Nearly a week before its North American release, the DS browser showed up in the Nintendo employee store. The idea of browsing the web from exceedingly small devices has recently excited me, so I threw down my money and made the purchase. But! What was behind the counter, and now in my bag, was not the shelved DS browser, but the Lite version, whose memory expansion pack will not fit in my old, obese DS Classic. The boxes look very similar, so caveat emptor.

Now that the copy I had to order from Nintendo's online store has arrived (in record shipping time), I, too, can enjoy the World Wide Tubes on a screen slightly larger than my thumb. While the small interface is a little difficult to use - I am typing this entire message on it - it is at least usable.

The small format also introduces rendering issues, but of course this can't really be helped. What this software should be best for is finding minute nuggets of information while on the go (and near a hotspot).

Surprisingly, this browser is much more feature-rich than its Wii counterpart, though it also appears to be slightly less capable in terms of, say Javascript.

Progress: This keyboard is very small!

I promised myself I wouldn't become slavishly devoted to the game like I once was, and I may already be losing this battle. Now I am in a race - against no one, except perhaps time itself - to reach level 70 within this coming weekend. Previously I have upheld a rate of a level per day, but I do not know that I can keep it up.

The first zone in Outland is Hellfire Peninsula, and is perfect for leveling from 60, or even the late 50s. I decided I was too cool for this zone and utterly skipped it. I started in Zangarmarsh, a slightly higher-up zone that has the trappings of the Swamp of Sorrows but the charm of Stranglethorn Vale. After sucking all the sweet experience nectar out of this zone I moved on to Terokkar Forest, which has a bunch of stupid bird monsters running around and some dumb blood elves building a magic bomb, but the main feature of which is a giant, dead crater produced by the explosion of, I'm not sure, but I think "evil." This started out alright, but what with an infinite supply of ghosts and unfriendly vultures, the Bone Wastes wore on me by the end.

Now I'm questing around in Nagrand, which is very reminiscent of the Tauren home zone of Mulgore, but much huger and much more interesting. There are some elemental dudes for whom I'm fighting the good fight, most notably a giant earth fury who requests that violent justice be dispensed upon invading rock monsters. Also in this zone is Hemet Nesingwary, the hunter chief from Stranglethorn, who is now interested in the bigger game in Nagrand.

One of the other cool quest hubs in Nagrand is populated by Ethereals, which are probably the coolest things to happen to WoW since conjured sliced bread. Here is a short list of characteristics of your average Ethereal:

• Lives in another dimension
• Is made of magic lightning
• Cares only about making profitable trades and expanding business
• For obvious reason, is primarily interested in Engineering
• Upon death, explodes in a super awesome burst of light

If they were a selectable race I would totally be one.

In the Engineering arena, I started arranging materials for some Destruction Holo-Gogs the other day - only to, 150 gold later, abruptly discover that one of the reagents (a Primal Nether) is only acquirable by being in a level 70ish dungeon run. Blast!

One thing that bothers me about my new engineering possibilities are that they require absurd amounts of metal. Whereas most pre-expansion ore could be smelted into a bar at a 1:1 ratio, and most parts required maybe 3-6 smelted bars, now all smeltings require two ores per bar. Then there's Felsteel, which requires several bars of both Fel Iron and Eternium (a rare ore), and Hardened Adamantite, each bar of which costs 10 regular Adamantite bars (yes, 20 ore for one bar), and each pound of which weighs over ten thousand pounds.

But I digress. I am really enjoying my time back in the game, and look forward to even more of it.

Progress: Level 66

I played a coworker (NST Hiro) today. He completely obliterated me. I want to practice enough to compete with him, but at the same time I don't know if that's possible - his puzzling feats seemed purely magical.

He recommended the Active Puzzle mode for good training, which I suppose I'll move on to once I finish the Advanced (static) puzzles.

Progress: Advanced Puzzle 6-2

They got me again.

Levelling up is a lot of fun - the new areas really feel like playing the old game again. I'm already burning down tree giants, hunting infamous wild beasts, and genocidally cleansing the marshlands of the nefarious, nazi-like naga. It feels fantastic.

Progress: Level 61

Gameplay hours later, I've defeated the Empire, rescued humanity from a rampaging monster, and destroyed a giant metal floating harbinger of doom. Though a handful of dungeons felt chorelike (the labyrinthine risen continent, for instance), most of the game was hard to put down. However! I feel that at least some of this effect can be attributed to my use of a walkthrough, which I did because otherwise I would have wandered around aimlessly for quite some time inbetween nearly every major game event.

In general, I am of the opinion that Secret of Mana - while certainly an impressive title with a well-deserved legacy - has not aged as well as some of its peers, specifically Chrono Trigger and Tales of Phantasia. The vague storyline (and accompanying lackluster, sometimes awful translation) is one factor. Others lie in frustrating design decisions: early in the game, the only way to heal is with items, which you simply cannot carry enough of. After earning the ability to heal with magic, your party is then stifled by a depressingly low amount of max MP, and impossibly expensive MP restore items. By the time MP reaches practical levels, the game has already reached a point where healing is trivial.

Most bothersome to me, on a professional level, are the technical issues. Oftentimes, when I order my party members to cast a spell, a message will display indicating that they are doing so, but in fact they are not doing so, and are instead sitting on their duffs or futilely flailing away at a boss. Then there is the spastic hit registration - when an enemy is knocked down by a blow, a period of time must pass before subsequent attacks will harm it - a period of time which is sometimes ambiguous, and often pre-empted by my stupid party members with weak, girly attacks. After seeing the credits, I can't say I'm surprised; each part of the game engine had only one programmer, eight of them altogether.

But despite these complaints, I must commend the gameplay mechanics, and especially the battle interface / ring menu system. It took me a while to get used to it, but once I did it became second nature. It is a really nice way to play an RPG, and I'm not surprised they've made so many more out of it. The combat is really deep; a bevy of equippable weapons, and dozens of magic spells, make it easy to liven up the hacking and slashing with a little variety.

Because of all the ways it's irritated me, I can't help but be a little harsh on Secret of Mana. Nevertheless, it's a really fun game, provided you have something to help you along the way.

Progress: Saved the world

What Planet Puzzle League Has:

1. A ton of single-player modes. In addition to the classical Endless mode (play until you lose), there are several ways to play by yourself - too many to fully enumerate. Some modes are alterations of the game's goals, e.g. struggle against constantly-falling garbage, or clear a certain number of lines. You can play with time limits or until the stack fills, by yourself or against a computer opponent.
2. Plenty of puzzles. There are four kinds of Puzzle mode, each one with 60 individual stages. Basic Puzzles mode has the obligatory turn-limit challenges, and after clearing it, the Advanced Puzzles mode opens to follow up on it. In Active Puzzles mode, blocks are already clearing when you start a stage, and the challenge is to actively move blocks with expert timing to set up killer chains. And Mission mode presents you with more esoteric challenges, from making an exact number of matches to forcing the stack to be flat.
3. Superb multiplayer. Planet Puzzle League can be played wirelessly with up to three simultaneous opponents - only one game card required. Hell, you can even download a single-player demo of the game to your friends wirelessly. And on Nintendo WFC, you can play anyone in the world (though this mode is limited to one-on-one).
4. Training. The puzzle mechanics are all about seeing patterns and reacting quickly, and practice is the key to becoming a better player. PPL has a Daily Play mode, in which you can play three challenges a day, and chart your progress over time. The trials are short, and not especially difficult, but they cover all the concepts you need to know (forming chains and combos for high scores, clearing large amounts of blocks quickly, and dealing with garbage). On Nintendo WFC, a special mode - Novice Battle - is open only to relatively unskilled players (once you "graduate" from this mode it becomes closed to you), and is a good training ground to play against easy opponents. And of course, there is a goodly amount of tutorial information for newcomers.
5. Movie recording? In a Score Attack game, it is possible to record a movie of your session and watch it later, or send it to friends who can then watch it at their leisure. This is kind of a pointless feature, but, if it strikes your fancy.
6. Control options. At first, I thought the idea of playing Panel de Pon with a stylus was outlandish. So I changed the holding style to horizontal, and used the buttons. But eventually I realized that the stylus could swap blocks faster than jamming the D-pad to move my cursor around - so I switched it back to vertical. Nevertheless, the game is full-featured for either method, and also has options to change handedness (left- or right-).
7. Cool presentation. It may not be a next-gen graphical masterpiece, but the highly stylized techno look and feel of the game's menus and backdrops - and similarly styled accompanying music - is something I appreciate.

What Planet Puzzle League Does Not Have:

1. A good ranking system. Yes, there are rankings for online play, at least in theory. Curiously, however, the only mode in which rankings are adjusted is Birthday Battle, and your rankings are only in respect to other players with the same birthday. Furthermore, the rankings are not "updated," but are reset every week. The idea of a real online ranking system seems very cool, and so it's a shame to see how they chose to [not] implement it.
2. A "story" mode. Tetris Attack tasked Yoshi with the mission of saving his mind-controlled friends and defeating Bowser with the power of puzzles. Meteos has branching paths with different opponents and multiple endings. There is no such mode in Planet Puzzle League, which while not necessary, is usually a neat addition.
3. Unlockables. Other than the Advanced Puzzles, there is nothing to unlock - no new play fields, no new modes, no new items.

The lacking points are poignant, and I think, if approached, could have made PPL leagues better and longer-lasting. But as it is, I still feel comfortable calling it the finest puzzle game on the market, with enough single player modes to keep a puzzle fan busy, and enough wireless (single card!) fun to become a staple among your friends.

Progress: Advanced Puzzle 2-1

After being stymied by the game's super-hard boss fights, I decided to buckle down and read a guide. It turns out, I can level up my magic - very useful. SoM is also one of those games that doesn't remind you of where you're supposed to go (it assumes I remember what the NPCs told me!), so a reference of what place to go to next is coming in handy.

It occurred to me earlier that the battle system in Mana, real-time party engagements with enemy creatures, was probably the largest inspiration for the modern MMO.

Progress: Two mana seeds

There's a good amount of breadth to Planet Puzzle League. I haven't seen it all yet, but so far I'm fairly impressed.

There are a slew of single player modes. One of the new ones, "Garbage Challenge" - in which the player's goal is to destroy as many garbage blocks as possible, as they drop down without end - is kind of a bitch. Most of the other stuff is pretty cool. At first I thought the game's obligatory move-limit Puzzle Mode was pretty easy; but several stages in it's gotten very tough.

One of the neater features is "Daily Play," where the game challenges you to a single round in each of its three main modes, Score Attack, Garbage Attack, and Lift Attack, each with a time limit. The scores for each of these three rounds is saved every day, and your progress is charted over time. Think Wii Sports's fitness chart, but for your block puzzle ability. This is something I have a keen interest in.

There are a bunch of multiplayer options, including single-cart and multi-cart wireless, online friend battles, online world battles, and a bizarre Birthday Battle mode, where you play online against people with the same birthday (saved in your DS, remember?). In a rather ... unorthodox design, Birthday Battle is the only way in which players are ranked online; the other modes don't count. More on this as it develops - currently, all the other players are Japanese, who, as it turns out, are fairly good at this.

Progress: Basic Puzzle 5-3

I intended to do some Glog software work this weekend, but instead spent most of my time pseudo-adventuring around Outland. The marketing of this trial is really quite brilliant - it prevents you from getting to or beyond level 61, which means that you can, with a little effort, see almost all of the new continent, but are unable to enjoy the overwhelming majority of it. My taste has really been whetted. I fear it's only a matter of time before it gets me again.

Fun fact: new Master profession level + Gnomish racial Engineering bonus = level 78 mechanical pets.

I made a new Draenei Paladin, and tooled around in the starting area for a little while. The starter quests - like most others as I recall - have a real charm to them, and so far I'm really happy with it. I've also inspected Outland a little bit. Hellfire Peninsula is kind of dull; I hope I can get somewhere else.

Footnote: the download ended up taking only 6 hours, rather than 10. I still think they need to work on their direct download reliability.