I remember the day clearly. I had enough money to buy myself either the first generation DS or go off and by the PSP. It was perhaps quite a hard decision, I was only able to afford one at the time, but I really wanted to own a current gen portable system. When the decision was made, I decided on the original DS even if it was quite bulky. At that moment, I did not mind at all, in fact, I had a lot of fun. However, what games were launched with the system? Here is the list of games that made it to the United States:

• Asphalt Urban GT (Gameloft)
• Feel the Magic: XY/XX (Sega)
• Madden NFL 2005 (Electronic Arts)
• Ping Pals (THQ)
• Ridge Racer DS (Namco)
• Spider-Man 2 (Activision)
• Sprung (Ubisoft)
• Metroid Prime Hunters: First Hunt (Nintendo)
• Super Mario 64 DS (Nintendo)
• The Urbz: Sims in the City (Electronic Arts)
• Tiger Woods PGA Tour (Electronic Arts)

Out of all the games, only one was a full Nintendo released game and even that was just a port of a popular title. Out of all those games, not many received high praise from reviewers. Now fast forward to 2011 with the 3DS. Players now complain about the lack of first party support with games that are actually good. The best launch game was arguably Super Street Fighter 4 with many of the previously announced games being delayed. (If Legend of Zelda made it to launch, players would have a very similar lineup to the one to the original DS.) Honestly, who in their honest minds would want to play Ping Pals and Sprung? Those games were horrible! Just like the original DS, the timeline for games released for the DS will become a lot better around holiday season. With games such as MGS preparing for that time, expect many 3DS systems to be bundled with the game as Christmas gifts. Around that time in the original DS days, Konami delivered Castlevania so that fans would eat it up.

Even now, Nintendo is prepping up a number of titles in the holidays like it did when the DS was starting to boom back in 2005. When Nintendo Wi-Fi was introduced, players were given first party love with Animal Crossing, Mario Kart, and Tetris. With that, Nintendo gauranteed their continued dominance in the portable gaming industry.

Nintendo has a history of wanting to perfect their art in their games. Miyamoto has a history of scrapping a project only to restart and make things even better. (Stay out of casual gaming Miyamoto, Wii Music is not your field.) The lack of first party support confirms that Nintendo does not want to dissapoint their loyal fanbase. Even the shop is delayed in order to make it even better, but fans continue to complain. I for one, continue to be excited, hoping to get some Indie game love that I missed since I did not buy a DSI. Iwata wanted to improve the shop, because obviously the Wii Shop was not something that Nintendo expected to bomb compared to its rivals.

Yet fans continue to complain, why? The consumer demands that they get the best bang for their buck immediately. How? By complaining in every 3DS post that there is a lack of support and nothing they can do with their system asides from the basic gimmicks that Nintendo is offering. Already, after a very short lifespan, many are mentioning that the 3DS is a bomb, even if there are many games being released. Heck, many games are probably in development, but are unnannounced. This usually happens when a system is brand new, what the heck should be announced immediately? Shovelware? Every system has many horrible titles and the original DS was infested with it. However, there were also many titles that I enjoyed playing that were not popular to the general audience. (I was full of joy when I found Phoenix Wright when it was a very rare title.)

Is Nintendo too late to the party or is it just getting started? Only time will tell, but perhaps E3 will be the key to our issue with the 3DS.

Recently, I decided to leave the bank to pursue my future of a Graphic Designer, however this leaves me unemployed, but it does not stop me from wanting to buy Kenna's new effort: Make Sure They See my Face. For the past week or so, I've been listening to the advanced copy of the CD along with the recently leaked version. I even listen to it in a very obnoxiously loud manner in my car. Yeah, I'm openly admitting it, only because I am very excited to purchase the actual copy on Tuesday, October 16th. In fact, I'm praying that some of the songs on the Advanced Copy make it into the final release. Songs like Never Let Me Down bring in some major high energy Kenna action!

It's nice to see how an artist matures from their last album as well. New Sacred Cow is by far one of my favorite albums and was ahead of its time. (Even if it had a lot of the Neptune's produced tracks that have similar sounds all the time.) This time around, Kenna reunites with the Neptunes, preferrably Chad Hugo to create another amazing CD. In fact, IGN music gave the album 8.8/10. However, my trusted site for lesser known artists, Okayplayer, gave it a 3/5 ?uestlove heads, but gave it a very harsh review. I on the other hand, after waiting for a few years for a new Kenna Album must say that the album is well worth the wait and continues to make me smile even if it is a leaked version.

If you ever went to Myspace, you can sample a few of his songs, which include Out of Control, a song featured on a PSP commercial, Face the Gun, a teaser for his upcoming album, and Say Goodbye to Love, which is his current single. Each of these songs make me happy to have waited this long for his album. However, the length that it took was due to a plague that continued to harm Kenna's career. That plague? The jump from label to label, in which labels tend to let him go and make Kenna fight to find a rightful home for his CD. In fact, delays were constantly occuring like his first album. However, unlike NSC, this album is released in conjunction with his current single and not delayed years after the single.

Originally scheduled in August, then pushed to September 11th, then now October 16th. Personally, I think this is a much better chance to sell, since September 11th, Kenna had to battle against Kanye and 50 cent. As an avid Kenna fan, I must admit that he could not touch a piece of the pie created by those two artists. However, his CD deserves much praise since he experiments, but is successful. In fact, Kenna's vocals are not strong at all, but you can feel him express so much heart and thought in his music that you can almost feel what he is thinking. The only problem with the CD? The agony of realizing that the 12 tracks on this CD will make you realize that Kenna's third album may be released years after MSTSMF. Bright side? I am definitely going to listen to this CD years after I buy it from my local music store. (AKA Best Buy.)

If anyone is reading this, definitely look into this CD and BUY it. Sure you can download, but Kenna deserves the recognition. Definitely, being the opener for the Live Earth concert as a growing artist is big and hopefully the sophmore release will do the same.

I'll make sure that Kenna's album will see my face on October 16th.

In the brink of watching people constantly debate on which system is better, it made me a bit annoyed. Sure, I could've easily avoided all contact by not reading user comments, but I just could not help it at all. It's like a child who knows that something is dangerous, but goes on to play around with the dangerous thing anyways. So why must people hate on their opposition? A bunch of "lowlives" arguing over the gaming supremacy of all systems. "Go PS3! Down with Microsoft!" That for example deserves a slap to the face by the parents. There's better things to be arguing about in life. For example, one can argue about the current state of the world, but most Game Spot readers choose not to. Instead, they post thousands of posts within a whole week just to get their point across and help their marketed system.

What happened to the days where people actually tried out each system? During the classic Sega and Nintendo battles, gamers weren't really arguing much about the better system like they did today. Instead, gamers would flock to Best Buys and treat it like a Mini gaming convention. Gamers from across the city would come to these places just to try out the latest games from all current systems at the time. No, they were not there to debate, but they were there to debate in their minds about which games were fun or not. At the time, Mario garnered fans throughout the world, both young and old because of the gameplay found in the games. Nowadays, people tend to strand away from Mario because he looks too darn cute for his own good. How does this relate to Nintendo's current state in the flame war? The obvioius "Nintendo is for children" statement occurs. What ever happened to the word fun? The PS3 is just a big blu-ray player! Most of us owned a PS2 at one point, or at least a PSX? XB360 is just full of first person CRAP! Did one forget that Microsoft is realizing their issues and entering new markets? Viva Pinata, in my opinion, helped expand the age group quite a lot. Not to mention, it was a good game for all ages with a bit of cannibalism too.

Do not forget the portables either. They witness similar battles through the idiotic "DS VS PSP" threads. I own both and I enjoy both equally. There's games in there for everyone. However, it does not hurt to expand your horizons by trying out a game YOU think will not be fun. The casual gamer tends to stay away from games that look too darn cute for their own good, but give them GTA and it will be the greatest thing ever to them. My friends were casual gamers and normally only played sports and action games, but it was interesting to hear one of them talk about Harvest Moon being a great game for the SNES.

In an age where people tend to think cute games are for kids, that brought a smile to my face. If they can realize and open up to other kinds of games, then so can everyone else. Since almost 100% of the "I think these games are for kids" gamers are males, I must say most males are idiots. Yes, I'm a guy too, but it's true. In terms of gaming, a girl is much more brave to try out different kinds of games compared to a guy. Those same girls are also not afraid to play Gears of War or Halo. A lot of X-Box Live subscribers will notice the increase of female gamers recently.

It amazes me. My girlfriend LOVES everything Disney, enjoys RPGs and because of this is a big Kingdom Hearts fan. However, when Gears of War came out, she wanted to get Gears of War BAD. To save her the groans of buying a system, I had to convince her not to get a 360, why? Only because she did not have enough money to pay off the 360 ASAP. She also loves to spend money on clothes. Besides, she does not like me spending too much money on games either so it just shows that we look out for one another rather than be too controlling.

Of course, this blog was not going to dive deep into the level of open mindness of a gamer, but hopefully spark SOME form of interest to gamers so that they will actually try games and systems more than what they see on boxes, ads, commercials, or at a local retailer. There's more to a game than just the look, there's also something we've all forgotten about, and that little thing is called fun.