minna ni naisho dayo

New Game: Zoo Keeper (JP)

Title: Zoo Keeper
Platform: Nintendo DS (JP)
Publisher: Success

Where: Shibuya Tsutaya
When: December 4
How Much: 3,800 yen (3,990 yen w/tax)

I had a feeling something might go wrong with my Zoo Keeper order from amazon.co.jp when my confirmation mail showed up saying the game would be shipping on Dec. 2, 2005 instead of 2004. I mailed them immediately to see what was up, and they responded right away, assuring me that it was just a simple system error and that I had nothing to worry about.

Dec. 2 came and went without any shipping confirmation from amazon, so I sent them another mail to see what was up -- sure enough, the game was sold out. So much for that simple error, eh?

Up to this point, amazon's service has been unbelievably good -- did you know they ship for free anywhere in Japan if your order is over 1500 yen? and that it almost always shows up within a day or two? It's crazy, but it's true. So rather than get upset, I simply cancelled my order and went over to Tsutaya to buy a copy there.

So, I finally got my Zoo Keeper. Believe it or not, this is actually the first Success game I've ever bought (heh), but so far I like it a lot! It's a really simple, really low-budget puzzle game, but it's alarmingly addictive, and it's really fun with two players. My girlfriend, who up until now has hardly ever played games with me (I think Katamari Damacy is the only exception), has been playing with me non-stop. We were actually up until 2am last night playing against each other, and we'll probably play again tonight. Single-Card multiplayer play rocks!

By the way: yesterday, the two of us stopped off to have a quick drink at Starbucks on the way home from shopping, and we decided to break out our DS systems and mess around with Pictochat. After two or three minutes, somebody new suddenly showed up in our chatroom. A minute later, a fourth person joined, and then soon after, yet another entered the room. Within moments we were chatting away with three complete strangers (which, by the way, is almost never a problem in Japan -- everyone is polite, unlike the endless stream of jackasses you often run into in American online games). It was great! Only one of them was anywhere near us, too -- we had no idea where the other two were chatting from.

I've always known this sort of thing was possible with DS, but for whatever reason I guess I never expected it to happen so quickly and easily. It was cool! I can't wait to see what this thing (and the PSP) will be able to do two or three years from now. I dunno about you, but I find all this very, very exciting. :)

Posted by john tv at December 7, 2004 12:43 AM