What attracted me to the Nintendo DS was its ability, thanks to its touch screen and second screen, to play games not possible on other home game hardware.

A more traditional game--one that relies on pressing buttons rather than touching a touch screen--on the DS has to be really, really good for me to buy it.

Much of the game library for the Game Boy Advance, Nintendo's previous handheld, amounts to been there done that, often literally. I'm not against nostalgia--I own a few too many classic game compilations for the PlayStation and PlayStation 2--but I want my nostalgia to be at least as good as my initial experiences, and the Game Boy Advance's lower-resolution-than-a-television-screen screen creates frustrations.

So while the DS can play Game Boy Advance games, I, a DS Lite owner, never had any desire to buy a Game Boy Advance game.

Until two weeks ago.

I never owned a Game Boy Advance, but one of the games that I would have purchased if I had one would have been WarioWare Inc.: Mega Microgame$. Its large collection of silly, varied, ultra-short minigames; the random order in which you play those minigames; the fast and ever-increasing pace and its eclectic appearance looked like a lot of fun.

By the time I bought a DS Lite, there was a WarioWare game available for the DS: WarioWare: Touched!. Unfortunately for Wario, it received a lower score than the two Game Boy Advance WarioWare games, Mega Microgame$ and Twisted!, because it was "not as much fun as the other games in the series," so I decided not to buy it. That and Cooking Mama, a then upcoming WarioWare-like minigame collection but less random and slower-paced for the DS, at the time had greater appeal to me.

More than a year and many views of WarioWare game videos later, I was ready for a new minigame collection.

I searched for a copy of WarioWare: Touched!, but I discovered that it was no longer available unless I was willing to pay a premium over the suggested retail price. After several days I was close to breaking down and paying an excessive price for the game.

Eventually I questioned myself, "Am I not buying a Game Boy Advance WarioWare game, which is apparently better than the DS WarioWare game, because it is a Game Boy Advance game?"

That was silly.

I started an Internet search for WarioWare Inc.: Mega MicroGame$. Within minutes I found a place selling it, new, for the suggested retail price. My copy arrived almost two weeks later--U.S. Postal Service Media Mail is slow.

It's just as fun as I thought it would be.