Quick entry for tonight: Videogames

-It has come to me from the internets in America that Nintendo plans on releasing a new DS version with a camera, better WIFI, SD-card storage ability and dual touchscreens. Nothing is set in stone, but we should hear more news as time goes by. A note to Nintendo (if these rumors are indeed true), I call BS on a holiday release date in Japan. Your track record of releases is horrible.

- As you may or may not know, soon is fast approaching the date of the Tokyo Game Show which will take place in the second week of October. I'm skipping class going on Friday (10/10) Saturday (10/11) to go and I'll write a report of what to expect in the coming year from Japan (hopefully more information about the new DS lite will be present at the convention).

- I looked up the date for the official release of the new PSP (version 3000) here in Japan and it appears to be on Oct 16th. Wow, this is the second release I've experienced so far here that is behind the US release (the first was the new Kirby Super Star Ultimate that was released last week in the US). It looks spiffy and I was holding out buying a used 2000 model just because I already didn't have one and the improvements are worth paying the normal used price (around 160 dollars here) paying for a new one instead of an older one.

-I recently went to my local Bookoff and bought a first-generation Japanese PS2. And when I mean first-generation, I MEAN first-generation. It has a PC card slot instead of the drive bay the later "thick" ones have and requires you copy the DVD player software to the memory card because the DVD playback wasn't included in the original 1.00 OS. Bought some games (I can find titles like "Tales of" and FFVII over here for non-ridiculous prices) and have to say that there's nothing too entirely bad with owning this particular PS2 (it was half the price as the other "thick" model, the last model of the "thick" PS2s), but sometimes when I go to turn the power switch off on the back of the model, if I press down the power plug, it makes hissing noises. It's strange, and probably should avoid accidentally putting pressure on the plug connector. Other than that, nothing is particularly wrong with the system.

Anyway, that's all for tonight.