I’m not a traditional kind of guy – but I happen to be a traditional geek.

A few weeks ago, I dropped into a GameStop store just to take a look around – and Ponzi, my wonderful wife, was in tow. We had just finished a fantastic sushi lunch at iSushi in Issaquah, Washington. She’s not much of a gamer. Then again, neither am I. A certain title happened to catch her eye – Brain Age. I told her that we didn’t have a system that could handle it – a Nintendo DS Lite. In fact, a few years ago, I tried giving her a Nintendo GameBoy Advance as a gift and she flat-out refused it.

Yesterday, I was walking through Target and noticed they had both white and black Nintendo DS Lites in stock, as well as the Brain Age cartridge. There were a few other games in the case, and I was asking the clerk about a few titles, including Super Mario Bros. “Is that the original,” I asked. He said something to the effect of “It’s from the old, old original NES.”

Old, old?! Since when did my childhood memories become “old, old!?”

Well, I got a black and white unit (and the brain game) anyway – calling the young buck a whippersnapper and knocking him in the shin with my walker on the way out.

I wasn’t expecting an extremely positive reaction from Ponzi, but she appears to have appreciated the gift of a Nintendo handheld entertainment system this time around. I think it’s less about the hardware and more about the software. The title is what attracted her in the first place – not necessarily the dual screen or wireless gameplay capabilities. Plus, she’s always wanted to figure out how to play Soduku, and apparently Brain Age includes it.

Ponzi was so enthralled, she didn’t even notice that I forgot the flowers.

[tags]nintendo, nintendo ds, ds lite, brain age, brain teasers, brain puzzles, puzzle game, valentine[/tags]