Knowing I'm awake on the day I'm picking up my DS lite, I can't go back to sleep. It was all I could do to fall asleep in the first place. This gaming experience had better hold up against that first red tricycle under the tree! 

I told myself I'd wait. I could live without. I must abstain. The DS lite is just a worldly desire; it will soon fade. Maybe I can sell my dog to offset the cost.

With the help of $73.13 worth of trade-ins (eight games, my SP, and some fairy dust), my wallet isn't hemmhoraging quite as badly as it might have been. So I caved, but I'm happy about it.

The games that I come back to are like toys. They have little to no story, so they don't age. You know that Mario's going to save the princess, but does that ruin the game? I'm also becoming more polarized against violent games. I don't like the attitudes surrounding games like Battlefield and Gears of War. One poignant moment for me was the Half-Life 2 demo at e3:05. The demonstrator fired at a flammable barrel which exploded, causing the ravaged, and now burning, humans to scream under their headcrabs. That's a valid circumstance, given the nature of the game; the disturbing part? The audience cracked up. It was hilarious. I think they laughed even harder as the screams became more desparate. My problem is that I think I would have been laughing too, and that's not something I want to laugh at.

Some of my favorite games in my library have violence at the core, so I'm not resolved against them, but I'm slowly becoming cold to them. Why do I enjoy Ninja Gaiden, Chronicles of Riddick: Butcher Bay, or Grand Theft Auto? Well, Grand Theft Auto is most fun with no regard whatever for the missions. Activate the flying cars cheat and bounce off of mountains and skydive onto LA's fictional cousin. Riddick? It's so immersive, so absolutely first-person, that it's like a dream. I don't really care what I'm doing, as long as I get the rush of feeling like I'm doing it. Riddick provides that. Would I have as much fun with the Riddick strategy if I were not shooting, boxing, and shivving inmates and guards in a prison? It would be difficult to match the excitement, hence my concern. Now, Ninja Gaiden? The immediate, intricate, and spectacular gameplay is enthralling, and the feeling of being lightning fast and deadly with only a sword is a very accessible thrill.

But guess what? Ninja Gaiden is not a whole lot different from Super Mario 64. I didn't make the connection until my brother complemented Mario's "mad ninja skills," but the fun of doing a backflip to jump off a wall onto a ledge and do a running dive into a Boo is roughly the same thing, only about one tenth as frantic. Plus, the act of putting on a hat and jumping three times to fly off of a floating island is so fantastic and dreamlike that I think I will never get tired of it.

Enjoying games as I do, it's probably about time I figured out where I want them to go.

In the meantime, I think I'll pick up Super Monkey Ball 2.