::A Geek in Korea::

Ashley: Mm hmm.  Do a little housework and you can play for five
        minutes.
  Bart: No way.  [turns away, but has to turn back] Argh!  Yes, 'm.
Ashley: See, Lisa?  Males aren't hard to tame.  They all follow their...
        video cartridges.
         [swings it towards wall, Bart follows and smashes his nose]
  Bart: Ow.

Homer, Bad Man

My students in my last class were very uppity and excitable today because one of the students had successfully gotten his mother to buy him a Nintendo DS. I’ve had one going on three years now since the Japanese launch, but the Korean school childen haven’t really paid attention to the game device until the “Nintendo DS Lite” got an official release in Korea. Now that it’s advertised on Korean television and there are localized titles, it’s starting to really take off here.

Now, all my student envy my claim of having two units. Several of my students study for the express purpose of saving enough smile points from our reward system at school to eventually win the game system, which is a truly Herculean task. (Think winning a prize at Chuck E. Cheeze with Skee-ball tickets, only with more memorization and testing and less “Carny”.)

Since the student in the class had brought his new Nintendo DS lite with him, all the students were abuzz watching him play Super Mario Brothers 64 DS. I beat that game years ago and sold it back to the shop, but I offered some tips before class started.

During class, students kept clamoring on and on about buying a DS while I was trying to conduct a dictation test. They annoyed me so much because they couldn’t stop talking while the rest of the students shushed them repeatedly.

Finally, after class, I grabbed my own DS and challenged the newcomer to a game of “Grab the Star” in Mario 64. The download process on that game is a bit funky, so we had a problem setting up the game before they had to leave. The other students in the class that had a DS promised to bring it with them the next time we will study together on Monday.

I plan to use this as a reward system. If the students are good, I will bring my extensive game library for them to pay with me between classes. If they are bad, I will ban them from playing while I am in the school. The students in class have a deep, burning desire to play all games multiplayer, and this will be the first opportunity they, or I, have had to play with 3 or more players at the same time. I’m fine with kicking all their asses in download play, even if they don’t own the carts.

As much as I want the students to do well for their own well-being, I also want to have a reason to reward them for hard work. Since they are the last class in my day, if they do well, I’d be willing to stick around, but if they aren’t leaving won’t bring me to tears. It’s been a long time coming where the DS is common enough to see people on the street with it, but now that its time has arrived, I plan on enjoying it.