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Nintendo DS Review and Internal Pictures
OctaneZ writes "Lik Sang couldn't help themselves, and have already torn open their Gameboy DS. Among other things they found, the DS shares both its power and battery with the GB, and the 802.11b range is 10 to 30 meters, depending on the surroundings."
http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/20/ 2351253&tid=207&tid=137
It's the Nintendo DS. Gameboy is a completely different product line.
Duplicated articles!!
"Not to mention the cheating tool it can become... "
How could you pass this off. "Mr. Jones, your Civics test is so easy I am putting myself at the liberty of playing some metroid while taking it."
Then again people used Ti-85 calculators in English class in my highschool.
God spoke to me.
I can't wait for warDriving DS to come out.. It will be the BEST GAME EVER!
but will it have wireless internet access? is it capable of rendering websites via html, wml or perhaps msntv techniques? and can its 802.11b hardware act as a repeater, so wireless games and wireless internet can be daisy-chained?
its not bluetooth at all, you honestly think theyd include 2 wireless hardware interfaces? No, their protocol is just a low powered version of 802.11b
lol. Only problem is with the limited power output of the console is that by time you find an open network, the administrator will be chasing you out of his cubicle!
_
Free 27" Sony WEGA TV
OK, so I have my Nintendo DS, and so far it's great, but what I was *hoping* for was that Picochat could be configured to go over the internet via 802.11b. Unfortunately that doesn't appear to be the case.
;)
The graphics are *amazing*. I've been playing the demo version of Metroid. The DS is somewhere between the N64 and GC in graphics quality. Gameplay is a little hard at times with the touch screen. You have to use the same thumb to move that you use to make contact with the screen. Oh well.. I guess it's time to evolve a third hand..
I also got Super Mario 64DS. No surprises there, per se. The split screen does give a nice perspective of the playfield while you're playing, however.
All in all I think Nintendo has the foundation of a truly classic gaming system.
Polymorphism -- It's what you make of it.
The official line was that the DS had both a 'proprietary Nintendo communications protocol' ala the Wavebird, and 802.11b for Wifi.
You're probably right though, As there are reports of Pictochat transmitting a MAC address when it's searching for other DS's.
And for the record I have no idea why my grandparent post was a troll. I own a DS and am extremely pleased with it.
is does it run Linux yet?
. there used to be a sig here.....
It can do whatever any other device with an 802.11 wireless ethernet repeater can, as long as you can get software that does it.
... can be daisy-chained?
At this exact moment there is no software available for the DS which uses the wireless to connect to the internet. The only announced software so far which is known to use the wireless to connect to the internet is Nanostray, a shooter by the Iridium 3D people, which uses wifi to connect to an internet high score board.
Nintendo representatives seemed enthusiastic about the idea of a web browser for the DS, so I assume if someone goes to Nintendo asking for a license to make a DS web browser they'll get it.
and can its 802.11b hardware act as a repeater, so wireless games
This can be done; there's a DS game (I think Japan only right now) called "ping pals" that repeats in such a way that up to 128 people can connect to each other over the wireless, so long as there's an unbroken chain of DSes between them to relay the signal. I think most games require all the players to be in a 10-30 yard radius though.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
I'm just curious what the wi-fi communication does to the battery life on this thing. Anybody read numbers on the max. battery life playing with wi-fi and without?
From what I've heard so far:
:(
It seems the shortages are real, not hype, but it is not really something to worry about. Basically there are serious shortages in some areas but no problem whatsoever in others. It seems that outlets of the big video game chains (EBGames/Gamestop) often had shortages, and sometimes didn't even get enough units to cover their preorders, but more general stores that don't generally do the preordering thing (Best Buy, Target) you can just walk in and buy one.
There are also reports of shortages of a couple of the games, specifically Feel the Magic and Mr. Driller. I don't know how accurate these reports are. It's unfortunate it seems there's been a shortage of the good games but no problems getting the EA stuff
Now, whether there will be shortages after Black Friday is another question altogether.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
I never realised the Nintendo DS ran windows
And yet I've noticed that there are already people scalping them through Amazon Marketplace for as much as $269. And Amazon has them in stock for the standard $149.99 price. Sick.
There they were, sitting in the van with all those dials, and the cat was dead. -V. Marchetti, CIA
I had asked the same thing on another Slashdot DS story. Here in north Alabama, I can't find any stores that have any in stock. The Wal-Marts and Target stores got about 6 each and were sold out by midday Sunday. A local Rhino store had two left at closing time yesterday, but had sold both of them by 10:30 this morning.
There is a definite run on them here. The EB stores got enough to cover their pre-orders, but no extras at all. Best Buy got 16 and sold them all in an hour. No stores I talked to had any concrete dates when they would get more, but all expected at least one more shipment before Christmas.
-- stream of did I lock the front door consciousness
Can anyone tell me why there is a RSASecured logo on the back of the unit and on the box?
Amazon is no longer listing them for MSRP, but the Amazon Marketplace prices are up to $350. *This* kind of behavior is what causes supplied to run out. It's not that people can't find them for Christmas presents, it's that people are snarfing them up to scalp on Amazon and eBay.
-- stream of did I lock the front door consciousness
Heck, with the right drivers, you specify the drawing area only as a certain portion of the screen (the tablet I'm looking at buying supports this), and configure the D-Pad and other buttons to switch drawing tools or colors. It'd make for a neat little toy/tool.
That's what the teeny little Pringles cans are for.
I'm returning my DS this morning. It has some major flaws.
I really wanted to like this machine. I *ached* to like it, because I want to see draw/chat becoming a daily thing.
I can sum it all up very neatly. It says that it has an "alarm." You would think that you set this alarm and the machine beeps at the time you've set, whatever you happen to be doing.
No such luck. The "alarm" is a special mode you put it in. While the "alarm" is active, you can't do anything else with the machine. It just displays the current time and the time the "alarm" will go off.
It's the same with every part of the DS software.
Want to PictoChat? The chatting's nice, but if you want to exit to the main menu you have to reset the machine. If you then want to check the time and date you have to reset the machine. If you change any of the user settings, like which screen GBA games will show up on when you run them, you have to reset the machine. If you're in Pictochat and you want to change your background color you'll end up resetting the machine twice!
Every time you reset it displays a several second startup screen and a health warning you have to click through.
What they had described was a multitasking system that would keep an eye out for other players, do the alarm stuff, and sleep when you weren't using it. What they gave us was a system with many modes, but no reasonable integration between them. It's a collection of kludges.
The game functionality is very nice if you just want to pop in a GBA or a DS game and play, but the bells and whistles are refugees from a 1994 handheld PC. So no, I really don't think a PDA card would work. A PDA requires an uninterrupted background OS of some sort to be watching out for your appointments. The DS just can't do that.
Oh, while I'm griping, the sound's got so much interference from two processors and two screens that in a good set of headphones the buzzing is nearly unbearable.
The wi-fi capabilities are going to sell millions of these things to little kids. Think about how big the IM market is with these guys. Haven't you ever seen the little faux PDA's that actually have some wireless text messenging built in?
Think about it this way. When little 10 year old Johny wants a new handheld cuz his GBA broke, what's his mom gonna buy him? My guess is that a DS would only make sense if she wanted to get him something new. Nintendo sold us all as kids with the NES, and has continued to do so with the gameboy for many years. They really have no competition. The PSP will either sink or become a niche item for 20 somethings with money. I can't see many people spending $200-300 for a portable console, especially on kids. How many times do you think one of those finely sculpted bricks will take a 4 foot drop.....with the drive spinning?
I'm getting nearer to 30 and I love the SP, but I think that is probably not the norm. I really liked the classic SP and seeing the familliar grey lines on black definately imparted some sense of nostalgia. When I get on the bus and I fire my SP up, usually the only other people actually playing video games on the bus are the really greasy fat nerdy kids (oh, no offense intended to 60% of you here) and 5-10 year olds. For some reason adults sometimes try to watch me play because I think it bewilders them that someone other than a kid would be playing video games in public.
The gameboy will certainly take this round because Nintendo knows its market so incredibly well and have always pushed for what it considers the golden pricepoint. >=$100
While the DS is $150, remember that the SP and maybe even the GBA started out at $120 or so and has slowly fallen to $100.
Clamshell is a great design too. It protects the pricey LCD screens that so easily scratch and break.
I mean really. Is there any debate over who will end up with the lion's share of the market here?
zosxavius photography