Hate Farmville? Hate that everyone's obsessed with it? Support the cause- there's a T-shirt with your name on it for that purpose.

Pulled from here.

Nice game for the Xbox 360. Until....

Oops. Someone break out the spellchecker.

Okay, I bet you've noticed my last few blogs have been all about flipnotes and Flipnote Studio, but that's how awesome it is. Lot of crap on the website, but the good ones are really, really good. Do you love your DSi? I sure wanted to love my DSi a bit more after watching this flipnote. It was so adorable(again) and touching I had to feature it. One more epic win flipnote, and made by a Japanese fellow, imported to the US for all to see. It's a song about the love between a person and his DSi.

The imported flipnote is here.

Lyrics for the song, titled 'I'm a DS, and you're a Human', together with a more detailed explanation of the flipnote and the command for DSi users(so you can download or add stars or whatever). is here.

EDIT: LOL. I just realized this was my 200th blog. I'm celebrating by taking a picture of it with my DSi.

Flipnote Studio is great, in some ways. It's one of the most user-friendly animation tools I've seen ever, all you do is scribble on the screen with your stylus, which is infinitely more accurate than using a mouse to draw on Photoshop, and a whole lot less fiddly that using Flash where you have to deal with vector shapes and layer upon layer of animation.

But when you're trying to do a really complex animation you'd probably be better off with Flash. Flipnote Studio, as easy as it is to use, is pretty limited. Number of tools is very few for the sake of getting everyone to make their own animations....Maybe there's a few tricks I haven't learned, but it's frustrating to only have two layers to work with, and only two colors. Imagine what I could do if black, red, and blue could all be used on a single frame.

Two layers also means if you have even more content you want to layer on top, you'll have to either rub some off and draw it in again, or open a new frame and copy/paste from there. ANNOYING.

The selection tool is fine, but the resize tool is not. It only doubles or halves the size of the picture which you're working on, and whatever goes off the screen is cropped off. ANNOYING x2. The cropped off portion isn't limited to just the Resize tool, if you decide to move stuff off the screen just for a moment, the software doesn't allow you to. It gets cropped off if you do. ANNOYING x3.

Sound tools are fine, no complaints there, although more space could be given for recording sound effects. I've seen many great flips which obviously use more than 3 sounds, they're all overlayered into the music, then erased, and then a different set of sounds are recorded, and then put into the music again, and then erased again....Quite laborious.

If you want to properly animate, get rid of the frog at the bottom left/right corner of the screen. It gets in the way sometimes.

Professionals will want to use either x6 or x7. It's the only way to make it smooth and fluid, although you might have to make more frames. (if your patience is that of a Wobbuffet, i.e. damn patient, you can do x8 speed and make a thousand frame animation that lasts something like half a minute only).

I'm satisfied with the thing, but I can't help but feel like more should've been done to make animating work a little less frustrating. I know it's supposed to be tedious but it's things like this that help speed up the process, right?

Pulled from my other blog.

Just after April Fools' Day, another holiday-ish day follows hot on its heels. And an Easter Day flipnote to share with you!

The link to it along with an explanation of the flipnote and the command for DSi users is here! Not my flipnote, but more adorable than I could've ever imagined it. :) Go see and add lots of stars~

There will be 9000 blogs of people leaving GS. 9001 of them are fake.

Gamespot needs ita own April Fools joke. How can it go without one this year?

Why isn't Poison super effective to Bug? And why doesn't it have any effect on Steel? Why is Dark resistant to Ghost? ... Thinking about Pokemon type relationships too much will make one's head asplode. Why don't you try giving me some ideas on how to make sense of these three, and loads more inconsistencies in the chart, here? http://nintendo5star.blogspot.com/2010/03/logic-on-pokemon-type-relations.html

It's not very exciting to get Red Steel 2 than it is to get, say, Pokemon Soul Silver, but RS2 is pretty impressive. Read all about it in my hands on with the game.

http://nintendo5star.blogspot.com/2010/03/red-steel-2-hands-on.html

Today is the day the Nintendo DSi XL will hit store shelves. Great timing, Nintendo. With the DSi released just last year and the 3DS set to storm the world next year, this gigantic FOURTH make of the iconic Nintendo DS is sandwiched in between...Is it really necessary to get it when either 1) You've just upgraded to a DSi, or 2) a brand new handheld is just around the corner? It just makes you feel ripped off, doesn't it? DSi XL's position right now, in my opinion, is equivalent to that of the Game Boy Micro right after the GBA SP and before the original DS was released, only it's the exact opposite in terms of size.



The Micro didn't spark any excitement when it was released back in that time either. The screen was ultra small and the console was designed to look sleek. It even had removable faceplates. Obviously catering for the trendy crowd. And again, that's what the DSi XL is doing, catering to a niche audience, only this time the gigantic screens and redesigned stylus are mainly for grandma to see the numbers on Brain Age that much easier. XL even comes prepackaged with Brain Age Express. If the Micro didn't sell well surely this DS won't either. Nintendo are making the same mistake all over again, but hey, they've got nothing to lose. No one condemns Nintendo for making the Game Boy Micro anymore.

But why should we buy a DSi XL? I know the bigger screens(90% larger than the screen of the DSi, blimey!) and the slightly extended battery life are selling points, but Nintendo says.....well, Reggie mentions a wider viewing angle so people can see what you're playing from all sides. I remember him mentioning that on Nintendo Week while the hosts were playing Zelda: Spirit Tracks. But what's the viewing angle for? Surely you don't want to play Spirit Tracks while 3 people stand around you breathing down your neck.

Cue Photo Dojo for DSiWare. Using the DSi (or the DSi XL)'s camera you take shots of your mug and your fighting pose, and your opponents' too. Record a taunt on the microphone. And then using your stick like poses you 'head into battle!' and the fireballs you shoot have YOUR FAEC on them. Some really tense funny stuff. And in multiplayer VS, both of you fight on the same system instead of having to link up. And when two people are staring on the same screen, well, logically you'd need a bigger screen with a wide viewing angle! That's where the DSi XL shines. Photo Dojo could be one DSiWare that gets a lot of attention, for once.

I don't have any videos of Photo Dojo, but here's one on Youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_55zoAgtJPs

This potentially makes DSi XL a more social machine than the regular model, and that's what Nintendo looove to do these days- pack a room full of people staring at game screens while smiling away having fun, whether you're playing or spectating.

Well honestly speaking if you already have a DSi there's not much reason to pick this up(DSi XL) but if you still hold a DS original or a DS Lite in your hands, XL is up for consideration before the 3DS comes next year. Do you want one? I'm not getting it since I my DSi is fresh from just 5 months back.

http://nintendo5star.blogspot.com/2010/03/pokemon-ranger-tracks-of-light-import.html

I'm very pleased with the end result after finishing this game. It could still use a few improvements, but ultimately this is hands-down the best Ranger game in the series. Import, or wait for the US version, just get the game :)