My dirty little secret has started to come out at work: I’m a gamer. Not only that, but I bring my DS to work.

It started with me wearing my Feel the Magic goldfish shirt. People would ask, “What is that?” or they might stare at me oddly for a moment and go “Is that a… fish?”

“Yes! Do you have a DS? (pause for answer) Did you play Feel the Magic? (pause for “nope, can’t say I did”) Well, the, uh, main character is apparently a skateboarding goldfish deliveryman, although it matters little to the plot after the first minigame. He just has this shirt on the whole game, and in a roundabout way, this is the mark of a romantic hero.” (pause for “oh. ok.”)

Many of the editors and designers I work with are my age, and only one has any interest in video games. He noticed me playing Hotel Dusk one day during a lull (he hadn’t seen it before, but said the ‘A-ha’ animation style gave it away. it’s interesting that that one video had such a lasting impression on my generation.) We started talking about adventure games and such. He hadn’t played Trace Memory, but thought it looked interesting. He said he didn’t know if he would like having to read so much. (lol @ newspaper page designers …jk)

I had started recalling what I liked so much about Trace Memory, since it’s available on the cheap now and I really recommend it to anyone with a DS. There was the way the main character held the then-novel DS Phat (i still like its design better — call me crazy — and i wish i could stick the Lite’s screens inside it). It wasn’t a DS in the game, but a stand-in device that looked the same.

She held it like a real object, not like something that you played games with. She held it like it was a nuisance, too big to stuff in a pocket.

It was done because it was another route to get the player into the game. Cing, the developer, made an effort to exploit the DS’s unique design in several places. I’m not really aware of anything else they’ve made (besides Hotel Dusk), so maybe this is a one-shot thing.

But. Turn on Hotel Dusk, which I believe qualifies as the first videogamey video game to be played with the DS vertical, and you might notice something similar. It’s subtle. Kyle Hyde holds a little notebook in one hand, precisely the same way you might be holding your DS. Of course, with this game, everyone might hold it differently, but the notebook is there as another DS stand-in. Another way of getting the player into the game.

I’m on chapter 2 now.

Musical thought: The Everybody Votes Channel’s music sounds like a track that was cut from the SNES version of Street Fighter II.

Title: I’m referencing a song from the latest TMBG podcast, it’s called “Hand on the Computer” and it’s kinda Bowie-ish.

Put your hand on the computer
Doesn’t that feel better now?
Put your hand on the computer
The computer knows

Put your fingers on the keyboard
Brush your hand across your false goatee
Put your fingers on the keyboard
Whee

This podcast also has the most beautiwonderful version of “Boat of Car” ever.