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If you're like me—stuck in New Super Mario Bros trying to get your third star after you've finished every level—you should have figured out by now that incomplete levels have red pads whereas completed levels are blue, and therefore you need to go through all the warp cannons to really have been everywhere... but of course I needed a walkthrough (the second one) to tell me that.
But at least I did it in style:
While the DS web browser is only coming out in Japan soon, everyone expects it to be sufficiently usable in English, so of course we're anxiously awaiting it here too. Finally, one of the big importers, Play-Asia, is taking preorders.
Make sure to order the Lite version if you plan to use it with a Lite, as the memory expansion cart for the GBA slot is in a different form factor than the original DS version's.
Opera has a new press release out today that announces Opera for DS will be available in Japan starting 24 July. While I'm sure Opera DS is very different—based on Opera for Mobile or Devices—if you haven't tried Opera for desktop PCs, you can download the brand spankin' new Opera 9.0 free from their website. (Opera for PC used to be paid or ad-supported, but now is totally gratis—presumably they make money providing one of the best mobile browsers for devices such as the DS and, as announced at E3, the Wii.)
There are a couple videos on YouTube showing some Super Paper Mario play (for the Cube) from the World Hobby Fair in Tokyo. See them here on Go Nintendo.
Net music site Disquiet had an E3 post about music gaming on the Wii and elsewhere at E3 (though no mention of Elite Beat Agents, even amidst the "simpler" music games) as well as how a new volume rule played with attending companies.
Meanwhile computer security guru Bruce Schneier posted a brief comment a month ago on how "off" on the Wii will really mean "asleep," while still allowing net downloads. He also plays up how that means the Wii could apply undesirable updates to itself without permission, which I find implausible given how clueful Nintendo has been with DS downloads—but, true, there's nothing technical there to prevent ReplayTV style emasculation of what you think you bought. Plus that means any Wii you buy, at least in California, will have an "I'm a vampire" sticker.
A new roommate brought, among other things, a copy of PaRappa the Rapper 2 for Playstation 2. This is the sequel to the grandaddy of rhythm games, 1996's PaRappa the Rapper for PS1. As Wikipedia says, it's superficially like Simon, but you copy not only each level's rap masters button pattern, but the same pattern in time to the music. This is the most basic form of rhythm video game, but even this stripped down, you can see how PaRappa spawned a whole new genre of game.
The game has a freestyling algorithm that scores you on extra presses you insert into the pattern. As long as your presses are in time and complicated enough, you can score extra points. In fact freestyling is the only way to get the maximum score for a level and attain "Cool" ranking. The algorithm is just an algorithm, though, and can seem pretty capricious in what it considers good sometimes.
The really awesome part, though, is multiplayer. You don't just play the levels competitively, but you play one line from a level over and over in a virtual rap battle of oneupsmanship, taking turns freestyling more complicated patterns until the game declares a winner. The inhumanity of the algorithm really comes into play here, as not only do you have to repeat or improve on your opponent's play, but do so to please a mechanical aesthete.
Here's me managing to pwn my slightly inebriated friend. This is just level one, so all the other levels have more complex patterns to play (and sentences to say).
PaRappa would be a very cool game to carry around on the DS, but until then, try it out on the PS2 (and bring some friends).
