It's stupid, but wottheheck

Ok, I traded in four Nintendo DS games I had laying about and never play, and got one new one for "free" (with an extra $3.05 credit voucher). It's not free, of course. But you can't tell about these shrinkwrapped games until you buy them, mash the buttons awhile, and slowly come to realize a DS game can be that bad.

I traded in:

• Mushroom Men: Rise of the Fungi (used) - worst game I ever bought, bad controls, unplayable, and the cover has a green and purple color scheme


• Myst (used) - the NDS screen is too small for this game, and it is truly bad by modern standards, even dumbed down (there used to be that gratuitously balky switch on top of the tower near the spaceship, remember?)


• Space Invaders Extreme (marked down) - not actually a bad game, but too fast for my 64-ear-old reflexes


• Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time - not unplayable, just irritating. Remember block graphics with jagged edges? Moving is that way in this twinky. You can't go NE without going N, E, N, E, N, E... It gets old, and so what?

Received in return, even up:

• Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume - This one is playable, but twisted evil. Kid blames the Valkyrie who found his dying old man on a battlefield and added him to her Einherjar collection. He wants to get even. That's bent. Complete misreading of the mythology, kinda makes you wonder if Square Enix has their head on straight this time. We'll see. It's another of those games that are too much fun for Lent, so I have to wait until next Sunday. I mean that ironically, of course.