Marc’s List

Animal Crossing (series)
Nintendo Gamecube, Nintendo DS, Nintendo Wii

Yes, I have owned all three Animal Crossing games. The first one was a unique idea and at the time, and I wasn’t embarrassed about it at all. It was a fun, albeit an occasionally labored experience. Chatting with neighbors and doing them favors, mostly deliveries, got old fast for a lot of players, but once I discovered the Nintendo-related furniture and clothing, I was renewed. I thought the fishing and bug catching were exciting, too, even though the winter months proved to be a time of dedication and patience with little in return. You could always alter the time clock and play in warmer months, but such things might disrupt the game’s continuum and yield disastrous results. Plus it’s technically cheating.

The DS version was more of the same, except with online play. I wasn’t sold on getting it until I saw that you could get a Metroid for your living room that played a snippet of the original theme song. It was a day-one purchase after that. I ventured out into the online world only once or twice, as most of my friends were either a little too “grown up” for something like this or had burnt out on the first game.

The Wii version had a lot of old and a little new and I really didn’t think I’d buy it until, yet again, I saw some of the rare items – namely the Link and Samus costumes. Vrooom. Off to the game store again!

Nintendogs
Nintendo DS

Sigh. I really wanted to blame this one on my wife, but I can’t. I brought this monster to her attention and I myself spent many nights walking and training my virtual pug in his Mario cap. If you aren’t familiar with this game, it’s… well, I pretty much told you everything there is to do here in the previous sentence. Except for bath time…… Please don’t judge me.

I was tempted to create an honorable mention list until I realized that many of the games to be on it were actually great games, despite their saccharine appearances. The 16-bit Lion King and Aladdin games are among these, as is Diddy Kong Racing for the Nintendo 64. Given my old age, I probably would not purchase these games today, but now that nostalgia has set in and their quality has been solidified in the grand test of time thus far, these games are worthy of a place in my proud collection.

Kevin’s List

Pokemon (The entire series)
Gameboy, Gameboy Advance, Nintendo DS

Meet Buizel, not in fact Tails.

I previously listed Pokemon Red/Blue as one of my games that people should just shut up and play, but if you were to sift through my game collection you would find a version of every iteration of Pokemon to ever be released. This is borderline shameful, not because they aren’t fun games, but because I am a 28 year old man. I wish my friends would start having children so I could borrow them and take them to Gamestop with me on launch day. That way I could at least have a small child with me when I purchase these games.

Furthermore, every game has been the same since the first one. I recognized this quite some time ago. I always fast forward through the opening text from the newest Pokemon expert without reading it and just get to the point where I can select the fire-type starter (effectively choosing hard mode), name my team different words for feces, and plod through yet another region of the world whose economy is centered around Pokemon. Just once I’d like to see the formula change up. Maybe the story would give you the option of choosing to join the evil gang of Pokemon trainers who use Pokemon to commit crimes (the gang name is different every game, but they always do exactly the same thing). Maybe NPCs will talk about the tyranny of governments and how the world needs to be purified by the fires of anarchy. This series isn’t going to change though, and I’ll be back at the store on launch day… again.

Feel the Magic: XY/XX
Nintendo DS

I was embarrassed about this one as soon as I made the purchase, but as an early adopter of the Nintendo DS, what else was I supposed to do? I wanted to play my new system so badly, but Meteos and Kirby were months off, so I broke down and bought this monster.

The premise of the game is to win the heart of a girl by performing various death defying stunts with a performance group called the Rub Rabbits since you are too shy to talk to her. It’s very unusual, but didn’t really become extremely embarrassing until the clean up mini game where you are encouraged to wipe the girl clean of mud that was thrown on her. As you vigorously rub at her with a cloth, she makes moaning sounds and squirms as you rub her. I had to turn the sound off. After that I was all too glad for the game to reach its quirky finish.