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Honestly I think the GBA Movie player is a better deal that that($20 + CF card), although you need to either PassMe or FlashMe your DS to use Moonshell, which plays MP3s, JPEGs, and movies at full rez.

Anyhoo, I'm using a FlashMe DS and a GBA Movie player with MoonShell. The Datatel will probably be a bit easier to use, but it is more expensive.

With the $45 NDS Dev Kit + Compact Flash card and an original copy of hexen or heretic you can play DS Heretic or DS Hexen. I only have an 8MB GBA flashcart which isn't enough space to try these out...

The total cost is about the same as 2 DS games, plus you can now watch movies and do all the cool homebrew stuff on your DS.

People are buying the PSP so they can hack emulators on it

All PSPs sold new this month have version 1.51 or newer firmware, which doesn't work with emulators because Sony hasn't signed any emulators and doesn't appear to intend to do so. Because the downgrader isn't stable yet, the only way to get a 1.50 PSP is to buy a used Japanese or North American unit.

The "other" popular handheld for both new commercial games and classic system emulation is Nintendo DS. All versions except the "iQue DS" version (sold only in China) and the one in a red chassis (sold only in Japan) work with the most popular hack.

So, NDS is a DRM free, non-proprietary machine.

There is the PassMe adapter. When used with a GBA flash card or a CompactFlash adapter it lets you run homebrew on a DS. And unlike Sony and its firmware-of-the-month club, Nintendo is still selling systems compatible with homebrew.

A request for Nintendo to open up the GB DS

For one thing, there is no "GB DS".

For another thing, the Nintendo DS has already been busted wide open. See PassMe.

Sorry but im not spending $50 on Lumines

Especially because if you buy a GBA and a GBA Movie Player or a GBA flash card, you can get Luminesweeper free.

Why are the movies priced higher then DVDs??

Because the UMD-ROM and UMD Video patents are newer, for one thing.

you come out cheaper with the psp.

What about the time you spend waiting for a particular movie to come out on UMD Video? Currently the PSP has zero UMD Video titles rated G. It takes time to build up a library that comes close to approaching the DVD Video library in a given Region, and time is money.

as far as music is concerned unless you are talking about the pretty useless [for me anyway] ipod shuffle, you will have to shell out more than the PSP itself.

If you already have a GBA flash cart, you can use the GSM Player to put music on your GBA.

once you talk about emulators and homebrew, you will need a flashcart, or one of those awkward looking passthru devices for your ds. there goes the form factor right there.

And no, an F2A or EFA flash cart for GBA homebrew doesn't kill the form factor of the Nintendo DS any more than an official GBA game does. And for DS homebrew, once you've used the PassMe adapter once to flash your DS's firmware, you can keep the PassMe at home and load the DS homebrew from a GBA flash cart.

That wouldn't be backwards compatibility would it? It would be compatibility with a completely different system.

Architecturally, the GBA is "a completely different system" from the GBC, but the GBA can play GB and GBC games. Nintendo also sold an adapter to let the Super NES play 99% of GB games and one to let the GameCube play 99% of GB, GBC, and GBA games.

How many games designed for a 4:3 TV screen would even be usable on a 16:9 handheld

The Game Boy Advance (3:2 display) in both its original and SP iterations can run games for Game Boy and Game Boy Color system (10:9 display) out of the box; by default, it draws a black border around the screen.

with a different control scheme?

The only thing that the PSP lacks vs. the PS1 digital controller is that L2 and R2 are missing. Sure, Ape Escape and other PS1 games that require both analog sticks wouldn't work, but those are few and far between because publishers wanted to target those who bought the PS1 in the first two years before Sony packed in the Dual Shock controller.

Does the DS play N64 games? Or Gamecube games? No. It plays

...most NES and many Super NES games, with a PassMe adapter and a GBA flash card. And unlike Sony, Nintendo doesn't play the cat-and-mouse firmware upgrade game.

Sony doesn't have any previous handhelds.

I beg your pardon?

I do think that GBA compatibility is an advantage of the DS, but as a GBA owner, it doesn't make me want to buy a DS.

If you buy a Nintendo DS, you can carry one device to play your DS games and your GBA games, unlike a GBA SP/PSP combination. This parallels the PSP fanboy argument that if you buy a PSP, you can carry one device to play your PSP games and your MP3 music, unlike a Nintendo DS/iPod Shuffle combination.

Unless there are good DS-only games, why should I upgrade?

There are good DS-only games.

I patiently await your rebuttal of the alleged FUD.

The DS also has a growing development community, and most likely, it'll be the more fruitful, at least in the short term. For one, we can already run our own code on the DS - and who knows when that'll be possible on the PSP?

I hope cool things do turn up on the PSP, but if you're interested in DS hacking, check out these:

• http://www.dsdev.org/
• DS Dev Forum
• http://www.dslinux.org/
• http://www.dspassme.com/

As compared to the open format on the DS? Or the GBA?

Officially, the Nintendo Playan adapter for GBA lets you play MPEG-1 layer 3 audio and MPEG-4 video stored on common SD memory cards. However, because it has an onboard decoder that draws a significant amount of current, it's recommended for use only in those GBA devices that have a rechargeable battery (GBA SP and Nintendo DS).

Unofficially, GBA has been busted wide open with third-party flash memory devices such as the EFA-Linker and the SuperCard. You can play music on them with the GBA GSM Player, or you can play video with the Meteo codec. Work continues on making the Nintendo DS homebrew-friendly.