''Ping Pals'' is a chat/accessory program developed by

WayForward Technologies WayForward Technologies, Inc. is an American independent video game developer and publisher based in Valencia, California. Founded in March 1990 by technology entrepreneur Voldi Way, WayForward started by developing games for consoles such as ...

and published by THQ for the

Nintendo DS The is a handheld game console produced by Nintendo, released globally across 2004 and 2005. The DS, an initialism for "Developers' System" or "Dual Screen", introduced distinctive new features to handheld games: two LCD screens working in t ...

. It was released on December 8, 2004 in

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and th ...

& It was released in

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...

in early 2005. The program allows the user to customise their "Ping Pal"

avatar Avatar (, ; ), is a concept within Hinduism that in Sanskrit literally means "descent". It signifies the material appearance or incarnation of a powerful deity, goddess or spirit on Earth. The relative verb to "alight, to make one's appear ...

and game interface by selecting from over 1000 different items such as hairstyles, makeup, clothing, backdrops, music loops and sound effects.

Gameplay

Items can be unlocked by trading with other players or buying them in a shop. Players must trade to complete their collections, as each cartridge's shop offers a different subset of the items. Players receive a regular allowance of coins, using the DS' date-keeping functionality, and can get more by playing mini-games (such as Guess the Number and Hot Potato), typing certain secret words in chat (each word works once per file) and even for choosing to display the credits screen more than once. Up to 16 players can connect wirelessly using one game cartridge; each must be within about 100 feet (30 m) of one of the others to exchange text and picture messages.

Reception

Although ''Ping Pals'' was marketed as a nonviolent, girl-friendly game, it was frequently criticized as not being

interactive Across the many fields concerned with interactivity, including information science, computer science, human-computer interaction, communication, and industrial design, there is little agreement over the meaning of the term "interactivity", but mo ...

enough to be called a

game A game is a structured form of play, usually undertaken for entertainment or fun, and sometimes used as an educational tool. Many games are also considered to be work (such as professional players of spectator sports or games) or art (suc ...

. In addition to this, the DS has a built-in chat program called

PictoChat Ever since the introduction of the Nintendo DS in 2004, which is Nintendo's first gaming console to have wireless communication as a standard, Nintendo has introduced a variety of instant messaging applications to suit each gaming console they ha ...

. PictoChat includes features that ''Ping Pals'' lacks, and due to this, the game received "generally unfavorable reviews" according to the review aggregation website

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...

. For instance, ''

Nintendo Official Magazine ''Official Nintendo Magazine'', or ''ONM'', was a British video game magazine that ran from 2006 to 2014 that covered the Nintendo DS, Nintendo 3DS, Wii, and Wii U video game consoles released by Nintendo. Originally published by EMAP as ''N ...

'', in its Nintendo DS special, opened their review of the game by describing its existence as being "a bit like paying money to breathe air." By contrast with other summaries in the magazine, which were typed and more detailed, the reviewer gave a one word handwritten summary reading "POINTLESS". Several images in ''Ping Pals'' were licensed from '' QPlay''. These include the Cupimon, a green creature that dances in the startup animation, and several avatar and clothing graphics. The game received two zeroes and one 1.5 from ''

Electronic Gaming Monthly ''Electronic Gaming Monthly'' (often abbreviated to ''EGM'') is a monthly American video game magazine. It offers video game news, coverage of industry events, interviews with gaming figures, editorial content and product reviews. History The ...

'', the lowest average score in the history of the publication.

References

External links

* 2004 video games Nintendo DS games Nintendo DS-only games THQ games Multiplayer and single-player video games Wayforward games Video games developed in the United States {{THQ-stub

Gameplay

Reception

See also

References

External links