Topic: Library of 100 Classics Revealed for Nintendo's eBook Software

[Kairon]

Nintendo's 100 Classic Book Collection for the DS will utilize Nintendo Wi-Fi and include authors like Jane Austen, Mark Twain, and The Bard himself, Shakespeare.
 http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/newsArt.cfm?artid=17349

 Still without an official announcement, the lineup of titles included in Nintendo's 100 Classic Book Collection was recently revealed not through Nintendo or partner Harper Collins, but an entry on Amazon UK.    

In addition to the list of 100 classic works of Western literature, the Amazon site also revealed that the title would allow users to download 10 additional books via Nintendo Wi-Fi, and rank their favorite titles via the service. With the DS held "like a book" and using the touch screen to turn pages, the software will also offer search options so users can select a title to suit their mood and time allowances.    

The game is listed for a December 26 release date in the UK. There is currently no information on releases in other territories.    

The list of included titles from the Amazon, arranged by author, can be seen below.    

 
• Louisa May Alcott - Little Women
 
• Jane Austen - Emma
 
• Jane Austen - Mansfield Park
 
• Jane Austen - Persuasion
 
• Jane Austen - Pride and Prejudice
 
• Jane Austen - Sense and Sensibility
 
• Harriet Beecher Stowe - Uncle Tom's Cabin
 
• R.D. Blackmore - Lorna Doone
 
• Anne Bronte - The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
 
• Charlotte Bronte - Jane Eyre
 
• Charlotte Bronte - The Professor
 
• Charlotte Bronte - Shirley
 
• Charlotte Bronte - Villette
 
• Emily Bronte - Wuthering Heights
 
• John Bunyan - The Pilgrim's Progress
 
• Frances Burnett - The Secret Garden
 
• Lewis Carroll - Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
 
• Lewis Carroll - Through the Looking-Glass
 
• Wilkie Collins - The Moonstone
 
• Wilkie Collins - The Woman in White
 
• Carlo Collodi - The Adventures of Pinocchio
 
• Arthur Conan Doyle - The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
 
• Arthur Conan Doyle - The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes
 
• Joseph Conrad - Lord Jim
 
• Susan Coolidge - What Katy Did
 
• James Fenimore Cooper - Last of the Mohicans
 
• Daniel Defoe - Robinson Crusoe
 
• Charles Dickens - Barnaby Rudge
 
• Charles Dickens - Bleak House
 
• Charles Dickens - A Christmas Carol
 
• Charles Dickens - David Copperfield
 
• Charles Dickens - Dombey and Son
 
• Charles Dickens - Great Expectations
 
• Charles Dickens - Hard Times
 
• Charles Dickens - Martin Chuzzlewit
 
• Charles Dickens - Nicholas Nickleby
 
• Charles Dickens - The Old Curiosity Shop
 
• Charles Dickens - Oliver Twist
 
• Charles Dickens - The Pickwick Papers
 
• Charles Dickens - A Tale of Two Cities
 
• Alexandre Dumas - The Count of Monte Cristo
 
• Alexandre Dumas - The Three Musketeers
 
• George Eliot - Adam Bede
 
• George Eliot - Middlemarch
 
• George Eliot - The Mill on the Floss
 
• Henry Rider Haggard - King Solomon's Mines
 
• Thomas Hardy    - Far From The Madding Crowd
 
• Thomas Hardy    - The Mayor of Casterbridge
 
• Thomas Hardy    - Tess of The D'Urbervilles
 
• Thomas Hardy    - Under the Greenwood Tree
 
• Nathaniel Hawthorne - The Scarlet Letter
 
• Victor Hugo - The Hunchback of Notre Dame
 
• Victor Hugo - Les Miserables
 
• Washington Irving - The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon
 
• Charles Kingsley - Westward Ho!
 
• D.H. Lawrence - Sons And Lovers
 
• Gaston Leroux    -  The Phantom of the Opera
 
• Jack London - The Call of the Wild
 
• Jack London - White Fang
 
• Herman Melville - Moby Dick
 
• Edgar Allen Poe - Tales of Mystery and Imagination
 
• Sir Walter Scott - Ivanhoe
 
• Sir Walter Scott - Rob Roy
 
• Sir Walter Scott - Waverley
 
• Anna Sewell - Black Beauty
 
• William Shakespeare - All's Well That Ends Well
 
• William Shakespeare - Antony and Cleopatra
 
• William Shakespeare - As You Like It
 
• William Shakespeare - The Comedy of Errors
 
• William Shakespeare - Hamlet
 
• William Shakespeare - Julius Caesar
 
• William Shakespeare - King Henry the Fifth
 
• William Shakespeare - King Lear
 
• William Shakespeare - King Richard the Third
 
• William Shakespeare - Love's Labour's Lost
 
• William Shakespeare - Macbeth
 
• William Shakespeare - The Merchant of Venice
 
• William Shakespeare - A Midsummer-Night's Dream
 
• William Shakespeare - Much Ado About Nothing
 
• William Shakespeare - Othello, the Moor of Venice
 
• William Shakespeare - Romeo and Juliet
 
• William Shakespeare - The Taming of the Shrew
 
• William Shakespeare - The Tempest
 
• William Shakespeare - Timon of Athens
 
• William Shakespeare - Titus Andronicus
 
• William Shakespeare - Twelfth Night
 
• William Shakespeare - The Winter's Tale
 
• Robert Louis Stevenson - Kidnapped
 
• Robert Louis Stevenson - The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
 
• Robert Louis Stevenson - Treasure Island
 
• Jonathan Swift - Gulliver's Travels
 
• William Thackeray - Vanity Fair
 
• Anthony Trollope - Barchester Towers
 
• Mark Twain - Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
 
• Mark Twain - Adventures of Tom Sawyer
 
• Jules Verne - Round the World in Eighty Days
 
• Jules Verne - 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
 
• Oscar Wilde - The Importance of Being Earnest
 
• Oscar Wilde - The Picture of Dorian Gray
 

   

Thanks to reader Rabicle for the tip!

[Kairon]

I SHAKE MY FIST IN FURY AT THE EXCLUSION OF AUSTEN'S NORTHANGER ABBEY!!!

[King of Twitch]

Great, ports of 400 year-old books.



jk, this is a good deal. I would probably read a lot of these on DS.

[Kairon]

Great, ports of 400 year-old books.

Wow...wait a second....you're...you're right... THEY'RE PORTING BOOKS.

[NWR_Lindy]

I've heard that they've removed any words that are over two syllables.

[AV]

for purposes of space, i rather pay $20 and have this on my stand, than that many books.

problem is i rarely read books.

Now I don't mind the idea of applications for DS, not really game but make something useful.

How about instead of buying a Text book for College or School, you just buy the book on DS and update it via Wifi? That way I don't have to spend $50-140 on a college book.

Or how about an version of TI-83 calculator I can play on my DS. Have a clean interface and I only have to pay $30 instead of $80+ range. Having two screens and one being a touch screen would be amazing easy for TI-83 calculations.

The Personal Chief game does look useful, so I do have hope the effort they put into that will go into other non-game applications like this.

[Kairon]

Agreed Mr. Vega, and brilliant ideas.

Heck, I can already see applications to HS English Classes here! The only Shakespeare plays I studied in HS are all here! Macbeth, Julius Ceasar, Antony and Cleopatra! And of course Dickens is always a classic...

[Michael8983]

N/A

[UltimatePartyBear]

Mark Twain once wrote that a classic is "something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read."

[KDR_11k]

Speaking of definitions:

Critic, n. A person who boasts himself hard to please because nobody tries to please him.

[DAaaMan64]

UPB. I think  I agree.

[Toruresu]

Ok. Where's my Bible with commentaries, dictionaries and all of those books in my library?

I could really use em for my DS

Can you imagine giving a sermon, not with my laptop, but with my DS? haha

[Ian Sane]

Not a bad idea but I think the DS screen is a little small for this.  Think of the size of the DS screens and then imagine a physical book with pages that small.

[Kairon]

Mark Twain once wrote that a classic is "something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read."

Mark Twain also said that a library without Jane Austen is a good collection. RAAAGGGGEEEEEE

Not a bad idea but I think the DS screen is a little small for this.  Think of the size of the DS screens and then imagine a physical book with pages that small.

This is true, and I'm not sure but it didn't look like they fit a lot of words on the screen from the very poor views that Amazon gave me.

[King of Twitch]

Plus what if the gap between the screens cuts out a couple sentences on every page LOL SONIC MEGA COLLECTION ALL OVER AGAIN AM I RIGHT

[LuigiHann]

I've read Elite Beat Agents fanfiction sci-fi short stories on the DS using Moonshell, and it's fine in small doses. Oddly enough, though, I'd much rather hold the system DS-style than Book-style for this sort of application. I wonder if this pack has both options.

[AV]

Plus what if the gap between the screens cuts out a couple sentences on every page LOL SONIC MEGA COLLECTION ALL OVER AGAIN AM I RIGHT

wouldn't the logical solution would be FORCE "book style" or Brain Age style holding of the DS, so that isn't an issue and you could probably get more text that way too

[King of Twitch]

People have to remember that the whole point of these "read on DS" games is to appeal to the people that never owned a book.  If somebody never owned a book, then why would they have a book style option?

In Nintendo's mind, they probably feel that the older fanbase that would play these with a book anyway, already bought them on book when they were first released and as a result probably wouldn't buy the DS version in the first place.

[D_Average]

IMO the current DS and upcoming DSi screen is just too small.  Nice to see they're working it in, maybe it'll be better served on the DSseQuel

[UltimatePartyBear]

Speaking of definitions:

Critic, n. A person who boasts himself hard to please because nobody tries to please him.

Ambrose Bierce. 

People have to remember that the whole point of these "read on DS" games is to appeal to the people that never owned a book.  If somebody never owned a book, then why would they have a book style option?

In Nintendo's mind, they probably feel that the older fanbase that would play these with a book anyway, already bought them on book when they were first released and as a result probably wouldn't buy the DS version in the first place.

I doubt anyone old enough to have bought Great Expectations when it was first released is worth targeting now anyway.

(Possible rejoinder:  "Of course they need to buy it again on DS!  It's too dark in a coffin to read a book.")

[King of Twitch]

Those words are from a poster defending a certain game cube port's controls being yanked out simply to appeal to non-game-cube-owners / casuals. Here's another poster:

Again, this is called "Read it on DS". The point of the whole line is to read classic books with enhanced dual screen controls. Its the main selling point of the series. While having the option would have been nice it would have defeated the purpose of reading a classic with new controls.

I already read the original with classic controls, and it was great. The main reason I want to read it again is because it offers new controls at a budget price. And I'm sure I am not the only one that feels this way.

Call it stupidity, call it blind fanboyism, call it whatever you want. I accepted the "Read on DS" series as DS control heavy ports of classic books.

[UltimatePartyBear]

Yeah, well, I need a book with more turning.

[MaleficentOgre]

This is a great idea. I have a homebrew book reader on my DS and it really isn't bad. I totally enjoy it. I would enjoy a legitimate one even more so.

[Ian Sane]

People have to remember that the whole point of these "read on DS" games is to appeal to the people that never owned a book.  If somebody never owned a book, then why would they have a book style option?

What is there target market Chad or Burkina Faso?  Are there honestly North American people with money that have never owned a book?  Maybe at 27 I'm just too f*cking old but I don't know anyone who has NEVER owned a book.  I don't read books that often but I still own quite a few.  Even if you just read comics the concept of a book layout would be familiar to you.

But in all seriousness I'm not a grade school kid in the internet age and I never was.  Is it normal now for young people to have no real interaction with books?  Just hearing anecdotes about my co-workers teenage kids suggests that even at only a ten year age difference they live in a completely different world than I am.

[King of Twitch]

Those words are from a poster defending a certain game cube port's controls being yanked out simply to appeal to non-game-cube-owners / casuals.