Ping Pals - DS/DSi

In Ping Pals, THQ offer a souped-up alternative to the Pictochat messaging program that comes with the DS console. Players must first design their avatar, choosing from hundreds of different heads, bodies, eyes and hair to create an on-screen persona to represent them. Once that’s done, they are free to link up with up to seven of their friends and exchange chat and pictures, using either the stylus to write or bringing up the onscreen keyboard. But that’s not the half of it. Players can also challenge one another to any of several minigames, like Hot Potato, Top Ten, Pick a Number and Doodle.

The idea is that by winning games, either solo or multiplayer, and chatting with your friends you can amass coins, and these coins can be used to purchase extra items for your Ping Pal alter ego. Focusing as it does on the wireless communication powers of the new DS, Ping Pals is one of several launch titles eager to signal the direction that future titles for the console will develop in. Heaven help teachers once their students start to get hold of the machines, as they seem just the job for whiling away a double maths lesson, without the risks involved by whispering. more