My wife and I coach volleyball and the team we coach together got us a blue DS so now we both have one. They also got us Are you smarter than a 5th grader and brain challenge so maybe my wife will play something besides Brain Age 2. After selling Zelda and Hotel Dusk and getting 100% through Professor Layton, I realized I had nothing but time wasters and Mario to play on vacation next week, so I stopped for some travel ds game cases and Mario Kart DS. I have loved this game since we used to skip classes in college for all day/night Mario Kart 64 marathons, and it sounds like the ds version is just as good. I am now prepared for the eventual sunburn that will keep me inside at least some portion of time while in mexico. Wish me luck.

Now that the weather is getting nicer, it's time to stay inside and play some video games. So I finished Zelda on the DS, then used gamespot and their wonderful walk throughs to pound through Hotel Dusk. Both on ebay and sold for $20+, which is not as much as I should get, but more than trade in, so that's nice. Dusk was fun, and I liked the story, but I got so tired of saying the wrong thing, I plowed through the walk through just to see the ending before my ebay auction ended. I have since ordered Professor Layton and the Curious Village and since I have to be gone all next week for work, I plan to steal the wife's DS again. Maybe I'll have a chance to finish Mario as well.

As for the 360, I am about 30 min away from being 85% done in Lego Star Wars, and I think that is far as I am going to go because the last 2 achievements just aren't worth the hours it will take to get the rest of the gold bricks and get to 100%. Then its time to finish the Simpsons as I am still only about 10% through that, and hop back into Conan just in time to lose my current challenge on xbox360 voice. A challenge that didn't have someone gain 4000+ points would be a nice change of pace, considering I am still not at 10k yet and will never stoop to 2k6 games to get points and couldn't muster enough time to finish that many games even if I was sick for a week. But I digress, and realize I don't know what that means, so back to work.

As you can see from the new banner above, I can't wait for lego indiana jones. This series is such a great idea that I hope they go past star wars, indiana jones, and batma. It would be fun to play as spider man, james bond, or a number of other characters.

I finally had a chance to fire Zelda Phantom Hourglass back up when I was gone over the weekend and stole the DS from my wife. I didn't realize it but was just about at the end of the game already, so I was able to beat it the same day with a little FAQ help. You end up not really needing to find everything in the game to beat the last level, which is nice. I hope they make another Zelda DS title. Games that use all stylus are fun and I would play another one. Speaking of that, Hotel Dusk is frickin hard to not say the wrong thing and have to restart. FAQ here I come...

As for trying to finish Conan's achievements, some of these are proving pretty hard. I can beat the game, but it will take multiple game completions to master all the various weapons, get the 1000s of different kills you need, and find all the treasure chests, power-ups, and topless maidens. Good for replay value, bad if you are in an achievement challenge.