Harvest Moon – DS
Harvest Moon for DS was released on the 15th. Dan had pre-ordered it and, the day it came out, brought home a copy for me for a late birthday present! I’ve been playing it a lot over the last few days and I can safely say that it’s an excellent game. Gone is the annoying 5-item rucksack limit! You start now with a rucksack that’ll hold 15 items, and like items will STACK (up to 99 per stack)!  You can carry all your tools with you at all times. You can wander about and pick up 16 bamboo shoots, a handful of red grasses, some Pink Cat flowers, and a stack of chopped lumber, without running home constantly!
The graphics are Friends of Mineral Town style, with nicely-updated large portraits. The touch screen is used to great advantage — you can be looking at a map (zoomed in or distant) while you’re running around town. You’ll never get lost (I get lost a lot). You can select or stack items (or split stacks with rapid taps! Thanks, Dan :) in your rucksack with the stylus.  Eventually, animal care can be performed on the touch-screen but I have no animals yet so I can’t comment on that aspect.
Your bookcase at home now holds many helpful books — the business hours of all the stores, for instance, and the growth cycles of all the possible crops. Most purchases are made over the telephone in your house (you’re ordering from the stores in Mineral Town).
It’s a tremendously fun game. The only thing I really wish for is a notification of the selling price of the items you drop in your collection box (c.f. Magical Melody).