Oshare Majo Love and Berry First Looks With Pictures

The advantage of being a video games blogger (and a one who does his research) is that you'll know what to answer when your other half points out to a Love and Berry arcade machine and asks what is it.

That was exactly what happened while I was holidaying at Genting last weekend. To the benefit of those not in the know, Love and Berry is a cross between a rhythm game and a card collecting game and generally appeals to girls. The cards that you collect (from playing the game) can be swiped at the card reader equipped arcade machines to allow you to play dress up with your characters.

This SEGA game spawned a DS spin-off titled Oshare Majo Love and Berry (DS Collection), and guess what, it arrived in my mailbox earlier today :). The Nintendo DS game comes with its very own Card Reader (which goes into the Slot-2) which reads cards obtained from the arcade version of the game!

One word of caution though, it appears that the game does not read cards from the English arcade version of the game, which is understandable since the DS release is Japanese only. I haven't gone about playing the game (it has joined the long list that is "games bought but waiting to be played") but here are some pictures for the curious:

Oshare Majo Love and Berry (DS Collection) is available at Play-Asia for just USD 19.90. Click here for further details.

Retro DIP-switching

I've been playing alot of old-school arcade games lately, courtesy of the Konami Classic Series Arcade Hits compilation, which brings games such as Gradius, Track & Field, Road Fighter, Rush N' Attack, Contra and 10 others to the Nintendo DS.

Throughout the years, some of these arcade games have since been ported over to home video game consoles but the games featured in this compilation are true to their original arcade form (more on that later). The compilation itself reminds me of the other retro compilation that I have, Atarimix, both of which boast really nice production values and art styles.

But what does this compilation have that differentiates it from the rest? The answer to that question would be... dip-switches, or at least a graphical representation of them. A collective "HUH?!" goes up in the air. DIP switches were present on the original arcade boards of these games and by flipping them on and off, gamers could manipulate the game settings.

For what reasons you say? Well... some of the common ones would be to increase difficulty (and the level of challenge), speed things up, slow things down, and of course, to cheat, if that wasn't obvious enough in the first place.

Under the Detailed Settings mode for each game in this compilation, the stylus is used to flip the DIP switches on or off to affect changes to say... the fuel consumption rate in Road Fighter or the number of lives in RainbowBell (a.k.a TwinBee). It is not as difficult as it sounds as a guide is provided (on the top screen) to what each set of DIP switches does.

This is the first new game that I've purchased in a long time, and the opportunity to fool around with the game settings with the DIP switches makes the compilation worth the money I spent. More on the games next time when I get the opportunity to play them a little bit more. For purchasing details, visit Play-Asia.