Today's purchases,

Games you need to get:

- Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan
- Moero! Nekketsu Rhythm Damashii Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan 2
- If you're a pervert, get Doki Doki Majo Shinpan
- If you're not a pervert, get Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow
- Puzzle Quest isn't too bad, but the AI is CHEAP.

There's a few more, but I'm not too sure what sort of games you like. So there you go.

You got to get Electroplankton. I endorse that game, despite never having played it.

If I were you, I'd get all the Harry Potter DS games.

Avoid Electroplankton. It's not very good. I figure it'll probably become rare, so I picked up a copy, but it's not good enough to inspire people to ever want to play it years down the line. Oops!

Don't you have to import Ouendan? I've never imported anything before. Is it expensive?

Yes, you have to import it. The most expensive part of importing is generally the shipping. However, if you look on eBay, you can sometimes find an American seller with the item, and can thus get the game for quite cheap. Otherwise, play-asia has really good rates on shipping compared to other places. They're fast, too.

How good are these "really good rates", my friend?

You can get it shipped in a box for about $4, if memory serves correctly, and in a bubble mailer for a buck less. Their stuff arrives about 5 days if they don't ship over the weekend. Considering it usually takes me well over a week to get stuff from Japan unless I use $20+ shipping, these rates are quite acceptable. Maybe because Play-Asia is in Hong Kong rather than Japan. Who knows.

Before you take Espiga's advice, I'd make it my goal to go after games that were actually released on this planet and have titles that can be pronounced.

They're not that hard to pronounce. =[

Those Japanese names are way easier to pronounce than everything I've learned in Italian.

Ouendan is awesome if youre into J-Pop & Rock. i prefer it over Elite Beat Agents. anyway, you should get both.

-Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow
-Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin

These are absolute must-haves. I don't hesitate to say that Dawn of Sorrow is the best game on the DS.

Fuck the truth. I still think you should get Electroplankton.

I've never played a Castlevania game before, would that be a problem?

I can't tell if your HP suggestion is serious or not, genj. >_>

There are 2 types of Castlevania games.

Your typical old-school Castlevania, like those found on the NES, SNES, Genesis, and Turbo are fairly linear (I think Castlevania 2 is the exception), and they're stage-based.

The newer ones, from Symphony of the Night down to the DS ones are more like Super Metroid. And they typically star really flamboyant, girly men.

It's not really a problem if you haven't played one yet, however. They're typically fun games, and you won't be lost since each game's story is pretty independent of the other's, I think. You'd be wiser to try Castlevania than Electroplankton.

I never cared for Castlevania outside of SotN (Bloodlines was okay I guess) but everyone else seems to like it so it's worth getting. I haven't heard of any of the other games mentioned except for Tetris and NSMB so I can't really help you here. =(

So both Castlevania games are worth getting then?

They're ALL worth getting!

But if you can only get one, get Dawn of Sorrow before Portrait of Ruin.

Is one a sequel to the other or are they separate?