1162: Launch Lineup

I have a curious habit that I tend to fall into pretty much any time I purchase a new games system. Thinking about my recent purchasing habits and my ongoing desire to forgo the “triple-A” experience in favour of more interesting, distinctive titles from further down the “food chain” it’s actually entirely understandable in retrospect, but I always used to wonder why I did it.

It’s this: whenever I purchase a new games system, I will typically not buy the “system-seller” games, and instead buy something that looks interesting and quirky. I’ve been doing it for quite some time, as it happens, if my memory is to be believed, anyway.

When I bought a PS2, I picked up Shadow of Memories (aka Shadow of Destiny) instead of, uh, whatever was exciting in the PS2’s early days. When I bought an Xbox, one of the first titles I grabbed was Sudeki. When I bought a Gamecube… actually, I can’t remember what I bought with my Gamecube. Possibly that Sega volleyball game Beach Spikers. Anyway, you get the general idea.

When it came to the Nintendo DS, I forget exactly what the first games I bought were, but it was one or all of Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney, Trauma Center: Under the Knife and/or 42 All-Time Classics (aka Clubhouse Games in the States). All of them are still favourite games.

42 All-Time Classics is a particularly interesting one to me. I’m not entirely sure what inspired me to pick it up in the first place, as on paper it sounds like shovelware of the worst kind — 42 simple board, card and touchscreen games that you can play either against the computer, against other players in the same room with other DSes or via the Internet. It’s the sort of thing that these days you’d download for free on your mobile phone and then be expected to shell out in-app purchases for “energy” or extra games or game-breaking powerups or something.

But no. 42 All-Time Classics was a full-price game for the DS (and was subsequently split into a number of smaller individually-downloadable chunks on DSiWare) that offered everything you need for a virtual “game night”, so long as you had a few DSes to hand around. You only needed one copy of the game, though; thanks to DS Download Play, you could transmit a copy of the game you wanted to play with other people over Wi-Fi and play with a single cartridge. This is still one of my favourite things about the DS system.

42 All-Time Classics is such a great DS game because it doesn’t do things half-heartedly. There’s a hefty single-player mode that will keep you busy for a long time completing specific missions and unlocking new content through “stamp” mode. The multiplayer mode allows childish chatting through PictoChat during play, which is somewhat pointless when you’re in the same room as your fellow players, but I must applaud any game that practically encourages you to draw knobs at your friends while you’re playing multiplayer with them.

The presentation is pretty good, too. While there’s only so much you can do to visually represent various classic board and card games, 42 All-Time Classics supports its relatively simple visual aesthetic with pleasant little animations, catchy music and distinctly “gamey” sound effects. It doesn’t overdo any of these things, but they round the whole experience off nicely — and cute little touches like the music getting more “dramatic” when someone’s about to win a game add a bit of drama to the experience.

42 All-Time Classics is a great little diversion and pretty much the perfect handheld game. While a lot of people prefer playing this sort of thing on their phone these days, the simple knowledge that I can just open up 42 All-Time Classics on my DS and play without having to connect to the Internet, share to Facebook, make in-app purchases or wait for energy to restore makes it worth the price of admission all by itself. So if you own a DS… well, I strongly recommend grabbing a copy.