Agree with all of that. Portrait of Ruin (in retrospect) was a big letdown for me. It felt like it was sent from their best handheld team to some third-tier, just-hired-off-the-street team (using the same engine/tools).

I hope its not the last Castlevania we see on the DS. 

...

Coin clocked NSMB twice? Not bad ;)

I was very impressed that my partner (a complete non-gamer) loved the game so much, she almost finished it. Got to the very last level, then found it too hard (ran out of patience/time).

(on a separate topic, its interesting watching her attitude to gaming. Mario Party has sucked her in big-time - I have seen her play entire games on her own - i.e. 1-player. For the DS, Clubhouse games has been great. She beat me at Backgammon last night - and she only just learnt how to play. I was impressed... :>).

...

I really must play more of Elite Beat. Never got close to clocking it. Maybe once I'm done with Pkm Diamond....

Pokemon Diamond, and I've only had it 4 days!

In terms of time, Advance Wars Dual Strike has given the most value for me.

PoR was not that bad - until you unwittingly finish the game the first time, inadvertently get the false ending, and are forced to replay the ENTIRE !@#$% GAME instead of letting you continue where you left off.

I got the false ending at 49.5%, couldn't undo, and abandoned the game. That was about four months ago. I don't look forward to going back either, but something in the back of my head keeps telling me, "you got the game, now finish it!"

has to be advanced wars as well, clocked up over 320 hours on that monster! a lot of time getting all S ratings in the war room there... i loved that you could play that game for 5 minutes, close the ds, come back to it an hour later play your shot and so on and so on.

it'd be great if the next 1 was wi-fi, seems to be quite a lot of good players in here