I just bought a nice blue Nintendo DS--literally the day before Nintendo announced the $20 price reduction coinciding with next week's release of Nintendogs. Nothing like great timing. The strange thing was, even though I bought the handheld, I didn't buy a single DS game to go with it (instead, I ended up purchasing Fire Emblem 2) simply because since the launch of the console, there hasn't been a single game I've been interested in enough to even consider buying. Now here I am DS in hand, in preparation for all the good stuff that's about to come down the pipe. Consider the following:

Advance Wars Dual Strike is almost here; Trauma Center and Phoenix Wright are about a couple months out; and the holy grail--Animal Crossing DS--is dropping in November. Don't forget Mario Kart DS, either. Even though I never really got into previous Mario Kart entries that much, the thought of playing the game online whenever Nintendo gets their Internet skillz together has me pumped up. Hell, I even Gamefly'd Sprung this week, though I felt a little dirty doing so.

And then there's Nintendogs, a game that charmed me the instant I saw it at this year's GDC. I was lucky enough to write one of our first previews for the game and, ever since, it's been on my mind as an example of a game that well and truly "fits" into the console it was designed for. Other games I slot into this category would be NFL 2K for Dreamcast (the VMU playcalling made that game); Halo 2 for Xbox (the game that pushed Xbox Live further than ever before); and Gran Turismo 3 A-Spec for PlayStation 2 (sure GT4 trumps it in every category, but GT3 was the first "wow" game on the PS2).

In my anticipation for Nintendogs, I find myself trading IMs with my 13-year old cousin (also a DS owner and future Nintendogs player) almost daily as we plan our puppy training strategies, which breeds we want to raise first, and all the fun we'll have taking our virtual dogs for walks. Meanwhile, I've got two real dogs (a Cairn Terrier named Walt and a what-the-hell-is-that? named Ollie) who will probably spend the next few weeks wondering why the virtual dog is getting walked every hour on the hour, while they've got to practically beg me to take them for a potty break. Sorry guys. It's not you, it's me.