I now understand why the Boundary Waters area was picked by Forbes as a cell-phone-free getaway after a recent family vacation near there. We spent a week at the YMCA’s Camp Du Nord, a family camp 15 miles from Ely and just a mile from the Slim Lake entrance of the pristine BWCA wilderness. We used our cell phones only occasionally to check messages or make a quick call to relatives. But those few calling episodes often became comical, requiring climbing to the top of a rock formation near our cabin and maybe even assuming the crane pose from Karate Kid. It’s certainly easy to turn your cell phone off under such conditions.

Otherwise, in the beautiful northern Minnesota setting, our vacation was largely tech-free. The lack of Wi-Fi gave my wife a reason to leave her laptop at home, which still wasn’t easy for a prolific writer who does virtually all correspondence by e-mail and even teaches online. 

I still managed to bring along my Nintendo DS and Sony PSP to catch up with some recent games during my down time in the cabin–including the word puzzles of CrossworDS (plain, but addictive), the retro ricochet of Arkanoid DS (just OK),  the comical stealth of Secret Agent Clank (solid neo-Ratchet fun), the reworked Space Invaders Extreme (nonstop wild action), the even more-reworked Atari Classics Evolved (surprisingly engaging and difficult)  and the mythological adventure God of War: Chains of Olympus (cinematic bliss). 

In other news while I was away:

* The NPD group finally confirmed my report from more than a month ago that the Nintendo Wii is now the top console in U.S. homes, with nearly 11 million units sold through June. It also noted in its June sales report (released last week) that the PlayStation 3 posted its highest monthly sales outside of the holiday season with sales of 405,500 units, nearly double the Xbox 360–although the latter older system still has more titles purchased per system, almost 8.

* By many accounts, last week’s annual E3 video-game expo in Los Angeles was a disappointment, including the surprising non-announcement of a new Halo title. There’s talk now, including bringing gamers back to the media event, of how to keep E3 from dying completely.

* A whole slew of intriguing catalog Blu-ray releases were announced, including the Ultimate Matrix (October), Quo Vadis (spring), Young Frankenstein — “that’s Fränkensteen”– (October), Ghostbusters (October), John Carpenter’s The Thing (September) and much more. Cool.

Be sure to check the Star Tribune website Monday night for my story on local fans who dress as Star Wars characters for community appearances, including some great video. 

This entry was posted on Friday, July 25th, 2008 at 2:50 pm and is filed under DVDs, Gadgets, Techno chatter, Video games. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.