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Review: Nintendogs
All that said, it is easily the most enjoyable Tamagotchi ripoff I've ever played with. When you first start the game, you're presented with a trip to the puppy mill. There are three versions of the game, and each one has different dog breeds available to play with. I got "Miniature Dachshund and Friends", and along with the title breed you also get the option to adopt Shih Tzu, Golden Retrievers, Beagles, Pugs, or Siberian Huskies. Even if you choose a larger breed, you needn't worry about ruined furniture; the dogs in this game are eternal puppies. Once you've gotten a puppy, the game puts you through a quick tutorial ... and then you're on your own. If you just want to sit around and rub your dog's tummy all day, that's cool.
On the other hand, if you just have to do something constructive with your puppy you can teach your critter tricks. By moving the stylus in certain ways, you can get your pup to approximate certain positions (sit, lie down) or actions (roll over, chase your tail). When they perform the trick with your stylus prompting, a little light bulb shows up on screen. If you press the icon, you're given the chance to say something into the built in microphone. Say roughly the same thing enough times, and your dog will associate that vocal imprint with the trick. The key with this is that, as good an idea as it is, the microphone isn't all that great. Multiple words (like "sit down" or "chase your tail") with distinct sounds are the best way to get the wee canine to do what you want.
Once you have it following your voice you can do what every dog owner dreams of: enter it in contests! Actually, the contests are phenomenally boring and are hosted by two incredibly annoying virtual yahoos. The only reason to enter a contest is if you want money ... and you're going to need it. In order to pick up dogs from the kennel, you need to spend money on them. At the start of the game you have more than enough to buy one dog, but if you want to buy any more you're definitely going to need to enter a few contests. Despite the annoyance factor, you've just got to do it. Having two dogs in the house is part of the whole fun of the game. The easiest contest is the obedience contest, which asks you to have your dog perform certain tricks in a specific order prompted by the game. You also have the option of entering your pooch into a frisbee competition or an obstacle course event. The frisbee toss is relatively easy once you get the hang of it, but the control for the obstacle course is terrible. Even with practice it's hard to know what the dog is going to do. Whether it's going to understand your stylus clicks enough to go through the little doggie tube in a timely fashion is critical to success in the contest, and the control just isn't there.
Personally, I much preferred one-on-one time with my dog (a Siberian Husky named Lupus) in the house or taking it for walks. Going for a walk isn't a terribly interactive event, but your dog enjoys it a whole lot. From your house you plan out the walking route, and can aim yourself and your dog at places like the park or the obstacle course arena. At the park you can play catch or practice with your frisbee, and at the arena you can get in some time with the awful jumps and tubes for the obstacle course competition. There are also cheaper second hand stores than the corner store near your place, where you can buy toys, food, and water. A walk mostly consists of you holding the dog's leash while it chugs along, occasionally stopping to wizz or poop. There are occasional points of interest, where your dog might find a gift for you or run into another dog owner out for a walk. The presents are cute, ranging from odd objects that you can use to play with your dogs to even odder fashion items that you can cruelly place on your animal. The other dog owners are know-it-alls, and seek to give you unasked for hints about how you should best play the game.
And really, who cares what they think? Nintendogs is entirely about what you can get out of it. Whatever makes you laugh or get warm fuzzies is the right thing for you to do. For example, for a reason that escapes me Nintendo thought that it would be important for you to know every place in the neighborhood that your dog has peed. They're marked by little blue dots on the mini-map showing your progress on your walk. The more your dog pees in a certain spot, the larger the dot gets. Though I know it isn't always the case with Nintendogs, Lupus only peed in places he'd already done so. By the time I was ready to write this article the mini-map resembled a smurf's version of mapquest.
The intelligence and responsiveness of the virtual puppies, as well as their individual personalities, is quite a sight to behold. Not only can you derive enjoyment from your interaction with the dogs, but if you have more than one in your house you can watch them play with each other. Some dogs are playful, some are lazy, and some are troublemakers. Together, a pair or trio of dogs is almost more than you can comprehend. You can only actually play with one dog at a time, but that doesn't stop the puppies from getting right up against the touch screen and struggling for your attention. Lupus and my wife's dog Erin would constantly battle each other for chew toys, affection, and (thanks their exuberant natures) who got to be standing at any given time. If you like animals at all, it's hard not to smile at the image of two happy puppies literally warring for your attention. Nintendo has really captured something intrinsic to the appeal of having a dog for a pet here, and everyone I've shown the game to has had a hard time putting it down. Even without the voice element (the voice commands only work for the dog's owner, obviously) it's hard not to be drawn in by their enthusiasm and wagging tails.
In the end, this unique title for the DS is all about who you are and the connection you can form with little virtual critters. If the idea of a virtual puppy isn't appealing to you, you're probably not going to get a lot of enjoyment out of Nintendogs. If the venerable PC titles "Catz" and "Dogz" were your thing back in the day or you were one of the people that made sure your Tamagotchi was fed regularly, these pups will be right up your alley. Judging by sales numbers the non-hardcore market has already adopted this title, and a dog of their own. Your mileage may vary, but Nintendo has a real accomplishment here.
These concepts go a bit further back than Tamogachi, i.e. David Crane's Little Computer People, which today would be something akin to a cross between Tamogachi and Sims, as you could interact with some little dude who lived in your C64. I thought it was a bizzare idea when I first saw in in development at Activision in Mountain View, back in 1985 (that's twenty years ago!) and it runs in only 64K of memory. Imagine David Crane coming out of retirement or someone else picking this old nut back up and injecting it with new life. IIRC the main fault of LCP was the limited repetoire of the character, which Nintendogs seems to take advantage of technology (i.e. lots of cheap memory) to hold more behaviour and possible courses of action.
I'd probably lean toward some other animal than a dog. A cat would be easy, it just eats and sleeps most of the time, though you could enjoy the thrill of virtual litterbox cleaning and dragging a string around while the cat chases, or even give it a brown paper shopping bag to hide in.
What animal would really make for an ideal pet? I've tried spiders, which are actually fascinating pets and that might be cool in a virtual way.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I need to feed my Tamagotchi!
Jesus saved me from my past. He can save you as well.
It's an excellent title and it's clear that an amazing amount of work has gone into making these critters very lifelike. I do have a dog IRL and the puppy behaves very much like him. There are of course still some limits (it's obvious that there are lots of event triggers, that can make things look unrealistic), but generally it's just an amazing piece of software and a great toy.
Now if you'll pardon me I'm off to win the master series in disc throwing ^_^
Against the grain
WTF is non-game games?
Let me be the first to say it:
Awwwww. Ain't it cute?
What's interesting about the game is that it is really designed to be played for about 30 or so minutes at a time. You start it up, teach the dog some more tricks (I think it's 2 max per day), take it for a walk (which you can only do every 30 minutes), and train it for competitions. So must of the fun in the game comes from all the little details and things that happen as you perform the main tasks, and watching your dog change (my shy chihuahua grew "more confident" as I kept taking her for walks...she eventually started to listen to my commands better).
The only thing I wish for is that the dogs could grow up. I always thought it was fun watching that happen in older games like Dogz.
A non-game game where you enter numbers into spreadsheet cells. Sounds like non-fun to me.
This is another example of Nintendo's gaming genius. Take a simple idea, make the gameplay simple to get to grips with, but program it well.
The game has been well thought out with some nice touches, but has not been made over-complex.
Games like this show that you do not need a top spec machine with flashy graphics to run an addictive game. Some of the most addictive games ever made have been simple, but they have a hidden depth (playability).
Well done to Nintendo, lets hope they keep up the good work.
For example, for a reason that escapes me Nintendo thought that it would be important for you to know every place in the neighborhood that your dog has peed. They're marked by little blue dots on the mini-map showing your progress on your walk. The more your dog pees in a certain spot, the larger the dot gets. Though I know it isn't always the case with Nintendogs, Lupus only peed in places he'd already done so. By the time I was ready to write this article the mini-map resembled a smurf's version of mapquest.
It's rumored that the dogs use this to mark territories. Notice that if you meet another dog during your walk, sometimes the mini-map will highlight the other dog's pee spot by making it blink in red, as though you're entering its territory. At this point, it's unknown what effect this has on the two dogs becoming playmates or fighting. There are a ton of weird undocumented little things like this in the game. I found a stick and a juice bottle, and I accidentally bopped my dog in the head with them during catch, and now he just growls and them and runs away when I bring them out. But he loves my kleenex box. Weird little virtual dogs, man.
"Sufferin' succotash."
... compared to my favourite new game.
Nintengirls!
Japanese Product Page
Some blog
English Box Shot
Here's a crazy idea: if you don't like the idea, don't play the game. Everything then magically works out fine.
In Japan, this game is getting a LOT of casual and female gamers into the DS, which is good for Nintendo and good for the DS and good for gaming. These are people who never would have played games before, maybe because they didn't find them interesting or were intimidated by them. My girlfriend, for example, fell in love with Nintendogs the moment she saw it, and wants a DS now. Because of that interest, she's been paying a bit more attention to other DS games: she also wants Pac Pics, and she gets a kick out of Ouendan.
I'm not hoping for her to become a hardcore gamer or anything, but I like that she now has some interest in it, so that we have another thing we can share together.
I still play with my Pocket Pikachu.
Is that what the kids are calling it these days?
"To lead the people, you must walk behind them"
Holy shit guys, Donald Rumsfeld is writing for Slashdot now! I would try out Nintendogs, but I just have too many known unknowns.
Some people have been having trouble with their dog recognizing vocal commands, until they realized they were leaning forward and practically yelling into the DS mic. The mic is very sensitive, and you only need to speak clearly at room-level volume with the DS at a normal distance, and the game will recognize your voice much more clearly.
"Sufferin' succotash."
Bah, my pets were never that well-behaved. Bringing the frisbee back to you after you threw it - what is the fun in that? No, with my dogs you had to chase them down and pry it out of their mouths, while defending from the other dogs that were also trying to get at it. It made for some awesome games of base^H^H^H^Hcalvin ball.
Which brings me to the question of why these role playing games never include any decent side games. From everything I have talked to this game has the pet-owner emotional attachment parts down to a tee, but then you have all the boring things, that you would have in real life. I guess it has the redeeming factor of teaching kids responsibility, but as an adult I have enough of that, so it just comes acrossed as meaningless busy work - the infamous grind. Why not make the contests where you earn money more fun mini-games?
If you look at the old Atari games, most of them were nothing but mini games, and they fun. Now you have all these MMORPGs, where advancement and community is the entertaining aspect of the game, while the things you do to advance are dull, dull, dull. Something that Nintendo does very well in nearly all their games is combining fun gameplay with the opportunity for advancement (new things to unlock). I am still waiting for someone to create a MMORPG, take a cue from the old Atari games and newer games like Super Monkeyball, Mario Party, and approach the advancement tasks like they were mini-games that are fun to play in and of themselves. They would have to do a little more work to integrate them into the game (for immersion and all that), preferably happening in the same world. For example, being in a race should be implemented more like vehicles in FPS, rather than like Mario party where map screen and game screens are completely different. They would also have to include multiplayer coop games for the community aspects, and have different characters classes and stats would result in diffent advantages in the games. If anyone ever did this, it would be pure crack.
The nice thing about this game is that it can appeal to gamers and non gamers alike... Nintendo is really trying to reach out to the people that typically wouldn't pick up a gaming system, which is smart IMO. An untapped sector of the market.
Last week, the comic strip Foxtrot dealt with the mom and her wanting to play Nintendogs... it was pretty funny. Here's the first day's comic, click "next date" to read the days following.
I am so sick and tired of Zonk and his bullshit around here I seriously am thining of ditching Slashdot altogether. After many years of faithful readership, I'm pretty much done.
/. yet.
It can't have been all that faithful if you haven't figured out how to remove articles from your personal view of
Go to http://slashdot.org/users.pl?op=edithome. Click the Homepage tab at the top. Turn off the checkmark next to "Zonk" or anybody else you don't want to see.
It's not that difficult, guy.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
I got Nintedogs about two weeks ago, and I enjoyed it for about the first week. Now it's starting to get old. The problem is that you have to actually feed the dog everyday. Shouldn't a virtual pet have the benefit of not having to be fed and washed like a real dog? I even tried setting the DS's game clock backwards to try to fool it, but it somehow knows if you've done that. The last straw was when one of the virtual people in the game yelled at me for not picking up my dog's virtual poop. Nintendogs needs a virtual shotgun so that I can end it Old Yeller style.
Perhaps you could tell us which publication, web site, or whatever you write for, so we could sample your work, and from it, form a more informed evaluation of the merits of you criticism?
"I have never won a debate with an ignorant person." -Ali ibn Abi Talib
If you think the obstacle course is hard you are doing it wrong.
/me is off to go to a real training class with my pup now //much cuter than any virtual pet
You are probably doing what I was doing, just tapping and hoping your puppy will go there. The trick is to keep the stylus on the screen and drag the route, your pup will follow it and you can guide it perfectly. (after a few tries for the pup to learn)
Also remember to slow your pup down on the see-saw bye dragging the stylus to a point behind him after he crosses the middle, to let it drop, or your pup will get scared and jump off.
Logic brings Victory
Just a nit -- I find the agility contest control to be about the most precise control in the game. The key is quick reflexes to steer your dog away from potential distractions. I've got three dogs in my game and they all get distracted differently; it's about learning how they react, I think.
I've had this game since August 11 and have played it every day since. Awesome game.
I know that this comment will be trashed to hell and back and yes, I know that Zonk was just using a phrase but please, those of you who are considering getting a pet do not go to puppy mills (or kitten mills).
The animals are kept in cramped, deplorable conditions. Instead of having some semblance of a decent life the females are impregnated as fast as they can. It doesn't matter if the one doing the impregnating is one of her offspring, so long as she is pregnant is all the breeder cares about.
If you're considering getting a pet please go to either your local Humane Society or a reputable non-profit animal shelter. Your new companion will thank you for giving it a good home where it is wanted.
Also, please remember to spay/neuter your new friend. If that simple act were done the tens of thousands of animals a year who are dropped off at shelters or abandoned along a road would be significantly reduced.
I now return you to your normally scheduled rantings about whatever you think is worthy of your time.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Can you pause him when the phone rings?
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.
Back in the Tamagatchi era, I worked in a retail store that sold them. I could never get over the emotions attached to the toy - specifically the sadness people would have over their deaths (read: battery loss, water, older brothers, fights, etc). At one instance a little girl was balling over her Tamagatchi's death (due to battery loss) and refused to have her mother buy her a new one - she wanted her old one back. She was so distraught that I decided to step in and be the humanitarian. I told her I would try to bring it back, and took her toy over to the batteries department. Luckily they had the right size, so I popped the back off, slapped the new battery in, and replaced the facing. At the initial chirp the girl freaked out, latched onto my leg in exuberant gratitude, while the mother thanked me (apparently the girl had cried non-stop for two days now) for pacifying her daughter. Soon after other parents of this girl's friends approached me - all asking me to help bring their kids toys back from the dead. Smelling a pretty penny to be made off the irrational suffering of children I started dolling out my phone number and made house calls on the side. I was raking in $15.00 per house call off of a dollar battery install. Unfortunately the replacement batteries outlived the Tamagatchi phase. Such is the whim of children.
This irrational concern for the artificial seems strange to me. I have seen girls all out ignore flesh and blood cats for the Catz program, or in the same vein shun real dogs for Sony's Ibo. I would be curious to see a study on the empathetic relationship between people and their real animals versus people and their real animals plus the artificial ones. I would think the latter would be a bit more twisted since digital pets reinforce the "use, abuse, throw away" relationship. *shrug* I guess that is why there are alligators in the sewers, and feral cat colonies in the country - some people just cannot take care of something.
Well enough of memory lane..
ch ch ch chia
A cat would be easy, it just eats and sleeps most of the time, though you could enjoy the thrill of virtual litterbox cleaning and dragging a string around while the cat chases, or even give it a brown paper shopping bag to hide in.
You're forgetting about putting a sock on its head.
Virtual pets are ALWAYS more fun to abuse than treat properly. I used to have a tamagotchi, and I would punish the animal after every time I fed it. I was kind of surprised when it started associating punishment with feeding and started refusing food.
Of course, then I started punishing it for not eating...
$ cat
?
?
hey cat theres a mouse overthere go get it
hey cat theres a mouse overthere go get it
asdf
asdf
quit
quit
^C
$
Stupid cat.
Those chickens aren't wild. No chicken is.
However, have you ever tested the intelligence of a chicken? Wily hunters they are not. They are good at pecking, and thinking about one thing at a time. Usually it's "what do i peck?" or "blink, eye"- then they peck. Then they think "what do I peck?" - then they peck again, or maybe they look in another direction or take a step, then it's back to picking a pecking target.
Chicken: Bug? >peckstrutblink
Cat: prey. must. get. low. stalk. and. KILL!!!!
"If you just want to sit around and rub your dog's tummy all day, that's cool."
What if I want to be like Eric Cartman and play red rocket with the pup? Can I do that?
Click here. Uh oh. :)
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
So I guess none of us should criticize poor **insert ANY kind of job/skillset here** unless we can do better?
So it's OK for your car mechanic to do a poor job, because YOU can't do better yourself? We can't criticize the President because we have not been President?
If it looks like shit, smells like shit, you don't need to be a shit expert to call it what it is: SHIT!
There is not much wireless to speak of. Both my GF and I have DS's and Nintendogs, and the extent of "Bark Mode" is that you transfer your dog and trainer info over to the other person's DS and then the wireless shuts off. It then becomes identical to meeting another dog in the park where you play with your puppy and the other person's puppy.
We figured this out the hard way when my GF asked me if she saw the amazing catch my dog made with the frisbee, when I was throwing a tennis ball around on my screen. Eventually the dogs "go home" and that's the end of Bark Mode. Pretty disappointing.
Because, um, you didn't read the review or any other descriptions of Nintendogs, which does include what you're asking for? Whatever "everything" you're talking to, it seems not to have played this one.
My kids have a copy of Nintendogs. They play some sort of frisbee contest, a lot, and then there are actual agility training schools and contests. Both of those run as separate little arcade sequences, almost, with slight variations on the control system for each. The side games let you unlock various equipment and so on, as well as earning you money to purchase that stuff. Does this ring a bell, "mini side game" wise?
(And let me say, your Calvinball chases were a great example of positive reinforcement training. The game the dog was playing was called "keep away." They learn to do that because they get reinforced for doing it -- they enjoy the attention, running around, and so on. Check out a basic operant conditioning book for a description of how you trained Fido to do that. It's kind of an interesting topic -- and to its credit the Nintendogs model seems to "get" that sort of training, which a lot of real-life dog owners don't understand at all.)
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
This type of application will get a lot more interesting when displays get so cheap we can paper our walls with them, so virtual pets can literally roam around the house - following you or playing hide'n'seek.
I'd think head-to-head competition and shared playing would be a major selling point. Everyone wants to show off their pet.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
First of all, Nintendogs is definitely a game. It has clearly defined objectives and ways to reach these objectives. Of course, you don't have to reach them, but the fact that you can race the tracks in Need for Speed backwards and still have fun doesn't mean that Need for Speed isn't a game.
Second, I think the "microphone problems" Zonk mentions are an intentional part of the game. I've noticed that some dogs respond better to commands. I have a dog which actually responds to commands my girlfriend gives to her own dog while she's sitting a few metres away. Having played Bomberman, I know the voice recognition of the DS can be made to work pretty well. The fact that some dogs don't immediately respond to commands seems to be part of the gameplay - it reflects the fact that real dogs don't immediately respond to all commands, either.
I actually find the competitions to be quite exciting. The two commenters are annoying for sure, but the games themselves are pretty funny, and I enjoy playing them a great deal.
I suspect Nintendogs works so well mainly because it's so unbelievably believable. If you throw a ball and your three dogs run to get it, fighting each other for it once one of them picks it up, you simply don't think about how they're not real dogs even for one second. There's hardly a situation where you're reminded of the fact that they're only virtual - and when it happens, it's mostly because you go "wow, I wonder how the heck they did this!" because your dog did something so natural, you simply don't expect a simulation to act like that.
Lastly, I want to respond to all the "Nintendogs sucks because you should get a real dog" comments. Let me put it like this: Screw you. I live in an apartment where I can't have pets. I'm a student, so I don't have enough income to simply move somewhere else. I don't actually have enough money to take care of a pet at all, and I'm not home most of the day, anyway. What kind of crappy life would my dog have? And what about kids? I read that in GB, Nintendo works together with an animal charity in order to promote Nintendogs. It's a lot better for parents to get their children Nintendogs so they can learn to take care of an animal each day, than to get them a real dog, only to get rid of him again after the children lose interest a few months later.
Did it even occur to you that there are people who:
I'm glad that a real animal works so well for you, but it doesn't for many people, and that doesn't make them dumb.
Putting masking tape on top of one - four of your cats paws.
At 3-4 my cat can't decide for a long enough time which paw to deal with first....so none of them get fixed, he just keeps changing paws. Funniest thing in the world.