The ScooterBlog

And without further adieu …. The man himself, Matt Matson, as
“pictochatted” by Adam Stewart!

(Curses! The picture got lost in the move!)

I’d like to share some of the fun we had this past Wi-Fi Wednesday, maybe the best one we’ve had yet! I was the last to the party, about 7:30, so I’ll pick it up from there.

(An extra “hard time” must be given to Ryan Freed … I was going to surprise my girlfriend, whom came down to hang out as well, but he didn’t catch that I was being sneaky, screamed out “Scooter!!” and blew the surprise … we love ya Ryan, but you’re not off the hook yet!)

Anyways, when I got there, Matt was already busting out with the game in multiplayer mode, feverishly looking for 8 players with DS systems (we actually had 10 or 11 total). When I got there, I jumped on Ben’s system, and I got to find out what the game was all about.

The game is Nintendo’s latest step into rhythm mania, you take one instrument and are responsible for playing it by hitting and holding the right button. Sometimes, it was just a direction or a button to hit (Donkey Konga like), but sometimes, there were 9 possibilities, including the touch screen! By itself, it’s a lot of fun, addicting, and it’s got great Nintendo classic songs, including Zelda and F-Zero.

But the multiplayer is maybe the best ANY Nintendo DS game has offered yet. One host with a cartridge sends the mini game to 7 other DS players (one cartridge, that’s right!) via DS Download & Play, and then everyone jumps in. Once you’re in game play, you can pick either easy mode (2 buttons) or hard mode (9 buttons), and then which instrument you want to play. Depending on your choice, you’ll see stars indicating its difficulty (2 was the easiest we got, 5 was downright brutal).

Then, you go. You hear the song as it is being composed, with your part a little louder on your system. So in theory, if everyone is perfect, you’re “playing” your favorite songs, but if you mess up, you hear where it’s going wrong! You can even do quick chat during the song with the touch screen, and the balloons track your score compared to everyone else’s.

Once you’re done, you’re rated out of 100 on top, and then our band’s rating, the average of all players, is shown on the bottom.

We had great scores … we sucked a few times … but it was BY FAR the most fun I’ve had on my Nintendo DS yet, and a great example of what DS multiplayer needs to be. Easy to use, as many players as possible, and easy for anyone to get into.

Matt just made a great forum post about it too which I’m going to link to, I agree with him about a gazillion percent! And yes bro … your picture will be posted today!