Puppy Power

Nintendogs may be the only portable game not suitable for playing in public, unless you enjoy getting beaten up on the bus.

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Leave it to Nintendo to exploit the unique properties of its DS better than just about any other developer. The company's creative minds have delivered another quirky, hard-to-classify game in the oddly titled Nintendogs, an import copy of which we just received and eagerly tore into. Well, we tore into a third of it, at least. Taking a page from its own book of Pokemon, Nintendo has released Nintendogs in three installments in Japan, each of which focuses on five distinct breeds of dog. Great devotees of gorditas and small lap dogs as we are, the only real choice for us was to start with the installment subtitled Chihuahua & Friends, which also contains the beagle, shih tzu, Labrador retriever, and Cavalier King Charles spaniel (whatever that is).

You can't even get past the title screen of Nintendogs without realizing this is one of the most disgustingly adorable games ever. The premise is as simple as it gets: Buy a new puppy, love it, care for it, teach it new tricks, and eventually enter it into talent competitions and dog shows to earn more money, which will let you buy new toys for your doggy and even add a couple more canines to your stable, when you've earned enough cash. The game has a definite virtual-life feel to it, a lot like the pocket tamagotchi toy craze of almost a decade ago. After only a few hours with the game, we're not sure exactly how much time and attention the virtual pooches of Nintendogs will demand, but it seems like the kind of game you'd have no problem firing up every day, even for just a few minutes.

As simple as the game is, starting out can be a little perplexing since you have to get used to the unique ways you interact and bond with your dog, as well as contend with a sizable volume of Japanese text. After you pick one of the five breeds of dog, you'll see three of them romping around in the grass, begging you to take them home. Pick one by petting it on the DS's touch screen and the next thing you know, you're at home with your new pet. The game will ask you to name the dog via the built-in microphone, and after repeating the name a couple of times, you'll be on your way. It's important to name your puppy something that you won't mind having to repeat often, because you'll be calling out to that disobedient pooch a lot during the early part of the game.

You interact with your puppy, and pretty much all of Nintendogs itself, using just the DS's touch screen and microphone; no button input is required. After you've named your dog, the game goes to an open format that can leave you wondering exactly what to do next. The answer is obvious: Play with your dog! You can pet the dog using the stylus (or your finger, of course) which will obviously make it happier. More importantly, you'll want to give your dog a good scratch when it does something worth rewarding, so as to reinforce the positive behavior. Besides, it's plenty amusing to just rub the pooch down and watch it wiggle around for the fun of it.

'Sit! Shake! Good dog.' We drew more than our share of untoward commentary from fellow staffers while trying out Nintendogs.

In the course of horsing around with your pooch, you'll see it do "tricks" you'd want it to repeat on command, such as sitting, shaking hands, rolling over--the standard litany of dog tricks, in other words. Whenever that happens, a small icon appears that indicates you can use the DS's mic to tell your dog what that trick was (and then you should pet it for good measure). Give the command and reinforce the behavior enough times, and your dog will finally learn that "sit!" actually means to sit down. So after a few hours, you can have it doing whatever you command. We got our dog to master the aforementioned tricks in our brief time with the game, and we imagine the more you play Nintendogs, the more cool stuff you'll be able to make your dog do.

In fact, we were able to notice an obvious improvement in some of our dog Lucky's skills as we played with her. You can buy all sorts of stuff for your dog as your funds increase, and we bought a red Frisbee for Lucky just for something new to do...and also so we could participate in a Frisbee-fetching contest the game lets you take part in. After buying the Frisbee, we wisely went straight to competition without even trying to practice first. Lucky didn't do so well. She didn't even place in the contest, actually. She seemed content to chase after the Frisbee, lie down in the field, and start chewing on it, which is not an effective way to win a tournament.