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*or How I Learned To Stop Hating and Love the Flaming Monkeys

As a gamer with multiple systems, I find myself drifting from console to console at random. I am pulled this way and that by successive game releases: Puzzle Quest pulled me back to my neglected PSP in March, then Super Paper Mario pulled me into the Wii the following month, then I acquired an XBox 360 and was sucked into the various Live Arcade titles… and so on, and so forth. Over the last few months, though, I’ve been seriously neglecting my DS.

This seemed wrong to me. I’ve invested a lot into the console, buying a pair of DS Phats for myself and Jen soon after release, and then upgrading us both to the Lite species once multiple colors were available stateside. The last compelling title for it was released last November in the form of Final Fantasy III, and I really didn’t find the game all that worthwhile. The novelty of playing the one and only game of the franchise that hadn’t yet been released in North America was quickly outweighed by the stilted and uninspired gameplay of the seventeen year old title. Nintendo is well-known for its “It’s the Fun Gameplay, Stupid” philosophy, and to see a game given such a thorough graphical upgrade by Square Enix only to fall flat on its face in terms of fun was more than a little disheartening. I began to wonder if the naysayers were right: that the DS was nothing more than a gimmick and a bloated way for me to play my GBA games.

So my DS sat collecting dust pretty much since before I moved to Massachusetts.

Since the summer began, I have read the repeated Pokémon-related rants of Gabe, the artist half of Penny Arcade. You may know him better as the visionary who proposed the theory that governs most online discourse to this very day. With each passing post (and the hillarious comics associated with it) I became more and more curious about this dark chalice Gabe drank from, this horrid franchise that left deep rifts of disdain on my psyche when it rose its ugly head in the 90’s. Rifts that healed over with scars made of contempt.

And so my research began, and I found via the Tubes that the video games themselves were not far removed from the turn-based RPGs the wolf that raised me used to wean me from her flesh. Immediately I felt a long neglected desire stir: a portable turn-based RPG with nearly 60-hours of content, rich online multiplayer, the prospect of competitive play, and I could use my DS again?

I bought Pokémon Diamond this past week. I’ve already sunk nearly 12 hours into it, and as I type this my browser’s tabs are scouring the internet for how I might better husband my new “pocket monsters.” I had a Chimchar once… a cute monkey with a tail of flame that I named “Flicker.” He’s a Monferno now, and I am simply infatuated with turning him into a badass.

Pray for me, friends, for I may be truly lost.