I found myself in Best Buy today; Joshua had some money burning a hole in his pocket. Ultimately he could not decide between one of three Nintendo DS games StarFox, Super Mario Bros DS, or the upcoming Pokemon Blue Rescue game. I talked him into waiting for a few days to “decide” what he really wants.
I spent a few minutes with the 360 Madden 07, and I have to say the thing looked damn impressive. Pretty much in the same way NFL2K (Dreamcast) graphics were leaps and bounds better than the PSX, the 360 graphics for Madden are far and away better than the PS2. Not that I am making a next generation purchase anytime soon.
I came close to picking up Age of Empires for the DS, but I decided to stand pat for a while longer. I could see myself picking up a DS Lite, but I did not want to blow $170 or so today. I suppose I could “borrow” Joshua’s DS, but that would be like pulling a bone from my dog. Not going to happen.
So I decided to take a look at the PC aisle. I came this close (picture my fingers about an inch apart) to picking up Age of Empires III, but I decided that I was not going to pay $50 for a PC game. I am not sure why, but I thought gaming on a PC was cheap these days. I know top systems are expensive, but I thought the actual games were cheap, or they were discounted fairly quickly. Anyone know of a good place to get discounted PC games?
So I was almost a PC gamer … but not yet. I have a feeling within a week I will have AoE for the DS (with a DS Lite) or for the PC (with a $90 memory upgrade). Either way, I want to play AoE, and I either have to get a DS or upgrade my system to handle games.
I think the memory upgrade is the better route right now because it would be useful for other things besides a gaming fix. So the real question is how much memory do you actually need to run the game? I think the box said 128mb (or maybe 512mb), but that sounds pretty low. The machine I am going to put it on has 512mb and runs slow; processor is fast, but just not enough memory. Recommendations?
