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Album - After Mass and my morning honey-do's I worked on this album of 15 pictures. In recent albums there have been a lot of rather cute pictures of Daniel (“he's a door bell”) so I thought I'd balance it out with a picture of him when he's in a timeout. Even when he's being punished, it's hard not to think he looks cute. There are also several pictures of the boys in their newest pastime: playing with their Gameboys. With all the rain we've had lately, they've had plenty of indoor time to use them. Luckily Saturday we had some nice weather so the girls had a lemonade stand. There are also several pictures of Michelle. Sue me, she's my favorite photography subject.

Warioware - Last Friday I stopped by Walmart on my way into work. I went in to pick up a copy of one of Nintendo's newest and most novel games, Warioware Twisted!. We own another earlier version of Warioware for the Gamecube. Much like the Mario Party series is a unique form of game, so are the Warioware series. Quoting a few highlights from Wikipedia:

“The distinctive feature of all Wario Ware games is that they are collections of relatively short, simple microgames packaged in a single game. Each of these micro games last about five seconds and must be completed, or else a life will be lost.”

The graphics are intentionally cheesy, reminiscent of 80's style arcade games. No game is particularly hard, but they are thrown at you randomly in rapid succession. If you don't complete the goal, you lose one of your four lives. Lose them all and you don't complete the current level and have to start it over.

Michelle wasn't all that interested in our Gamecube version of the series. To her the short bursty nature of the games made it seem a bit like a game for those inflicted with attention deficit disorder.

So why did I buy another in the series? The new "Twisted!" version is a cartridge with a little extra hardware included. The cartridge sticks out of the Gameboy in a manner similar to how wireless adapters often stick out of laptops. Included in the appendage are tiny gyroscopes and a small rumble pack. The gyroscopes help the game detect the position of the Gameboy controller! The rumble pack gives small amounts of force feedback.

Almost all of the new microgames require you to twist or rotate the Gameboy. Unlike most Gameboy games, the gyros can detect the amount of rotation. It's not simple on/off like all of the other usual Gameboy controls. For example, in one of the low level games you fly an airplane through a narrow slit opening offset from horizontal at some angle. In another you must shine a spotlight on a fleeing criminal.

In true Warioware tradition some of the microgames are absurd. In one of the silly ones, you are controlling a pair of legs in a synchronized swimming performance. You must sway them in sync with your teammates or they'll crash into an adjacent pair of legs.

Overall it's a unique experience to play a game by "aiming" your controller. It's one of the things I've enjoyed about the Nintendo series of products. Instead of just producing role playing games, first person shooters, or sport emulation games — all with ever increasing amounts of photorealism — they create new types of games that are innovative and well … fun.