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Nintendo DS Launches
The DS system has launched today, allowing everyone with a interest in dual screen action to get their fill. Gamespy has a Beginner's Guide to the system available, while Gamespot has a detailed page reviewing the system and some of the first games available. Bionic_Baboon wrote in with a press release about the sale of the system at EB Games on Businesswire.
...editors, please please fix that headline. Someone might read it, you know.
Hint: The company is actually called Nintendo.
The only think I have agest it is that it looks in the pics to be quite large for a gameboy
I picked my DS up this morning, it's not that large. It's smaller than the original 1989 gameboy.
My biggest complaint with it is that Pictochat should've been internet-enabled.
I got one this morning too. My only real complaint is that I think it should have had an analog stick. The touch pad works well in Metroid Prime Hunters, but it just doesn't do it for me in Mario 64. The analog stick just worked better. Or have made the directional pad analog (like the buttons on the PS2).
Still, great little system. I can't wait for more games!
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
DS is a third system not a replacement for the GBA according to nintendo. Basically, they will still be introducing a ton of new GBA games, and DS games too.
It is only compatible with GBA games, not the old Gameboy and Gameboy Color games.
Well well, isn't the unplayable stored mode what counts? The size only matters when carrying it around (except if it's too big to hold, of course).
Shit, I also bought the GBA SP a few months ago. I bought it mainly because it's a very easy game system to develop homebrew games on. (See gbadev.org or my web page, above.) At the time, I did not even know about the Nintendo DS. Anyway, I ended up picking up the DS today because it looked too good to pass up.
I am hoping that the homebrew community can get together and quickly figure out a way to get our own binaries to run on this thing, because as a hacking system, it looks sweet. It's got WiFi and a touch screen dammit! Imagine the games you could develop for it! I imagine you could get Linux to run on this thing and use a virtual keyboard on the bottom touch-screen to input into a terminal.
The Japanese have "interesting" courtship strategies?
Nintendo could have given the DS better graphics, but they chose not to. This is not because they hate their customers as some people have suggested.
.24 x .24mm for each pixel and a 3" screen, better graphics would not necessarily look better anyway.
They had to make some choices. There were some constraints.
One was battery life. The Nintendo DS's 6-10 hour battery life is at full load. Sony has admitted that the PSP's 4-6 hour quoted battery life is at a certain brightness, using headphones, without using wireless, and playing games that are not that graphically taxing. Tokyo Game Show people were reporting 2 hour actual battery life.
Another was media. Optical media is less durable, and it takes more power to run, so they chose cartridges. 128 MB per cartridge will likely increase over the life of the system as it did with the GB and GBA, but you need a certain amount of space for the code for the better graphics.
There is the screen resolution itself. At
Then of course there is the cost--the cost to the company and the cost to the customer. Sony may be selling the PSP at $190 in Japan (without any memory card I might add), But it is costing them a lot more to make. Nintendo expects to make a profit immediately.
Other challengers have fallen to the Gameboy, because they were too power hungry, too costly, and simply too ambitious for the technology of the day.
The DS blows me away with what it gives me for the cost, battery life, and innovation. I knew going into EB this morning that the graphics would not be better than I had ever seen. It is the package that impresses.
I picked one up. I'm not impressed with the games that much at all. Mario is kind of boring. Metroid Prime will probably be good, but, the demo doesn't allow you to invert your aiming. Since I always invert my mouse when playing FPSs, this is really annoying and very hard to get used to. I picked up Asphalt Urban GT also, but I haven't opened it yet. Still trying to decide whether or not to return it. The reviews didn't look so hot.
The unit as far as technology goes is pretty sweet. The touchscreen thing is cool, and the wireless is neat. If there was an open SDK for developing apps for it, people could come up with some pretty neat stuff to run on this. I'm sure game shops will have some neat stuff also, it will just take time.
Physically, the unit feels kind of cheap. Button layout is not ergonomic at all, and it feels like it was just slapped together. It just feels like there is empty space inside of it, which means it probably could have been smaller. In any case, it doesn't look like they put nearly as much effort into the actual construction and physical design of the unit as they did into the actual guts of it. For $149 though, you can't expect that much.
I would assume when the game library grows, they will do away with the 2nd cartridge slot and make the unit a bit more compact.
Honestly though, I bought the unit for the potential of what will come, not for what's currently available. And I like gadgets.
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I just picked one up today. The DS kinda snuck up on me, I didn't even know about it until a few months ago. While one reason I got is because I trust Nintendo to support the hardware well and release the best first-party games(as well as developer support from companies like Sega), the real reason I wanted one is the potential of the hardware crammed into this little package. There is already a pretty good community of amatuer Game Boy Advance development using flash cartridges and neat doodads like the GBA Movie Player. I beleive that a lot more could be done with the capabilities of the DS. A touch screen, integrated wireless networking, microphone, and 3D hardware in a handheld system for $150? Think of the possibilities...PDA functions, web browser, MP3 player, emulators, homebrew 3d games...
There was a site recently called DSLinux that claimed they would give $1000 to the first person who could successfully run Linux on the DS...unfotunately, the site seems to be no more...while I find that odd and a bit disheartening, I hope others will take up where they left off. After all, wouldn't it be so much more fun to hack on a sleek portable system like this than a clunky XBox that can't do that much more than your average low end PC?
Sleep is futile.