A few days after Christmas, I braved the hoards of shoppers, the icy temperatures and the equally icy temperament of the shop assistants. Why would I subject myself to this? After all, I detest shopping. My reasoning was that a new cartridge for the DS had been released, and I decided that I must have it. You will notice that I said 'cartridge' and not 'game'. This is because the thing that I yearned for was in fact not a game, but is entitled 100 Classic Book Collection.
This release is a collaboration of Nintendo and Harper-Collins and does exactly what it claims to. It is a collection of 100 books by the most renowned authors. So of course, if the thought of reading a Dickens or Austen has you trembling with horror, then perhaps this is not for you.
100 Classic Book Collection is presented and packaged very neatly and has a number of useful and interesting features. Firstly there is the way in which the books are presented, lined up on a bookshelf for your perusal, in alphabetical order. You simply tap the book you want and begin to read, or look at the information it gives you on the author and the book itself.
If you have trouble deciding what to read, there is a quiz that asks various multiple choice questions about your lifestyle and somehow then decides what books you might like (although what my preference of coffee over tea, or choice of pet has to do with my reading preferences is yet for me to ascertain). Whether the questions make sense or not is irrelevant, as you own all 100 books anyway and it is a good way of choosing what you want to read.
The settings allow you to set music or sound to your reading if that is your wont, the choices range from tranquil music to a the simulated rhythm and bustle of a train, so if you usually read on your commute, you can recreate that effect anywhere. More useful settings allow you to alter the layout for whether you are right or left handed, and there is an option to make the text larger.
This brings us to the actual reading part. The DS is used on its side, and the text is displayed on both screens as in a book. Tapping one side of the screen will turn the page, with a page turning sound (a nice touch I hope you will agree) and tapping the other side will turn the page back again. Tapping the bottom of the screen brings up a scroll bar so you can find a particular page, and tapping at the top brings up a list of options. One of these options is the bookmark option. There are three bookmarks that you can use, place one of these and next time you switch on, you can resume reading immediately. It is also possible to change how you turn your pages, (I personally favour setting a shoulder button to turn the page as it is nearer to where I have my thumb when reading) which is helpful, as not everyone holds a book in the same manner. Once you have read a book, you are then asked to give it a score out of ten and choose a word from the list to describe it. These rankings can then be updated via wi-fi to give you an idea how the book is rated by others.
Graphically, there is not much to tell. The font is easy to read and a perfect size for the DS screens. The book spines are bright and based on the Harper Collins hardback editions, however this makes it a little difficult to read the name on the spine, while you are scrolling through the collection. This collection (as I can not really call it a game) works very well on the DS lite, the screens make reading easy and the adjustable light make it much easier on the eyes.
So then, what are the negatives? What could possibly be bad about this trove of literature? Well the first thing is unfortunately the selection of classics on offer. 100 books it may be but in this 100 lies 22 Shakespeare plays and 12 Dickens novels. I have no qualms with Dickens, but Shakespeare is not among the things I like to read. Don't get me wrong, I love the plays, but reading them is a chore. My personal preferences aside, I would have to have seen a little more variation in the choices. That being said, there is a wonderful selection here: From Austen and the Brontës through Dickens and Dumas to Shakespeare, Sir Walter Scott and Oscar Wilde, to name but a few.
The text size only comes in small or big, there is no middle ground. There are only 3 bookmarks, the music is hardly inspiring, the quiz makes no sense, and it wants you to describe a book in one word. There are a number of little things that could be improved to make this a more enjoyable experience but as I'm sure you can see, I'm being pedantic. As I said, it does exactly what it says on the box. It is a collection of 100 classic books, what more do you want a book to do?
The recommended retail price on this is £19.99. That is twenty pounds for 100 books. You could probably buy a DS lite and this and still not have been able to afford that many books. Of course not every book in here is going to be to everyone's tastes, but if you like literature, this is an indispensable addition to any book collection, and fantastic value for money at that.
This release is a collaboration of Nintendo and Harper-Collins and does exactly what it claims to. It is a collection of 100 books by the most renowned authors. So of course, if the thought of reading a Dickens or Austen has you trembling with horror, then perhaps this is not for you.
100 Classic Book Collection is presented and packaged very neatly and has a number of useful and interesting features. Firstly there is the way in which the books are presented, lined up on a bookshelf for your perusal, in alphabetical order. You simply tap the book you want and begin to read, or look at the information it gives you on the author and the book itself.
If you have trouble deciding what to read, there is a quiz that asks various multiple choice questions about your lifestyle and somehow then decides what books you might like (although what my preference of coffee over tea, or choice of pet has to do with my reading preferences is yet for me to ascertain). Whether the questions make sense or not is irrelevant, as you own all 100 books anyway and it is a good way of choosing what you want to read.
The settings allow you to set music or sound to your reading if that is your wont, the choices range from tranquil music to a the simulated rhythm and bustle of a train, so if you usually read on your commute, you can recreate that effect anywhere. More useful settings allow you to alter the layout for whether you are right or left handed, and there is an option to make the text larger.
This brings us to the actual reading part. The DS is used on its side, and the text is displayed on both screens as in a book. Tapping one side of the screen will turn the page, with a page turning sound (a nice touch I hope you will agree) and tapping the other side will turn the page back again. Tapping the bottom of the screen brings up a scroll bar so you can find a particular page, and tapping at the top brings up a list of options. One of these options is the bookmark option. There are three bookmarks that you can use, place one of these and next time you switch on, you can resume reading immediately. It is also possible to change how you turn your pages, (I personally favour setting a shoulder button to turn the page as it is nearer to where I have my thumb when reading) which is helpful, as not everyone holds a book in the same manner. Once you have read a book, you are then asked to give it a score out of ten and choose a word from the list to describe it. These rankings can then be updated via wi-fi to give you an idea how the book is rated by others.
Graphically, there is not much to tell. The font is easy to read and a perfect size for the DS screens. The book spines are bright and based on the Harper Collins hardback editions, however this makes it a little difficult to read the name on the spine, while you are scrolling through the collection. This collection (as I can not really call it a game) works very well on the DS lite, the screens make reading easy and the adjustable light make it much easier on the eyes.
So then, what are the negatives? What could possibly be bad about this trove of literature? Well the first thing is unfortunately the selection of classics on offer. 100 books it may be but in this 100 lies 22 Shakespeare plays and 12 Dickens novels. I have no qualms with Dickens, but Shakespeare is not among the things I like to read. Don't get me wrong, I love the plays, but reading them is a chore. My personal preferences aside, I would have to have seen a little more variation in the choices. That being said, there is a wonderful selection here: From Austen and the Brontës through Dickens and Dumas to Shakespeare, Sir Walter Scott and Oscar Wilde, to name but a few.
The text size only comes in small or big, there is no middle ground. There are only 3 bookmarks, the music is hardly inspiring, the quiz makes no sense, and it wants you to describe a book in one word. There are a number of little things that could be improved to make this a more enjoyable experience but as I'm sure you can see, I'm being pedantic. As I said, it does exactly what it says on the box. It is a collection of 100 classic books, what more do you want a book to do?
The recommended retail price on this is £19.99. That is twenty pounds for 100 books. You could probably buy a DS lite and this and still not have been able to afford that many books. Of course not every book in here is going to be to everyone's tastes, but if you like literature, this is an indispensable addition to any book collection, and fantastic value for money at that.
