Episode 28 - Lite Power

What can bring a guy who wants to be on the FDNY, a former dancer at Coyote ugly, an advertising major and myself together? Mario Kart DS, that’s what.

To be fair I should clarify that all of those people (except myself) attend the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan. And all of them work for the student govt. I brought my DS into their office a few weeks ago and I had people gathered around asking how I could possible see everything with two screens. One person even asked if I was playing two games at the same time. Yeah… that’s it… two games at the same time.

The next week my roommate (also a student) was in there with his DS and we were playing Tetris together followed by some Mario vs. Luigi. Again a crowed drew. Everyone was talking about how ‘cool’ it was that we could play together without wires. Plus the DS Lite is a pretty sexy piece of machinery.

The week after that (I go in there every Wednesday because that’s when comics come out and the coordinator of student activities is a friend of mine and we head to the comic shop and get lunch) one of the girls had a pink DS Lite. She was battling her way through New Super Mario Bros. with the future firefighter looking on. I said nothing and read a comic book. After she saved her game she passed it over to the firefighter. I kid you not; he played two levels and said, “I have to have one of these.” Then he looked up at me and said, “Where can I get one?”

I pointed him in the right direction and he returned with a black DS Lite, Mario and Star Fox Command. He had a hundred questions about the DS that I felt like I was more than qualified to answer. He was mostly paranoid that a newer handheld would come out soon and then his would be old, but I assured him that the Light just came out over the summer. He was totally into Star Fox, and that made me smile, because he’s a guy guy. Way more macho than myself. But he loved every second of it.


I didn’t have my DS with me because, well, I don’t usually bring it there. They were all pretty disappointed. Last week I skipped out because I was photo assisting, but this week… well, this week there were 4 DS Lites on hand and a newly purchased copy of Mario Kart. It was pretty awesome since we were scattered across this big open room finding seats wherever we could.

I have had my DS since the Lite came out this summer. And I had done some network playing but never more than one DS at a time. Now we were playing with 4! I was excited. I had played some Mario Kart, but I don’t own the title… I know sue me. We were pretty evenly matched as far as experience in MK goes… I mean, I had a slight advantage because I’m awesome… but that’s really it.

Anyway needless to say we all had a blast. There was cheering, victory dances, and even a little trash talking. I was most interested in Mr. FDNY’s reactions since he was the least ‘gamer’ of the bunch and put up a good fight placing second in many of the races.

I think its great that the DS has the ability to bring a kind of strange group together. I don’t see this happening with other devices. Even the Game Boy, and GBA, had link cables… but it didn’t really lend itself to playing together easily. The DS is fun. It has to be, that is the only way a future firefighter, and a former bar dancer would get together and play videogames.