Kimiko

Great! Thanks! ^_^

If I subscribe to the DS feed, will I also get the general Nintendo news? That is, will the general Joystiq Nintendo posts be tagged with both @Wii and @DS?

Thanks for getting that fixed. Now all that remains is making the two tags available as RSS feeds.. :)

Alisha was also one of the few (only?) women on the team. I fear that Joystiq Nintendo is going to turn into yet another boys club.

Wait, are you serious? Alisha Karabinus is gone? But she was the best writer DSF had. Please tell me this blog isn't going to turn into yet another males-only fiasco :(

Yes, please do something about the RSS feeds. I don't have a Wii and no plans to buy one either, but suddenly I'm flooded with posts about Wii this and Wii that. I want an RSS feed that brings only the DS news please.

I've used My Japanese Coach for a while, but found several flaws and frustrations in it.

It teaches the wrong stroke order for several kana (and often enforces them too). It won't stop using rōmaji until you've cleared all the kana lessons, which are scattered throughout instead of all at the start. It doesn't explain verb tenses very well at all, and continually mixes up formal and informal tenses and expressions. The games only test recognition, not production.

All in all it's not very useful at all for someone who's serious about learning Japanese.

Then again, it costs only half of what a basic textbook costs, so what can you expect?

I think "Action" and "turn-based" are contradictory. Action means something like the classic Seiken Densetsu games, or the modern Crystal Chronicle games.

Dragon Quest's characters are DBZ-like? Oh, that's a serious minus then. I don't like that look at all. Though Chrono Trigger wasn't too bad during the actual game. Haven't played the new version yet though. It has the PSX version's cutscenes, doesn't it?

Oh, I see the Japanese DQ9 does have kanji text after all, but with furigana in the conversations at least. Hmm, might be an even more interesting buy then once I get started learning kanji :)

Uhm, wasn't ASH a strategy RPG instead of a regular one? I think that's why I crossed it off my wishlist.

Yes, the Squeenix tax is bad, but I never bought the original, only played it on ZSNES. I think it's worth buying once.

And I wouldn't buy the European edition even if it was released at the same time as the N-American edition. Games are much more expensive here. Squeenix games go for €45-€50 here, while they're only $35-$40 over there. Add to that the favorable exchange rate ($1.00≈€0.78), and even the shipping costs don't matter. The only possible spoiler is if customs intercepts your package for taxes because then you end up paying the European price.