I feel I should mention my first "passer-by" experience.
My wife asked me to buy a satellite dish + tuner tonight, so I went into Shibuya to buy them from Bic Camera, the high street electronics store. I thought this would be the best time to check out the passer-by function, so I turned it on before I left work and did my shopping as usual. When I got home, I opened up my DS, and to my delight a little Shitsu had joined my Drinky. It said Buriemon's Shitsu, Sumomo-chan, has visited and brought you a present. It was the shabondama (bubble-blower). Sumomo likes the bubbles, but my Drinky doesn't.
Anyway, they played for a bit together, then I took Drinky home. When I got home it said that I've unlocked Shitsu breed in the kennel, and it also added Buriemon to my friend's list. Apparently she's a new gamer, only has 41 points, and her birthday is on 30 August. I put the blog URL in my friend card, so she might be checking out Puppy Times tonight
If I can have success like this on my first attempt, I wonder how much fun I could have over the holidays next week. I'll be sure to keep you posted.
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I had another passer-by contact today, so I'm going to try this a lot more often from now on. I put the DS in passer-by mode before I left the house for work, and on my journey to work, Chiharu's Labrador Retriever, Inui, visited. He was a cute little fellow, wearing a pair of sunglasses. He brought me a present too! A pulling rope toy. I'll let Drinky play with it later. In return, I gave a Mushroom toy. Chiharu is a pro-trainer though, so she probably already has one... oh, and she left me a voice message "Please be nice to Inui."
...and people say there is no community in this game. I weep for them :'(
Actually, I feel pretty bad for you importers because you won't get chance to try this out properly. It's a really nice feature. Maybe we should put some nice Japanese greeting on the blog for people who visit because of my message.
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Another update on the passer-by functionality
I really should write a blog entry on this!
I headed into Shibuya with DCharlie at lunchtime, to check out the new releases, and get some DS stuff off the Download Kiosk at Bic.
Between the office and the station, I had already made contact with some guy called Tetsuya. His dog gave me a useless photograph, so I stuck it back in passer-by mode and decided to give the photo to my next visitor. Get to Shibuya and in the first shop, I noticed I had another visitor. This one left me a blue collar. Nice, I only have red and black in my shop. Stick it back in passer-by mode and go to the download kiosk - Utada's dog pops up straight away. It comes with a present - a nintendogs record - and also adds a new option to the reform shop - Japanese room. I didn't have chance to check either of them out, as I saved and reset my DS to download the Goemon demo. I'll have to let you know what they are like later.
So far I've got 5 friends on my friends list - 4 female and 1 male :O
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"How does that work? When you pass by someone else with the game, the DS' automatically start to exchange data?"
Yep, exactly. You set up your passer-by mode. You give your dog a present to carry, then he starts to walk around town on your top screen and the bottom screen says "Searching... you can close your DS if you want". When a passer-by is detected, their dog will appear on the top screen with your dog. It'll run to you and bring a present when you open your DS. After you've opened the present, it'll play with your dog, and you can call them both to you and play with them if you want. It's really neat, and it avoids the potential embarrassment of playing a handheld game in public because people can swap dogs while the DS remains in their bag / pocket. Ingenious.