Looks like the Castlevania release go pushed [b]up[/i] a week to 12/05.

Since it will be on sale this Sunday for $22.99 I have to give a bit of love to Magical Starsign. If you like old school SNES RPGs this game is a must buy on the DS. I finished it this week and put in about 28 hours on it. The graphics and story are nice including some nice CGI cut scenes and I personally liked all the spells and the overall touch screen gameplay.

The negative with these types of RPGs is it can get repetitive and you do have to fight a ton of random battles, but personally I thought this was one of the better RPGs I had played in awhile. No its not FFVI, but its worth $22.99 if you like RPGs.

Of course I'm playing FFIII right now so this game is getting overshadowed in a hurry.

I picked up a Gameboy Micro yesterday at Wal-Mart and I love it. I wanted one when they first came out but there was no way I was going to pay 100 bucks for it. I got it for $39.92 plus tax. I went back today and they still had plenty left. It's a steal at that price.

At that price, it makes me think twice about asking for a DS Lite as a gift. Wow.

I just got my Micro too.

The Wal*Mart near me had PLENTY and the sale extended until all day today.

I picked up 2 from Sears with the price match at $36.94 each, got a silver one for the daughter and a 20th anniversary for me.

I haven't picked up any games for my DS Lite since August because of my new job. However, I get two weeks vacation for Christmas in which I will use the time to catch up.

Our Super Wal*Mart (1604 & 281) had about a dozen micros left when I checked tonight.

They also had about a dozen Wiimotes and Nunchucks.

Yoshi's Island DS might just be the sleeper of the year for me. I think those who look past the Artoon and YI baggage will be pleasantly surprised.

Good to here, I'm thinking of picking it up the week after next (week of Dec 3) as target will have it for $24 and I have a $5 GC I got when buying something there a while back, so $19 isn't too shabby.

I am so looking forward to Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin. Word is that it's as good or better than my fav, SOTN. Also, I was told by my buddy that works at Gamestop that the preorder bonus will be instore also so I preordered a copy the other day.

Isn't it a straight port of the SNES version? How can you be surprised by a 12+ year old game?

No the GBA version is a straight port and has been out for a couple of years.

Yoshi's Island DS is a sequel that just came out this monthl, and is an entirely new game with totally new levels and gameplay (i.e. multiple babies--mario, peach, wario, donkey kong etc. that have their own abilities when riding yoshi etc.).

For anyone that missed Yggdra Union, it's a great strategy game that's out for the GBA right now. Going to go pick it up soon.

Anyone else getting swamped by the overwhelming number of good games for the DS and the GBA? For everyone's bitching and whining about this system when it came out and it's pre-release criticism, the Nintendo DS is by far one of the best videogame system of all time. No other system matches the sheer amount of variety available. My PSP has just sat there for the past few months. It's really sad when inferior ports of the same game that's available for the PS2 are more expensive on the PSP - that certainly doesn't help sales.

And regarding remaking the old Final Fantasy games...they would definitely sell, and it would be ultra-cool to have all 6 original FF games on the DS. Maybe even FF VII-IX - the last chapters of the series that I really enjoyed...

My PSP has gone untouched for some time. I picked up GTA: VCS and played that for a couple days but I haven't played it since. With all the great games that came out for the DS I just haven't cared about the PSP all that much. That could change with MGS coming out, but then again Castlevania for the DS launches the same day. Methinks my PSP will go unplayed a while longer...

The PSP MGS just doesn't appeal to me right now...not to get off topic. It looks like a revamped version of the online portion of MGS3. I won't be getting it for a while though. Too expensive for a portable game.

About FFIII... I bought it.

I'm not a serious gamer at all, so this was the first Final Fantasy game I've ever played -- ever.

The first time I played it I was a bit annoyed because it starts off in a cave with all those random battles with goblins. I was impatient and didn't read the manual first so I just somehow figured it out. It took me a while to figure out that the battles were random!

When you first start the map is pretty small, but I thought it was a full world map, so my expectations for just the extent and depth of the adventure were pretty low. The leveling up is not too bad. Some may find it tedious, but for some reason I get a thrill whenever one member of my party levels up. Little by little, your attacks and magic spells become increasingly effective on increasingly powerful monsters. I think that's kind of thrilling, and the leveling up heightens my anticipation of battling the bigger monsters... Is my party powerful enough? There's nothing like getting 3+ levels up for your party and going to meet a big monster knowing you have the chops to kick his ass.

Well, I'm almost 10 hours in and I love it! I have never played the older version of this game, but I'm sure it's not as immersive as this remake, which, remember, does have the 3D advantage and better soundtrack. Because of this, it's a lot easier to get into the game and imagine it were really happening. I don't know about you, but I don't get that same feeling with old-school 2D games. The intro sequence is mesmerizing too, and I sometimes turn the game on just to watch it.

I remember when I beat the Djinn and thought I finished the game. LOL! I was pleasantly relieved to find later on that I had waaaayyy more bosses to fight.

Now that my rough review is done, I guess I should reveal my biases. I love adventure storylines (I have fairly good standards for this) but I think 3D is better than 2D versions almost always, just because I can get into the game more.

Has anyone else cutback on their DS time to play a Wii? I know I have. Usually I would have probably 30 minutes to an hour a night to play DS, now, I use that time to play Madden on Wii.

My GBA/DS time is still allocated daily for work breaks and evening baths.

I played it all last weekend too. It is better that I & II, but I enjoyed those too. I also just bought V for BGA. The visuals are not as important to me as the storyline/gameplay. I indeed appreciate the upgrade, but the DS screen incorporation is minimal at best. Also I'm still not terribly clear how the "online" part works... too busy playing the game.

I've actually cut back on playing everything else for the DS. Magical Starsign and FFIII have already eaten up 40+ hours of play and I still have about 1/3rd of FFIII left not counting the extra dungeon. I've also spent a lot of time playing Elite Beat Agents, Club House Games and Tony Hawk Downhill Jam. I still need to play Contact, FFV and Castlevania is out soon. I really have no time for console games.

I've played some Yoshi's Island but that's about it. I usually play my DS/GBA at work during breaks but lately I've just been using my GBA SP to play FFV. I have FFIII and I plan on picking up Castlevania so it's going to get quite a bit of use in the coming weeks.

I've not touched my DS much lately, due to Okami and then Wii/Zelda. Though there hasn't been much that's came out lately that I've wanted anyway, Yoshi's Island 2 aside.

And the less than stellar reviews for that gave me little pause on putting that one on the back burner. I'm planning on picking it up next week when it's $24 at Target though. Probably still won't get to it for a bit. Will probably finish Zelda, and move on to the new DS castlevania before delving into Yoshi too much.

I've been catching up on my DS games with the Wii being sold out consistently. I'm playing New Super Mario Bros and just got to world 6 now. I also am thinking about using my GS credit I got from my GC to get Final Fantasy III or Magical Starsign, its a tough call.

I bought 2 copies of the game, one for my son and the other for me. I had just got to World 7 and up to that point I had 100% completion on the other worlds. My son had already finished the game and wanted to sell/trade his copy for another DS game. So, I traded it and somehow ended up sending the guy my copy of the game instead of my son's. It wasn't until 2 weeks after I made the trade that I found out about it. My save is gone and I really didn't have the desire to restart over again.