :D
          I wrote a pacman clone for my calculator. I managed to finish it in the normal mode, even though last 3 levels were a hell. (just imagine Pacman with most of the walls removed and no energy balls :) Then the game was switching to "expert" mode where after every life lost all the dots on the level would respawn so you have to start chomping anew. I never finished it.
        • Depends on which version you're talking about. I remember in Simcity2000, in the scenario mode, you could manage a city where a random nuclear reactor would meltdown and you had to clean up and restore the city. However, if you simply paused the game as soon as it loaded, bulldozed all your nuclear reactors and built new non-nuclear power plants, no nuclear meltdown would ever occur and you would 'win' a few months later simply because you 'cleaned up' the city so quickly. Lame method but it worked.
    • Well yes, Sim City has a goal: to be a good mayor. If you are not, then nobody will want to move to your town and you won`t be able to make enough money from taxes to expand. Essentially, if you reach that point, you failed.


      In Animal Crossing, you don't even have to pay your mortage! You could just mess around and and keep all the money you made to yourself and the game will never punish you for doing so.
      • In Animal Crossing, you don't even have to pay your mortage! You could just mess around and and keep all the money you made to yourself and the game will never punish you for doing so.


        Shouldn't this game be banned for encouraging this kind of thoughtless attitude ? Il will breeed a genedation of homeless people !

        Think of the children !

  • Animal Crossing supports wi-fi (Score:4, Informative)

    by Chris_Jefferson ( 581445 ) on Wednesday February 15, 2006 @01:56PM (#14726195) Homepage
    Probably should also be mentioned that animal crossing supports wi-fi. While the game is great without it, it's really nice to be able to pop and see your friend's towns, and trade items with them. If you have a few friends who play the game, it adds a lot, and makes you keep your town super-tidy :)

    • Re:Animal Crossing supports wi-fi (Score:4, Funny)

      by idonthack ( 883680 ) on Wednesday February 15, 2006 @02:07PM (#14726265)
      Which is probably why it was mentioned in the review.
    • They missed it though.

      Having a "central town" where you can buy stuff or interact to find new people to visit would have really expanded the game.

      although I do not think that the DS can handle drawing a thousand avatars on screen.

      Create a interactive way in game to find others to mail, post notices, etc to would have made it way over the top.
    • Way easier to visit other towns via wi-fi than to swap GameCube cartridges, IMHO.

      This is very fun!
      • With the Wi-Fi, do your townspeople ever leave, never to be seen again? My son got rather upset when his favorite neighbors hit the road in the Gamecube version.
        • With the Wi-Fi, do your townspeople ever leave, never to be seen again? My son got rather upset when his favorite neighbors hit the road in the Gamecube version.

          That's a good point. What if you visit another town via WiFi while on the bus, some of your villagers leave, and then you get off the bus, never to see them again.

          Quite a depressing thought, actually.

          I know of a few animals that I wouldn't mind having left, but there are some that I quite enjoy. One problem with not planting enough flowers, trees,

  • Animal Crossing has always been like that (Score:5, Interesting)

    by WillAffleckUW ( 858324 ) on Wednesday February 15, 2006 @02:00PM (#14726219) Homepage Journal
    there is no goal, other than what you provide.

    Sometimes, I've gone on a tree-chopping crusade across villages, sometimes I've been a master gardener building a wide variety of fruit trees (and the ever elusive strawberry tree, or cherry tree with its blossoms), sometimes I've been a t-shirt collector, sometimes I've been out for gold making gold trees by burying sacks of 10,000 bells at a time.

    Other times I've been a music collector.

    Sometimes I've wanted lots of neighbors, so I've planted flowers and weeded everything to look nice - other times I've been a recluse, so I've put pitfall traps in front of my animal neighbors houses and laughed as they fell into them, and planted trees so they can't get out, while destroying all the flowers.

    It's like the real world, except noone ever dies, they just move away and leave you to wallow in your pit of despair.

  • The experience (Score:4, Insightful)

    by BigZaphod ( 12942 ) on Wednesday February 15, 2006 @02:00PM (#14726223) Homepage
    I think certain game makers are starting to really exploit the idea that a game is about the whole unified experience and not about what you do or how you do it or even what the little pieces look like. It's about a kind of interactive virtual total-immersion. Trying to explain why a game is fun in terms of how you play and what the avatars look like is a bit like claiming poker is a great game because the rules for getting a full house are so simple and the little hearts on the cards are cute.

  • Atari? (Score:4, Funny)

    by TheRealMindChild ( 743925 ) on Wednesday February 15, 2006 @02:00PM (#14726225) Homepage Journal
    Have you ever played an atari game? More specifically an Atari 2600 game? Apparently they were so low on space, they just excluded optional things, like an ENDING. I mean, even Adventure... it has an end, but it DOESNT EVER END! You just keep running around. And what about Mario Bros. I spent 7 hours once trying to get to an end. I got to level 91 before kicking the damn console with a rage only matched by a scorned woman.

    • Re:Atari? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Vo0k ( 760020 )
      Level 50 of River Raid could be considered the last: the game doesn't change after that, the level of difficulty remains. H.E.R.O. has about 16 levels, from which last 4 run in a loop. Boulder Dash, AFAIR shows some congrats, then dumps you back to level 1. Blue Max plays a nice mellody, then loops you seamlessly back into the same route. IIRC, Moon Patrol has 3 worlds with 3rd looped around. Behind Jaggi Lines never ends. Montezuma has that last room where you multiply your items, but then you can go all t
      • Hey there....
        do you have a cite for the River Raid info?
        I've always wondered about that... in fact I worked with a guy to try to map the thing out [kisrael.com]... one time I used an emulator w/ a hacked ROM w/ infinite fuel and no collisions...I let it run over night, and when I came back the game was showing "impossible" configurations, with items where they shouldn't be viz a viz on water or land...
        • There were several implementations of River Raid so if you used a (any) ROM then it was likely other implementation than the one I was loading from tape (at 600 baud, argh!)
          I cheated too, and in my version after level 50 it would just loop through several "typical" levels at the same difficulty (I got bored around lvl 150, as nothing was perceivably changing).
          I guess the thing is, with each level the river grows more narrow, my version had a hard limit, your got to negative width values :)
    • I used to love this game on Atari 2600 called Megamania. I played it until I got a score of 999,990 and then the game just stopped. I thought the game had frozen, but that was actually how the game ended, the score field wouldn't hold 1,000,000, so the game just stopped.
      • The (built-in) hunting game for Sega Master System did almost the same thing... IIRC it could hold more than that in the score feild, but not in the "Goal" feild. Basicly, I had over winning score 2 levels before the last one (IIRC that was aroud 65.... maybe 64?)

        At the end, it plays the "game over" music but prints out something telling you to go out and try real hunting I think
      • hehehe, a friend's father owned an arcade salon. He usually had one or two machines in the basement of his house and we would come to play. But sometimes the ROMs (often multiple boards the size of a big PC motherboard each) were missing, there was just one, with that space shooter I can't remember the name of, because it was buggy like this: You would just move to about 3/4 screen left and keep shooting in short bursts and all the enemies spawning would get killed before they could do anything. (if the scr

    • Re:Atari? (Score:2, Funny)

      by Ykant ( 318168 )
      You quit Mario Bros. at 91??? Dude, you only had 8 to go!

    • They weren't really supposed to have an ending. Like Tetris and other games of the era, the older arcade and Atari games were designed to be played indefinitely. As far I know, video games that actually end came about with Nintendo - and in point of fact, some of them had no ending either, like Duck Hunt with that damned giggling dog everyone in all creation despised.

      • E.T. had an ending. He rebuilts his ship and goes home.

        (and, contrary to an urban legend I've seen on slashdot, it IS beatable - it's just not a good game)

        • How'd you get out of that pit?
        • And actually, you can do it in 5 minutes.

          There are 3 (or 4) pits with phone peices in it. Get them. Then you run back to the screen where you started. Somewhere on that screen, while moving around, you will see a pizza pie thing appear at the top of the screen. Pushing your button activates this. All it is a counter to count down to when the ship will arrive. Run left one screen. Look for a little icon to appear at the top of the screen that looks like a helicopter landing pad. Just stand there. A ship com
    • Sorry to hear that. There's a spectacular cinematic victory sequence when you beat level 95.
    • This is slashdot... what is this "woman" you speak of?

    • You were so close! It actually ends at level 92, you should never have given up, its the coolest ending ever!
  • Will we have a game like in the movie jumanji?

  • There's a word for this sort of thing... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by santiago ( 42242 ) on Wednesday February 15, 2006 @02:05PM (#14726253)
    It's called a toy, as opposed to a game. While Animal Crossing seems like a very open-ended game, Electroplankton is definitely a toy. It's a neat thing that has certain properties and lets you do stuff, and you can play around with it to see what's possible and what isn't. Given the historical popularity of physical toys, it doesn't seem that surprising that virtual ones are gaining ground.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • It's called a toy, as opposed to a game.

      Now that you mention it, this phrase was used in the SimAnt manual. It said something like: "This isn't a game, but a toy. A game has rules, but you can play with a toy however you like".

      It may be worth mentioning that I got bored after playing SimAnt for a while :-/ There were no challenges.
      • Heh, so did I. And at the time I loved ants.

        The thing that makes Animal Crossing (I've only played the GC version, but I assume it applies) a game--and keeps me interested--is that although there is no pre-scripted story and you don't ever really "win", there are still goals and challenges. You have a mortgage, so there's a reason to try to earn money. Your house gets a rating, so there's a reason to try to improve it. Same with the town. It keeps track of every type of fish and bug you've caught, s
      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • you just wait and see (Score:3, Funny)

    by revery ( 456516 ) * <<ten.2cac> <ta> <selrahc>> on Wednesday February 15, 2006 @02:06PM (#14726256) Homepage
    Neither of them have a win condition.

    No win condition?

    No win condition?

    Well you just wait and see; Tom Nook's head will hang upon my wall.... Oh yes, it will.

    Nooooooooook!!!!

  • Need a port of SimTunes... (Score:5, Informative)

    by kisrael ( 134664 ) on Wednesday February 15, 2006 @02:07PM (#14726262) Homepage
    ElectroPlankton was by the same guy who wrote "Musical Insects" at the San Franscisco Exploratorium, which got redone by Maxis, called "SimTunes"...
    here's a Wired article about the artist [wired.com] and here's a review of the software [wired.com].

    SimTunes was a paintprogram of sorts, except the canvas was transversed by 4 bugs, each could be mapped to a different instrument. Each color then would make the bug play a different note or sound effect, and there were also square modifiers to change the direction or motion of the bug.

    It still had a sense of playfulness, you could just focus on making pretty pictures, but could be used as a semi-serious sequencing tool...unlike ElectroPlankton, pretty much any tune could be ported to it, plus there were some interesting tools like limiting the color pallete to a certain scale...

    anyway, SimTunes only "kind of" installs these days and runs poorly. I'd love to see a port of it to a game console or better yet as some kind of web app (with a way of SAVING results, unlike Electroplankton...)
    • A few updates to my original post:

      The guy doesn't have much of a web presence, just an old site and the odd reference here and there.

      The Exploratorium piece is Music Insects [iamas.ac.jp], not Musical...

      Also, I forgot about the lost game of Toshio Iwai -- also by Nintendo, "Sound Fantasy"...sometimes described as a precursor to SimTunes, but some descriptions mentions "subgames", as opposed to SimTunes which was a single tool...maybe it was more like Electroplankton, then...

  • Tom Nook is a Crook (Score:5, Funny)

    by idonthack ( 883680 ) on Wednesday February 15, 2006 @02:11PM (#14726286)
    He won't break your legs? I was under a different impression [vgcats.com]!
  • To some extent, I can see the argument of a lack of a win condition applied to the classic arcade games (Galaga being my current favorite). The sole point of playing these games is to continue playing them, at least in their modern incarnations where high scores tend not to be persistant or viewed by anyone but the sole proprieter of the game. Who cares if you've got the record high score if you're the only one playing? Yet we play anyway, more out of a sense of zen fulfillment than anything else.

    Hmm...
  • these are my two favorite "games" for the DS, nice overview.
  • Just because they're unconventional doesn't mean they aren't games. There are countless games that lack win conditions or a measure of progress in the traditional sense.

    At the most basic level a game is played for some kind of emotional feedback triggered by the player's actions, ideally it's positive feedback, usually as stress relief or as an escape I suppose.

    Those DS games are great, but let's not blow things out of proportion here.
    • "At the most basic level a game is played for some kind of emotional feedback triggered by the player's actions, ideally it's positive feedback, usually as stress relief or as an escape I suppose."

      that is called entertainment.
      A game involves a score or win condition.

      Man, people have some wierd thing about this.
    • Well, not Electroplankton, anyways. Someone above made a very good point, Electroplankton isn't a game; it's a toy. Think about it. He hit the nail on the head.

      Animal Crossing, OTOH, is a game.

      A game is something that you play for a reason. It has rules and it has some sort of progress or goal based on those rules.
  • When is a sim or puzzle not a game? Last I checked, a "game" wasn't required to have an ending or have you earning points. Something is a game if it is fun (although that is arguable with some of the bad "games" we have all played). The only condition in which a game isn't a game in the traditional sense if it is used for some sort of training, which I'm quite sure these games most definitely aren't.... Sure, there are probably a zillion definitions of what a game is that are quite different then mine,
    • "Last I checked, a "game" wasn't required to have an ending or have you earning points."
      Check again:
      Game [reference.com]

      A puzzle has a goal you achieve.

      A sim where there is no goal, is a toy.

      There is nothing wrong with either of them.
      • And that same page also says "An activity providing entertainment or amusement; a pastime: party games; word games." as the main definition. Most words have dozens of definitions, but it appears the main definition of game means something of entertainment or amusement. I've never played either of these games, but they sound damn fun. I will admit some of my comments may have been ignorant (Since I have no idea how Electroplankton works), but in general, they are still games. And games are often consider

    • The only condition in which a game isn't a game in the traditional sense if it is used for some sort of training...

      Since when? Many games have a purpose outside their entertainment value, which it seems you are referring to. Explain "theatre games" to me then? Everyone tends to agree that they're games, yet they're used to train different dramatic and theatrical responses. I don't think the qualifications of a game have anything to do with it's connection to real world material.

      • To sum it up, for me a game is fun or entertainment, and that is the only goal for the player. That opinion may be wrong to many though. Theatre games sound like education disguised as a "game" with your definition. Although what defines a game is pretty debatable I guess. But if I were to title theatre games as a game or a learning activity when education was the goal (and not as a learning game as it could be categorized), I'd consider them to primarily be a learning activity. But that depends on how

        • Thing that makes this dificult is that Theatre, itself, is entertainment... so training for entertainment, in itself, is likely entertaining.

          On other things, if you think about it, a lot of what elementary school is, is entertainment. It's very difficult to keep an 8 year old focused for 6 hours, and simply "entertaining" children for a length of time can have it's positive results. All you have to do is throw in a few educational things, and you're set. Video games, simply by their very nature, force peo

  • No furries pls (Score:3, Funny)

    by AEton ( 654737 ) on Wednesday February 15, 2006 @02:28PM (#14726402)
    The joy of this game lies in being a member of a tiny, cute, furry community.

    Not in public, please.
  • My wife is about as non-gamer as you can get. Well, I bought Animal Crossing for the Gamecube a few years back. She played it for months, eventually losing interest of course, but still for someone that did not usually play games this was quite a feat. I would highly recommend Animal Crossing or Animal Crossing Wild World for anyone that is not traditionally into games. As for Nintendo, I applaud them for this and other attempts at pushing the envelope and can only hope this goes on into the future. Th
    • My fiancee wasn't a big gamer either and I too got her hooked on Animal Crossing. So much so, that she was disappointed when I paid my last loan off first (got the gold statue). Everytime she plays now, she makes a comment about her "little silver statue". I've since lost interest, but it is a great game.

      I also got her hooked on playing the Gameboy SP. She has beat more games on it than I have. Makes it much easier to buy games now if I can hook her on them as well. So thanks Nintendo! :-)
  • Make the game a reflection of your *real* life.. where it's bank account is your *real* bank account... and when it's paying bills it's REALLY paying bills... ;) and you can compete with other people as to who has the most efficiently managed life for incentive.

    Who knows.. if people showed the same dedication to RL as they did their avatars, our world might actually improve a little!

  • Saving music (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Tringard ( 595737 ) on Wednesday February 15, 2006 @02:45PM (#14726519) Journal
    I thought I found the link on Slashdot, but perhaps not. A Nintendo rep recently explained [nintendo.com] a way to save your compositions to your PC (bit of a hack, but seems to work).

    From the link:
    For a very simplistic way of saving your compositions to your computer, get a male-male 1/8" audio cable ($3-$4 at your local electronics store). Plug one end into the DS headphone jack and the other into your PC's mic input. Then use a program such as Sound Recorder to capture the audio. Or research sound capture on the Intrynet using a search engine.
    • Of course he is ignoring that most people want to save their compositions to continue working on them later, which is not possible using this "solution".
    • For a very simplistic way of saving your compositions to your computer, get a male-male 1/8" audio cable ($3-$4 at your local electronics store). Plug one end into the DS headphone jack and the other into your PC's mic input. Then use a program such as Sound Recorder to capture the audio.

      If you connect your headphone jack (stereo) to your mic input (mono, most likely) you'll short out one of your sound channels and possibly blow the DS's audio amplifier. Plus the mic. input is attenuated for microphones, n
      • I've only played the WMB download demo of Electroplankton (Beatnes) so I don't know if the full game is also like this - but in that demo any music you input only gets looped like 3-4 times, then it stops. So to create a continuous, full tune you pretty much have to keep inputting more notes."

        I also played the demo before buying it and I wasn't that impressed. The full version definitely has more to offer and includes some of my favorite modes that weren't in the demo.
        I'll admit, I was hoping for more
        • Knock yourself out.

          I did enjoy BeatNES, and I know just a bit about the other stuff that's in the game - but it's still largely an unknown to me. If you'd like to elaborate on other features in the game I'd be interested in hearing about it.
  • A lot of people have to do relatively boring jobs which are now done in front of a screen. At least in the past there was limited activity involved - real interaction with fellow workers, handling real files and physical books.
    Douglas Adams kind of predicted what I'm presenting here, but I think he had a point. This is the idea that eventually game technology will merge with business applications to produce "skins" around the applications that fit into a virtual world. For instance, doing your accounts (or
  • If you are looking for a place to find people who play Animal Crossing online I recommend WiTendoFi.com [witendofi.com]. They have tools for sharing information in AC that are rather cool (like Turnip Watch [witendofi.com]).

    Hope you see you there.
  • isn't Nintendogs another game that hasn't got a precise goal?
  • Two of my kids, ages 7 and 9 (girl and boy) are absolutely addicted to Animal Crossing. They never have really gotten in to any of the more "action" oriented games that we have bought (Tak...which is very cool, and one of the Harry Potter titles...which was lame). They were kind of cool to Animal Crossing at first...but recently they have started playing it a couple of hours a day.

    I don't know if it is related, but both of them are high functioning autistic, and I think the "life" in the game with it's ve
  • I'm petitioning the ASPCA to investigate Nintendo's Animal Crossing for creating conditions that lead to virtual animal negligence and other cruelty. I am not directly referring to the animals in Animal Crossing as I seem to think that they are capable of taking care of themselves.

    Unfortunately, the time that one must devote to gathering bells to pay off loans to that cursed raccoon causes the poor pups in Nintendogs to languish around the virtual house waiting for their owner to return to feed them, bathe

  • Electroplankton a game and an artwork (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mattr ( 78516 ) <<mattr> <at> <telebody.com>> on Wednesday February 15, 2006 @09:54PM (#14729612) Homepage Journal
    Caveat, the author is a friend of mine. Toshio Iwai is a well known digital media artist who has done a number of works in which you compose music in one way or another, often using some kind of objects you can manipulate. Sometimes as simiple as a bouncy bal, other times you are herding a fleet of lights bouncing musically through a matrix like sound fireworks. So some of the things in the game are evolutions of some of his works. For example the donut spinners.. in recent years he has worked with displays projected from above onto a white table or in this case a white turntable.. you spin the turntable with your hand and something like a donut in the game appears. These displays are neat because you can make virtual controls sensed from above or below, giving an interesting non-crt tactile feel. Anyway, I also wanted to save things I made but it seems this may have been an artistic decision.. or possibly a technical limitation. One thing you may like to know is that at the Electroplankton launch in La Foret hall in Harajuku, Tokyo, the president of Nintendo came and gave a talk with Iwai and said the DS was made to a musical and interactive specifications so that it could play Electroplankton. There is also a wikipedia article [wikipedia.org] about it. Incidentally a FAQ [gamefaqs.com] at gamefaqs says it is not a game because "Electroplankton has no measurable objective; you can't 'complete', 'finish', 'win' or 'succeed' at playing it." However I got a massive amount of enjoyment out of it and electroplankton is the necessary and sufficient reason I'd have for buying a DS, I think this definition of game and need to fit into even one's idea of what will sell is unneccessary. For example I went to XBOX Live! which is a large bar lounge Microsoft set up in Omotesando, Tokyo (near La Foret) and tried a couple games for the XBOX in particular one where you direct armies to fight each other and you have magical berserker powers. Without instructions I found it initially interesting but so hard to win, so shallow, and so painful on the fingers that after 30 games or so I just gave up and never want to look at the place again. For me anyway Electroplankton beats that "showcase game" hands down.. a different audience perhaps. I'd rather thank Nintendo for doing it and hope it sells enough for them to make more like it! P.S. also it beats hands down the Fly Pen I got my nephews for Christmas, by about 100x. It would be worth it to figure out how to hook up an amp to it and record to a pc.. heck worth buying a DS for them too I think. And better for their brains than yet another Harry Potter adventure though they love those too.
  • Our (free) Garden Simulator is also intended as an an open ended toy.
    http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/gwi.htm [kurtz-fernhout.com]
    Doesn't suceed at that as much as we hoped, in part as we tossed too many of the fun aspects (neighbors, food preservation, survival aspects, etc.) in the interests of finishing version 1.0.

    Our PlantStudio software which tries to do less ends up succeeding more at that (where just designing your own plants can be a lot of fun).
    http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/PlantStudio/ [kurtz-fernhout.com]

    Seymo
  • I was hoping for "Extreme Animal Crossing" http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=167989&c id=14008510 [slashdot.org]

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