Brandon Notices

I've noticed that many newer video games don't seem to have time limits, but there's something about them that has been bugging me.

Think back to Super Mario Bros. The timer for each level would typically start with a few hundred "seconds," even though it always ticked down much faster than that. When the timer reached 100 or so, the music would speed up, causing a great deal of panic for the player. When the timer reached 0, Mario would die.

I understand that this just is a gameplay device to add some challenge to the game, but why does he die? By what mechanism is Mario killed when the time runs out?

What do you think of my new aquarium? My fish sure look realistic, don't they? Well, actually, the fish aren't real at all! They are video game characters!

Actually, I wouldn't really call it a game, but it runs on a game system. My Aquarium was released Monday morning as a download for Wii. It cost 500 Wii Points ($5), and I was a bit reluctant to buy it at first. After I watched a few videos online of it, I caved in and decided to get it.

There's a lot to do in terms of customization in this game, which is good news for me because I love tinkering with things. You can choose what every aspect of the tank looks like: what fish populate the tank, what decorations fill it (unfortunately, there are no underwater castles or plastic scuba divers), what the floor and background look like, and even what kind of lighting illuminates the tank. You can create up to six tanks. My first looks like a generic tank. The second has a riverbed theme.

The fish seem to swim around realistically. It probably wasn't very hard to make them swim convincingly because they just swim around. If you point the cursor at a fish and give the Wii Remote a little jerk, the fish will wiggle and squirm around. The fish start small and grow over time; if you don't feed your fish, they don't die, though. At first, the selection of fish you can have in the tank is limited, but it seems that more will be unlocked as time passes.

I'll probably get bored with My Aquarium before next week, but at least when we have company over, we can have a huge, vibrant, TV-sized fish tank.

The wild Haunter used Mean Look on my Rhydon, which means that I can't run away from this Pokémon battle, and I can't recall my Rhydon, either. The main reason I keep Rhydon around is because he knows a bunch of hidden moves, such as Strength. The hidden moves he knows are all of the Normal or Fighting type, none of which have any effect on Ghost-type Pokémon such as Haunter. The other move Rhydon knows, Earthquake, won't affect Haunter because she levitates above the ground.

I've looked through my bag, but I don't have any items, such as the Poké Doll or the Fluffy Tail, which will allow me to flee the battle regardless of the Mean Look. I could use Rhydon's moves (regardless of the fact that they'll do no damage) so that they'll eventually run out of PP. Then, he'll resort to struggling against the Haunter, which will finally do some damage. Haunter knows Spite, which reduces the PP of the move Rhydon last used, so that may help to speed up this process.

Or maybe I could wait for Haunter to finish off my Rhydon. The problem is that Rhydon's level is much higher than Haunter's, and this could take a while. Also, the Haunter is paralyzed, so half the time, it can't even move anyway.

Maybe I could catch Haunter. That would put an end to the battle. But its HP is maxed out, and I'm afraid that the Poké Balls won't work very well because of this. But I have a lot of them, so I think I'll give it a try. Nope, it didn't work.

Oooh, Haunter just used Curse. It halved its own HP and subjected Rhydon to the curse; each turn, Rhydon's HP is dropping by about third of its max HP. Now I'm just chucking Poké Balls until either Haunter is caught or Rhydon faints.

Click! The Poké Ball captured the Haunter! And just in time, because Rhydon's HP was so low that some alarm was going off. This was as bad as Wobbuffet versus Wobbuffet.

Before I get into the main topic of this article, I think I'll mention that I am using a new keyboard layout! The standard layout in the US is QWERTY, but I am using a rather new one called Colemak. It is designed to be more comfortable than QWERTY, but easier to switch than Dvorak. I don't want to talk too much about it; you can read about Colemak on its official site. I can't tell if I'll stick with it in the long run, but I'm going to write this article with it.

I've had a Wheel of Fortune game on my cell phone for a few weeks now, and it's a quality game. The other night, however, I got a puzzle with a really weird category: Category Name. (The screenshot to the right isn't the weird puzzle, but the guy on the left is my avatar! Looks like me, huh? I have a Wild Card!) Not only that, but the puzzle itself looked weird—it wasn't left-aligned, like usual:

_ _ _ _ _ _
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The round played as usual, and I eventually solved the puzzle: "Sample Puzzle". Weird.

Donkey Kong Country 2 is one of my favorite video games. It was originally released for the Super Nintendo back in 1995, and improved on the original Donkey Kong Country game in almost every respect. It's about Diddy and Dixie Kong, a pair of love-monkeys. The controls for this game, like the last, were very simple. Press B to jump, and hold Y to run. It was very easy to do a running jump: While moving in one direction, hold the Y button with the tip of the thumb to run, and press the middle of the thumb into the B button to jump. It was very natural and comfortable to play this way, which is a good thing, because the running jump is perhaps the most frequent action you'll perform in this game.

DKC 2 was released on Wii's Virtual Console back in May; I'm surprised that I didn't buy it until yesterday, but I have a good reason for waiting. It's because I didn't have the right controller. On the Wii, Virtual Console games can be played with two controllers: the GameCube controller (which I happen to have plenty of) and the Classic Controller, a new controller Nintendo has developed, which has a very typical button layout (unlike the Wii Remote's).

Until yesterday, I did not have a Classic Controller, but that's okay, because I can use my GameCube controllers to play Virtual Console games, right? Not really.

Since Nintendo gives no option for remapping the controls for Virtual Console games, it would be very uncomfortable to do a running jump with the GameCube controller. The A button is situated between the B and Y buttons, which means that in trying to perform a running jump, you are more likely to press A and have Diddy jump on Dixie's shoulders (that's what the A button does).

It's unfortunate that Nintendo gives no option to remap the controls. I would assign jump to the A button and run to the Y button, but I can't. So I decided yesterday to buy a Classic Controller, which practically has the same layout as the Super Nintendo controller. Now I can do running jumps! The controller cost $20, but it doesn't feel like a rip-off. It will be useful for future games, like the upcoming Smash Bros. game. But for now, back to Donkey Kong.

A few weeks ago, my sister Stephanie asked me to make invitations to a Halloween party that she was planning. And she gave one of the invitations to me! The party was last night, and Stephanie called it a Halo-Wii-n party, because she was planning for us to play Halo 3 and Wii games. But first, we had to watch The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and Stephanie decided that we would watch it outside. In 35-to-40-degree weather. So it was cold. She decided that we would participate with the movie like people did in the '70s, so she handed out rice, newspapers, toast, etc., and told us what to do and roughly when to do it. I got cold and went in near the end of the movie.

Kevin had brought over his Xbox 360 the night before to ensure that we could hook up everything successfully. This allowed me a little time to practice playing Halo, but it wasn't enough to make me anywhere near good enough to beat some of Stephanie's friends. My battle strategy is to run up at people, shooting continuously at them until I get close enough to hit them with my gun. But they usually managed to kill me before I could reach them.

While some of us were playing Halo, Stephanie and the rest were sitting on the floor, decorating cookies. At Safeway, we had found ghost- and jack-o'-lantern-shaped chocolate cookies that came with frosting, sprinkles, and small candy. After I was done losing at Halo, I sat down to decorate one. I was uninspired and came up with a very dull pumpkin that had globs of frosting for eyes, a mouth, and a nose. Each of the four globs had different-colored sprinkles. It's not my best work, and since chocolate isn't really my favorite, I don't know if I'll ever eat this. It's probably hard, dry, and stale. (Actually, I just took a little bite. It reminds me of Cocoa Krispies.)

Stephanie's friend Madison started complaining that nobody was playing Wii, so I set up Mario Party 8 for everyone. They started getting mad at me for starting the board game mode because they secretly wanted to play only minigames. They played one game, Shake It Up, repeatedly, because they thought the inadvertently suggestive animation of how to shake the Wii Remote was funny.

Remember, everyone, that It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown airs this Tuesday at 8/7c on ABC. (I told you earlier this month that it would air tonight, but that was a lie.) Immediately following it is another special, You're Not Elected, Charlie Brown, which is about Linus running for class president. The title is a little odd, since Charlie Brown isn't running at all for president. It has only a little bit to do with the Great Pumpkin episode.

I am very excited for the new Super Smash Bros. Brawl game that is supposed to come out later this year. I've been checking out the latest updates about the game on the official website. In today's update, they provided some pictures of Pikachu, which happens to be the character I've been using since the original Smash Bros. game was released 8 years ago. I thought something was a little odd about the Pikachu in these pictures, though. I think I figured out what is wrong. Pikachu is naked.

I've always used Pikachu in Super Smash Bros. Melee, and I've always had him wearing the spiffy green hat. I guess it's because it looks whimsical. I think the hat is supposed to be a fedora (or maybe it's a homburg—I'm not really a hat expert, as I rarely wear them myself); Pikachu's other hat choices in Melee include a pointed blue party hat and a red cap that resembles Ash's old hat from the anime. My point here is that I suppose I'm not used to seeing Pikachu without a hat!

I'm pretty sure that I've read that Nintendo is going to include costume changes in the new game, so I'm hoping that it's a given that Pikachu will continue to have a variety of hats to choose from, especially the beloved green hat. Except for the occasional hat, costume changes so far through the Smash Bros. series have been limited to color changes. I wonder if Nintendo's planning on entire outfit changes. I'm sure there are some purists who would rather see Wario in his classic yellow-and-purple overall ensemble rather than the new biker outfit he'll be wearing (personally, I love his biker outfit); it would be neat to have the option to choose between the different clothes.

Today, I bought Mario Party 7! I've been awaiting this eagerly for months now.

Steffi, Kevin, and I played today. We were already planning on playing at Grand Canal, which is like Venice with rivers flooding the streets. At first, I was stinking, frequently losing coins to my enemies. Also, it didn't help a whole lot that we decided to skip practicing to speed things up (besides, you usually get the hang of a mini-game after the first 10 seconds), but Toad, the computer player, automatically already knew what to do, so he won many of the mini-games.

For the Last Four Turns, Bowser threw Koopa Kid Spaces all over the place. On the last turn, Stephanie landed on one. Koopa Kid evenly distributed everyone's coins. Then I landed on a Blue Space and got three Coins, and Toad landed on a Happening Space. Then I won the mini-game. Well, it turned out that I won the game with 4 Stars, 28 Coins, and everyone else tied with 1 Star, 15 Coins. What a silly ending. I've never seen a three-way tie for second.

I have, however, won by a single coin before. There's no greater feeling.

Short but big thunderstorm today. The rain was falling really really hard—the Weather Channel's Doppler radar had this huge red blob headed across Lynnwood. The thunder was very loud, and my poor kitty cat was horrified. He was crouching on the ground, and I picked him up, and he was so tense! Poor kitty.

So much weather stuff going on. Weather's getting a bad rep. Let's see... Hurricanes Katrina and Rita struck, and now Otis is planning on striking Arizona. An article on James' blog had me thinking about how everybody's gotten a turn with bad weather, and it should be our turn next. Earthquakes make me nauseous. I don't know, I guess all disasters are bad. I feel kinda bad for the people living in my SimCities. There were times when numerous volcanoes would rise from the earth, several UFOs would invade the city, lightning would strike five times per second all over the place, and fire would just spread from out of nowhere. Earthquakes would roar five times a minute, and four or five tornadoes would tear up the city at a time. The population would drop to zero, and every building not destroyed in the disaster would get abandoned. What a rough day for my Sims.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was, once again, preempted for a wonderfully boring baseball game. This is the second time in this season's run that this has happend, and we're only four episodes into it. At this rate, I'll have no idea what's happening half the time.

Ah, that reminds me. Our class's theme for homecoming at Meadowdale High School this year is Ninja Turtles. How fun! The freshmen have Ghostbusters, the sophomores have Super Mario, and the juniors got stuck with Scooby-Doo. During the assembly, the girl demonstrating what to wear during class theme day was dressed up as a turtle, spinning a nunchuck above this head; this surprised a lot of people. Two girls sitting behind me yanked out their Student Handbooks and pointed out to everyone sitting around that it distinctly says no "nun-chu-ka sticks." So the ASB's example might inadvertantly lead seniors to bring weapons to school. Don't let some guy poke your eye with a sai!

Not much has happened during Mid-Winter Break. It's practically a waste of free time. However, the weather has been bearable.

On Wednesday, Stephanie and I invited Kevin over to have a Mario Party party. We decided we were going to play for 30 turns on Faire Square. Some people would say that's a lot of turns, but I've played 50-turn games several times—35 turns is called a standard game... But the party was based on this game, so it wouldn't make sense to have it end after only an hour and a half.

We played ten turns, which takes about 40 minutes, then Stephanie decided that since it was so sunny, she wanted to go play tennis (on my grandparents' badminton court, which is too small to play tennis on). So she called my grandparents to ask if it was okay to play on their court, but they weren't home, so we decided to go to the park instead. I thought we were going to go to Meadowdale Neighborhood Park, but Stephanie wanted to go to Wilcox Park instead. I was looking forward to swinging, but a bunch of selfish little kids refused to let us use the swings in the main playground, so we left to go to the smaller, older playground on the other side of the park. We ran crazily through the forest, with me yelling "I know the way, follow me!" but when we got to where I thought the playground was, Stephanie and I stood there staring at the empty field, then looking at each other. The second playground was gone! No longer there! Disappointed, we all returned to the playground and played on the see-saw for a while.

When we got back, Mom and Dad were home. Stephanie started talking to her friends online, and this made me angry because we were waiting on her to finish our Mario Party game. After she finally finished what she was doing, we played our game. The interesting thing about Faire Square is that you can buy up to 5 stars at once, and the prices change between day and night. The game ended anti-climatically when Twila wanted 40 coins for every star. Yikes, that's a lot.

Then on Thursday, Stephanie and I decided we had so much fun with Mario Party that we decided to have another Mario Party party. We invited Kevin over, but then Stephanie decided she didn't want to play. But we had already invited Kevin over... Stephanie ended up getting sick, so she watched Survivor with Mom and Dad while Kevin and I played a 10-turn game in E. Gadd's Garage. We played together on a team, and would have lost if it weren't for the end-of-game bonuses.

Kevin's upset that he wouldn't be able to play Tetris DX, a Game Boy Color game, on the Nintendo DS. Myself, I'm disappointed that I can't play Pokémon Puzzle Challenge on it. You can't play multiplayer Game Boy Advance games, either.

But what's cool is that it has TWO SCREENS! It's has dual screens! That's what the DS stands for. Dual Screen. You can touch the bottom screen. Use a stylus. It's a touch screen! You can draw pictures or whatever.

It even comes with a built-in program called PictoChat. That's where people can send pictures to each other as instant messages. Unfortunately, nobody near me has a Nintendo DS, so I can't play PictoChat with anybody. It's boring playing tic-tac-toe by myself. Fortunately, I know some guy on the bus who has a Nintendo DS. I'll play on the bus.

I got Mario POWER Tennis yesterday. It's awesome. I already unlocked four characters! I like Koopa Troopa. In the N64 version, I chose Paratroopa every time, but he wasn't available at first. I like Koopa Troopa's defensive power shot. It's swirly!

Guess what. I just finished an entire candy cane without it breaking! Ususally always when I eat a candy cane, it breaks. It's always so frustrating. I took care with this last candy cane to make sure it wouldn't break.

So on The Sims, last time Michelle was here, Michelle asked one of Stephanie's Sims to move in to her house. Some time after, Stephanie was upset that one of her Sims was taken from her house, so I told her to just have one of her Sims ask the other Sim to move back. And guess what she did. She asked that Sim, and another Sim from Michelle's house to move in. So great. Now all Michelle has is a teenager. The teenager can't ask anyone to move in, and nobody from Stephanie's house can ask the teenager to move in. I think Stephanie mutilated Michelle's family. I don't know what I can do to fix this.

Today, I went to Toys "R" Us for a Pokémon-related event.

Before I left, I was afraid that there would only be little kids who didn't know how to battle or do anything. I was also afraid that there would be nobody else there to battle.

So we got there at 9:30. The first 50 people to get there got a free Pokémon poster! There were only six people there. I got four posters!

Mostly, what we did was trade and battle. Some of the others also played a demo of the new trading card game, but I wasn't very interested. I never was interested in the card game.

I was more interested in trading than battling. I traded with Ace, Sparky, Lee, Brisa, Dayne, and Jeremy. (I'm certain that many of those names are not real.) I talked to Ace the most. He traded me a Gastly to keep! Jeremy was the Toys "R" Us employee who had a Game Boy that he used to trade Pokémon to us. We were all expecting a rare Pokémon like Jirachi or Celebi, but all I got from him was a Haunter (which immediately evolved into a Gengar).

Dayne was the only adult there (besides Jeremy, but it was his job to be there), and Brisa was the only girl there who had a game. Ace's sister Kaylee was there too, but she didn't have the game. She played an emulation on her computer. Sparky was Ace's friend, and he was a bit bizarre. Lee was very slow at making decisions at trading.

Something worth noting (that most of the readers here won't care about anyway) is that Ace helped me get a Ditto onto my Ruby game. Now I can breed my male Sceptile and get baby Treecko! "It doesn't matter that he's male anymore...Ditto's available for prostitution!" is a sentence that came up today.

I battled Ace twice, but he pretty much only used legendary Pokémon, and they're really hard to beat, so I lost both battles. Oh well. He had a Jirachi and a Deoxys! I want those! He wouldn't trade them.

So it was a pretty neat day. The event "officially" ended at 11:30, but most of us stayed until about 12:15.

Stephanie invited me to go to a movie with her friends. It was Napoleon Dynamite. The movie really lacked a strong plot. It's about this boy who thinks he's cool, and has a fantasy life, who's really dull. He helps some new Mexican kid run for president, and his uncle's ruining his life or something. It was funny at times (people in the audience were laughing at something I would only smirk at). It really wasn't exciting...I'll say it again: "LACKS A STRONG PLOT".

After that, Kevin met us at the theater. Stephanie invited her friends, Kevin, and me to go to Red Robin with her. Kevin had driven to the theater, and didn't want to have to walk back to the theater, so he drove, and I rode, to Red Robin while Stephanie and her three friends walked. Kevin and I, of course, got there first, and requested a table for 6. The greeter let us two sit down immediately, and told us that she would tell the others where to go.

Kevin and I ordered drinks ("Sprite, no ice." "Is 7-Up okay?" ".......fine.") while Stephanie & co. walked. We saw them in the parking lot through the windows, but it seemed like it was taking them a long time to get to the table, so I got up to walk to the entrance to get them. However, I saw Stephanie, etc., sitting on the other side of the restaurant. They had gotten their own table! And I thought Stephanie invited Kevin and me to dinner!!! Kevin and I ate alone.

When he and I waited for Stephanie and her friends to finish eating, we went over to GameStop to look at stuff. They had a demo of Paper Mario 2! I played that for a little bit... It was awesome. The game is much smoother than the first Paper Mario. I played until Mario got into town, then he died mysteriously and suddenly. Then Stephanie's friends got there. They played a demo of Donkey Konga. They didn't know what to do when the blue zig-zagged icon appeared, but I did (you're supposed to clap), but I didn't tell them that because they already didn't know what they were doing. That's what they get for not reading the instructions.

After Stephanie's friends left, Kevin, Stephanie, and I went ice skating. This was my first time, and hopefully, my last. The ice was far too bumpy for me. I fell on my butt then quit for the night. I cut my hand on some metal overhang above the handthingys on the stairs. OUCH! CUT! Fortunately, the first aid had bandaids.

I prefer roller skating over ice skating now.

Mom and Stephanie went to Bellingham last Tuesday to paint ceramics, and brought Karen back with them. We have done a lot while Karen was here. We taught Karen how to play Mario Party 5. She liked to play it, even though she wasn't great at it. Dad didn't like to be her partner. Stephanie and I make a great team in MP5.

Some time last week, while Karen, Mom, one or two other people, and I were shopping at Value Village (there's some great old stuff there!), I found a Scrubbin' Bubbles. It's rubber and it barely squeaks. Jackson and I used to play with one of these at daycare. I was going to buy it, but Karen said that she really wanted it, so I reluctantly said that she could have it.

Tuesday was quite an eventful day. We went to Costco only to buy another large jar of Jelly Belly Jelly Beans. That was it. The cashier was having a lot of fun making fun of us for only buying jelly beans. Then we went to Longs' Drugs to mail some stuff to Karen's house back in Kansas. While there, Karen and I each bought small boxes of JBz's. They're like M&M's, except the shell is flavored like a jelly bean. They're really good, but I don't think I could eat a whole box in one sitting. We had Pizza Hut pizza that night. Mmmm.

Remember when I talked about those Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans? Karen bought me a bag of them. (Here's a flavor guide, except it doesn't mention soap, earthworm, or spaghetti.) I took some normal beans from the 49-flavor jar, and put them in the bag, so now there really is every flavor! So exciting! Anyway, back to Tuesday...

We took Karen to the airport. Of course, I offered everybody jelly beans on the way there. It's about an hour-and-a-half drive up, so it was dull. Karen's luggage was heavy—Kevin actually hurt his hand picking it up—so I found a cart in the parking garage to cart her stuff around. Then we said bye to Karen. I was interested to hear about these new things the airport has. They're little mailing kiosks for things you can't carry onto a plane. Basically, if you have a pocket knife or something, you can zip it into a bag, stick a mailing label on it, and stick it into the slot. It costs money, though. Kevin drove home in the express lanes, so it was much quicker (and exciting!) to return home.

On Friday night, we watched another movie with Daniel's projector. It was Hook, and it was pretty good. It was about Peter Pan who grew up and forgot about being Peter Pan, so these kids remind him and then he kills Hook, who stole his kids. When it wasn't funny, it was exciting, so it was pretty good.

We beat Rampage: World Tour on Saturday night. It was fun. The ending was weird...they go onto the moon and win—I don't understand. There were like 130 stages.

We didn't picnic at the park because it wasn't sunny enough for a picnic, so Granny, Gramps, Stephanie, and I ate inside Quiznos instead. I have leftovers! Leftovers are special for when you don't like to cook because "POP" into the microwave and it's ready to eat! So I have the leftover Quiznos sub, and some microwavable lasagna that I can heat up for lunches.

Kevin came over today (again). We played outside and played Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour on the GameCube. It's cool because you can transfer characters from the GBA version to the GCN version!

The weather has decreased in sunniness. It's bittersweet, I guess, in that it's not so hot, but then again, it's not as sunny...

I can't believe this guy! That Jeopardy! champion is still running strong! He's already won at least a half-million dollars! I wonder if he'll get to be a 20-day champion.

Well, I gotta get my sleep now. I don't want to end up staying awake till 2:30 AM and waking up at noon like last summer.

Today was a good day because Katie Kildare let me play with her squeaky fish toy.

After school, I bought Pokémon Colosseum for my GameCube. It's a good game. However, since there don't seem any rental Pokémon available, and since I don't know anybody with Pokémon Ruby or Pokémon Sapphire, I can't play against anyone. I'm so sad. Dad said he might get Pokémon Ruby or Sapphire, but I don't know.

Today was an okay day! First, Stephanie found the Wheel of Fortune CD-ROM that I thought was missing forever, so we played that game. Stephanie won. I kept hitting Bankrupt. How angry I was!

I babysat Alyssa and Jesse today. I was upset because I didn't want to stay outside, and neither did Jesse, but Alyssa wanted to play outside with Ali and Austin, but all they were doing was sitting. How boring! I finally ended up getting Alyssa to come in the house as long as I invited Ali. Jesse wanted to watch Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2, but Alyssa and Ali wanted to play Super Smash Bros. Melee. We ended up doing neither; Jesse played Lego Loco on my computer (he thought it was funny to put people in the cow pens), and Alyssa, Ali, and I played The Sims on the GameCube. I got $16!

We went to Value Village today, and I got some great keychains to add to my collection! I found a Kansas Royals keychain! What are the odds?! I also saw You Don't Know Jack 3, and Mom and I were pretty excited about buying it! The first game was fun, so the third game must be better. However, before we bought it, we asked if we could open it to see if the disc was in good condition. We opened it, and, to our surprise, there was no disc inside at all! Empty. I said, "What?! I'm not buying this!" True, in the end, we did not buy it, but the nice Value Village lady let us take the jewel case for free!

Today, we went to the GOOD theater in Alderwood to watch Cheaper by the Dozen. What an annoying movie. C+ It has NOTHING to do with the book. What a nice theater. We should go there more often, except the woman sitting behind me kept kicking my chair, and the kid in front of me kept distracting me because he was balancing a cup on his head.

GREAT NEWS! At the theater, I learned there's going to be a GARFIELD MOVIE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It's scheduled for June 25 (I think June 19 is more appropriate, but whatever).

Well, I went online and had Dad order me a Headphone Adapter for my Game Boy Advance SP. I think it's stupid that it doesn't come with a headphone jack built in. While I was at their website, I remembered that my Nintendo Power subscription needed to be renewed, so I also had Dad renew my subscription online. As a gift, I'm getting a Mario and Luigi t-shirt! I'm so excited (because I love that game, so I guess I'll love wearing the shirt).