I’ve been going on another of my periodic possession purges recently, clearing out the clutter on ebay and giving away whatever doesn’t sell. The two DS games I owned — Mario 64 and Project Rub — were both great games, but I’d completed them and they were just sitting there, so off they went.

So now I don’t own any DS games, and I feel bad about that. It’s not that there aren’t any games that I want, far from it — there’s plenty. Pac-Pix, Yoshi’s Touch and Go, Wario Ware, Polarium, Zoo Keeper, Mr Driller, and those are just the ones available now; there’s loads more on the way in the form of Nintendogs, Sonic Rush, James Pond, Animal Crossing and the hysterically-titled Touch Kirby’s Magic Paintbrush. I am clearly being spoilt for choice.

The problem is, they’re just a bit expensive for what you’re getting. I’m sure they’re all excellent games but a lot of them are just very simple, one-note puzzlers, and I don’t want to spend £30 on them. Nintendo had claimed that there would be a price range, with some games available for £20 and some for £30, but so far only Polarium has been seen at the lower price. With the DS still so new, there’s no need to have reduced price games yet so even the online retailers are only knocking a fiver off, and there’s not much of a saving buying via ebay either.

Corporate whores.

High-street retailer Game are being fairly sneaky when it comes to their pricing of DS software; they’ve been putting stickers on the game packages claiming that the games have an RRP of £39.99 (which they don’t), but they have been ‘reduced’ to £29.99 by Game. Well, shucks, aren’t we lucky to have Game, who give us such high discounts? Cheating bastards, I’m sure this sort of behaviour should be illegal, if it isn’t already.

Mind you, Game have always been a bit too happy to claim massive discounts and GRATEST SALE EVAR!!1 in the past so I shouldn’t be too surprised. Their sales are pitiful, always offering the same items for sale — the same items that have been sat quietly with discount stickers on them anyway for the past six months. You know, a dozen copies of Rocky for the Gamecube and a handful of old Need for Speeds for the PS2, and perhaps a couple of dusty old Gameboy Color games they found at the back of the store one evening as they were busy snorting cocaine with rolled-up £50 notes.

But anyway, at least there are games available that I want which wouldn’t be the case with other systems, and I’m sure in time prices will come down — this is just what I should have expected in buying a system, as soon as it came out. In the mean time, as always, all donations to the cause are gratefully received.