Virtual Beagle

We picked up Nintendogs, the new virtual dog training game for the DS. Actually, it's not so much a game as it is a simulator. Katrina's been the one playing it, mostly. I really just toy around with it. The dog she picked out at the in-game kennel is a beagle puppy she named "Arnie."

It recognizes her voice and she's trained it to do about a half dozen tricks and commands so far. The amount of things you can do in the game are astounding. From daily feeding/watering to grooming and bathing. You can enter various contests to earn money you use to buy doggy related things and even decorate your virtual pad. If you take the DS with Nintendogs with you when you leave home, and have it 'on' or in 'sleep mode,' and you happen to come within, say, thirty feet of another owner, the dogs will even begin barking and interacting with one another, thus encouraging you to interact with another actual person in real life and allowing you to unlock new items and dogs in your game. I imagine this feature is bigger in Japan with their digital social culture than here; but with 250,000 units sold in the U.S. in the first week alone, who knows.