Pleasantly Surprised

I do like it when I support a company and they repay me for that loyalty. And yes, that means Nintendo. I've dutifully purchased the Nintendo DS, although I must admit that I wasn't really sold on the idea. I picked up Super Mario 64 DS, since Mario is a good intro to any Nintendo platform. I thought I was just buying a copy of Super Mario 64 slightly reworked for the DS platform, but I believe I've got a whole lot more. There are something like 30 new stars in the game. There are new ways of getting those stars including “crystal stars” (like the 8 red coins, but now there are 5 stars hidden) and new “secret castle stars”. I knew that there was going to be new playable characters: Luigi, Wario, and Yoshi. I didn't know that there was a whole story behind where 3 of those characters went, and I'd have to rescue them. And I had no idea that there were new mini games, many of which support networked multi-player modes. All-in-all there is a great game with easily $30 more fun packed into it.