Bird & Beans

Bird & Beans might be better known as Pyoro. You may also know it as "that little game with the bird and the falling beets or whatever they are from the first WarioWare game." This game, one of the first five out of the gate for the North American launch of the Nintendo DSi, gives you two variants of Bird & Bean for 200 points, or two dollars. That's a pretty great price for this simple-but-addictive arcade activity.

In the first variant, Pyoro sticks out his long tongue at a 45-degree angle when you press the A button. Beans slowly fall from the sky, and it's your goal to catch the beans with your tongue. The higher the beans are when you grab them--which requires careful timing on your part to ensure that the tip of your tongue reaches the right spot at the right time--the more points you earn. If a bean hits your bird, the game ends. If a bean hits the ground, that chunk of the ground is knocked out, limiting your movement. White beans will replace one missing ground block when eaten, and flashing beans fill up all of the holes. Beans. Things speed up quickly as you play, making things hectic and adding some real pressure.

Once you get decent at the original, the game unlocks Bird & Beans 2. The same concepts apply, but instead of using your tongue to grab beans, you spit seeds at a 45-degree angle, destroying the beans. Scoring is changed, as well, making beans worth more if you can line them up and eliminate multiple beans with one spit.

While this is stuff you may already own on the Game Boy Advance, Bird & Beans is a great little time-waster that's nice to have in your pocket, always at the ready. Two dollars for the package of two varieties is a heck of a deal.