The tech is capable but clearly limiting, but it does its job well in the proper environments. Without it, the game wouldn't be half as fun or interesting because, quite frankly, half the experience with a real dog is interacting verbally.

The most prominent Nintendogs bullet point is the design's speech recognition technology. Your dogs can never grow up or die, living in a reality where they don't age, leave their owners, or get hit by cars. For example, if your dog is absolutely rambunctious around other puppies, bringing another dog into your family might make it impossible to train the new arrival. What you do with your dog affects its personality, which, in turn, can affect other points in your experience with him. Pet it, play with it, wash it, take it for a walk, enter it into competitions. Good boy! Get the guide now!Įssentially players take care of their choice of puppy and do what you would do with a real dog without the hassle of any real responsibility. Nintendogs Guide Wrap your head around the Japanese import. And while the concept doesn't go all that far beyond a simple pet sim, it at least opens a whole new world of potential on the Nintendo DS and shows even the system naysayers that the Nintendo handheld can do so much new stuff right out of the box. Everything that the Nintendo DS is has been utilized in some fashion in the game design, from touch-screen interactivity to 'pet' your puppy to the built-in microphone used to give vocal commands for tricks. This experience was tailor made for the Nintendo DS system so much that it almost feels like that it was the other way around: that Nintendogs was influential to the R&D of the Nintendo DS hardware itself. This idea goes back as far as the Tamagotchi and probably even further than that, but no virtual pet has had as much put into its production as Nintendogs does. Nintendogs isn't anywhere near a new concept. The choice of which Nintendogs to pick up is simply a matter of which breed you want to begin your virtual life together - all 18 standard breeds are in all versions of Nintendogs, and when you work together with your puppy the other breeds become available in the kennel for adoption. The only difference between the three is the set of six puppies that are available to the user at the start of the Nintendogs experience.

Nintendogs comes in three flavors: Nintendogs: Dachshund & Friends, Nintendogs: Lab & Friends, and Nintendogs: Chihuahua & Friends, but they're essentially one and the same.

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