Burger Burger

From The Age, via elrobbo:

Burger Burger
Style: Hamburger simulation
Developer: Gaps

Instead of designing theme parks, this sim lets you design hamburgers. How does it go again? “Two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese…” Burger sims are huge in Americana-obsessed Japan, and after tinkering with Burger Burger, we’re inclined to see why. Coming up with your own creation to rival the Big Mac or McTeriyaki while beating your competitors into a ketchup-splattered pulp is a right laugh. Players can customise everything on their menu, hire pre-pubescent staff, select the site for their burger empire and even choose novelty items to keep the kids happy. Just don’t dream of running some ill-conceived Monopoly competition with last year’s tickets…

Hell yeah. My double-chicken-’n'-beef chilli burger* would kick some serious arse.

*– No such burger exists, and if it did I’d strong discourage anyone from actually eating it.

Cave Story

"Doukutsu Monogatari" (that's "Cave Story" in English) is a side-scrolling action adventure game that's very reminisient of games like Castlevania and Metroid, right down to the NES-era graphics and sound.

You start out in a cave, by yourself, with no idea who you are or what to do. Pretty soon you figure out how to get out of the room and enter a town. In this town, you find out you're in the strange world of the Mimigas and they need your help to rescue one of their own.

As far as I can tell, it was developed years ago by a Japanese group calling themselves Studio Pixel and made available for free. Another group translated the game into English, and now it enjoys a huge cult following — so huge, in fact, that a company called Variant Interactive is currently working on a sequel for the PSP.

You can grab the game and the English translation patches for both Windows and Mac OS X over at http://www.gameflaws.com/cavestory/, a site dedicated to the game.

New Super Mario Bros.

I just bought New Super Mario Bros. for my Nintendo DS on eBay, along with Tetris DS.

I've been excited about this game for ages… I can't wait.

Annoying Music in Your Head

You think the song you’ve got stuck in your head is annoying? Try the music from Super Mario Brothers 2, World 1.

Opera on Nintendo DS

Rumour has it that Nintendo and Opera are set to announce a web browser for the Nintendo DS. Most of the pieces seem to be in place — there’s Internet connectivity, a decent amount of screen space, a solid rendering engine, and an effective input method (although typing anything longer than a domain name is still a pain in the arse — they need to licence Inkwell or something).

In fact, this might blow my argument for getting a MacBook right out of the water.

EDIT: Heh, post #69…

New Super Mario Brothers

This has me pretty excited — the return of the side-scrolling platform game. There’s a video of it available, too.

My Nintendo Works!

Despite it getting soaked on Saturday, my Nintendo DS is back in full operation. No such luck with my camera, but who cares about taking photos when I can play Mario Kart?

Holiday

A brief overview of what I’ve been up to over the last two weeks:

• Got my hair cut while drunk by my even drunker housemate. I reckon it looks really good… best haircut I’ve had in years.
• Did the family thing over Christmas. Got nothing but gift vouchers, which was a little disappointing. Then again, I was pretty slack in the gift giving department this year myself.
• Bought a Nintendo DS, Mario Kart DS, Super Mario 64 DS and Futurama Series 3 with my gift vouchers.
• Watched the Boxing Day Test. I took my Dad to the third day as his Christmas gift.
• Played a lot of Nintendo.
• Maybe met a special someone.
• Got very drunk on New Years Eve in Robbo’s backyard.
• Did some recording.
• Watched the New Year Test.
• Finally fixed and cleaned my old car so I can sell it.
• Ate too much, drank too much and didn’t do enough exercise.
• Played a kickarse gig on Friday night.

How the Nintendo Revolution Controller May Work

I just found a video of how the upcoming Nintendo Revolution controller may work. It’s pretty cool, but the last demo (the fictional “F-Zero Revolution”) excited me the most. It proposes that you hold the controller NES-style, but instead of steering the car with the directional pad, you steer it by tipping the controller to the left or right — just like you probably already do.

Mario Kart Arcade GP

Holy crap. In Japan (those lucky bastards), Nintendo are teaming up with Namco and coming out with Mario Kart Arcade GP.

I really miss being a Nintendo owner…