PokeWorld

We’re back from a few days on Maui. I now have something that most of you probably do not at the moment: Sunburn.

Not a common thing most places in February.

We had a great time. We stayed at the Kaanapali Beach Hotel, which I recommend. Here is a view from our room:

We saw a lot of things on Maui. Lots of sand, lots of sun, lots of hula dancing (usually the Hukilau,) lots of whales, and lots of Nintendo DSs. Of course, the whales were the most fun.

As usual, once you have something, in our case a brand new Nintendo DS Lite, you start to notice other people who have the same thing.

So I saw a lot of kids running around with DSs.

And every single one of them seemed to be playing Pokemon.

That was certainly the most popular game on our own DS. As I mentioned in a past post, I grabbed three games for the DS when I bought it, Pokemon Diamond, LEGO Star Wars, and MarioParty DS. My daughter and I played an hour or so of Star Wars and a few minutes of MarioParty, but she did not want to put down Pokemon.

I actually learned quite a bit about Pokemon myself, a lot of which came from having to read things to my daughter, who is in kindergarten and not quite up to reading most of the text herself. The game has a lot more depth than I had previously credited it.

Not that I want my own DS now… not yet. But I can see why people enjoy it so much.

I will have to give Pokemon Battle Revolution on the Wii another look. It certainly lacked depth on its own, but it might be interesting combined with the DS.

But now I have to get myself up to San Francisco and GDC. And it is raining and Darren‘s cell phone isn’t answering. bleh.