Category: Toys

It’s More Fun To Compute

Another graduation gift I received is the TI Voyage 200 calculator. This is pretty much the Rolls Royce of calculators, and (I firmly believe) may be the best chip-based calculator ever made.

This shot shows it next to my iPad, which itself displays a life-sized image of the calculator. How meta!

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It’s a super device that can do almost anything you can imagine. A machine brain that makes me, a mere human, humble.

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Newer TI calculators are more like tablets, with colour screens and apps. This guy is old school, and although it can run apps (downloaded from the PC) via USB, the main function of the device is in a dedicated chip.

Did I mention the manual is 1080 pages in length? πŸ™‚

Anyway I’m going to write a basic game for this one day. You can expect a blog entry if I succeed…

Not So Bad After All

I’m feeling a little Halepule today, so this entry must be brief to give me a period in which to convalesce.

What’s this photo?

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Yep, it’s Mario facing down a Dalek. This was taken with my 3DS, using an ‘AR card’ which makes Mario appear in the image on top of his card. You can actually move him around and even animate him, but I kept him on the card so you could see the effect. It’s a bit nifty as you can see, and several different cards are supported by the OS.

Here’s another little feature of the 3DS OS I like:

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I’m still disappointed Nintendo hasn’t yet embraced a robust online identity with all the trappings (such as achievements), but I suppose extensive stat-tracking on a device is the nearest and next-best thing. You can see in these shots how the OS ranks your use and even keeps track of it on an hourly basis. This should be fun to look at years down the line…

I’ve now got a few games for the 3DS, including the two ‘big’ ones (Super Mario 3D Land and Zelda Ocarina Of Time). I haven’t yet played either though – I’m saving them! But I have been playing Samurai Warriors and Pokemon Rumble Blast and they are both pretty good. The 3D effect, although I rarely turn it on, is effective and occasionally very impressive. Even if the system did not have 3D though it would be quite a beast. Obviously much more powerful and much higher resolution than the PSP, this feels like a next step in handhelds and I think it may have a long and successful life ahead of it after all.

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That’s a screenshot of Monster Hunter Tri G, which comes out next week in Japan. I’m still hoping the game sees a US launch, but I’m starting to think that even if it doesn’t the 3DS may be worth buying after all.

There was an OS update today, which added the ability to record 3D video. I tried it out. My reaction…? Well it was a bit like this:

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I’ll have the 3DS with me in Australia. So some of you can eventually see for yourselves πŸ™‚

Platinum Again

What’s this?

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Not sure? Here’s the back:

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You got it! It’s the 2011 Club Nintendo Platinum reward, a set of Mario pins. But not just pins – pins that come packaged in boxes that can be separated…

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…and reassembled into three different Mario murals…

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All this could have been yours had you earned 600 coins in this years redemption program. That’s $600 spent on Nintendo products.

Yes, $600. Yep. 25 crappy pins πŸ™‚