China In Your Hand (Nintendo DS)

Member Name: utero

Product:	Nintendo DS
Date:	25/09/06 (457 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Decent Price, Good Design, Great Graphics

Disadvantages: Games are a little pricey

Sometimes it can be a lonely place on a market stall, for six days a week you can spend an obscene amount of time just doing very little. Of course you’d like to be busy all of the time but that’s just the way it goes.

To curb the boredom I decided to re-ignite my interest in video games. I’d grown out of them a long time ago when the Sega Megadrive was one of the leading consoles on the market. I don’t know what it was, I just grew tired.

But things have moved on a recent years, at one time a Sega game gear was considered a breakthrough in handheld gaming. Now you have handheld units capable of playing MP3’s, showing movies and negotiating world peace. At first I was toying with the idea of getting a Sony PSP. However the price of the unit without any games was around £140. I also didn’t have a use for mp3 playback and I have no desire to watch a movie on a very small screen. I started to do some research into the Nintendo DS and found it was simpler, cheaper and offered a good array of games.

I paid £109.99 for a black DS Lite from Amazon in a deal which also saw the latest Super Mario Bros incarnation thrown in. The console itself is extremely lightweight but feels sturdy enough to withstand the occasional drop or thwack of frustration. You flip it open to reveal two screens and a familiar set of controls. I have to say I’ve never been able to contend with the gamepads on regular consoles from the playstation onwards so the simplicity of the DS was a godsend.

The bottom screen is a touch screen, concealed in the side of the machine is a stylus pen that slides out and allows you to tap away at the prompts on the screen. Setting up the DS was incredibly simple and the control system is something even your mum could operate. The games come on cards that are around the size of a flash memory card and they slide into the back of the console. You then load up by tapping on the control screen, the game cards also have memory on them to allow for the saving of games. Therefore there’s no extra expense involved, you simply need DS and game to complete your gaming needs.

But all this guff makes no matter if the graphics and sound quality aren’t up to much. Well needless to say things have moved on a great deal since I last picked up a console. The screen on the console offers a great deal of clarity and the colours of the Super Mario world are sparkling, vibrant and fun. The sound is also pretty stellar considering the size of the thing. No longer do you get the blips and beeps that pass off as a soundtrack. Just by playing Mario I was impressed by the quality of the sound from something so small.

The console also offers a port for chucking in Gameboy Advance games. This is great for those gamers who’ve followed Nintendo handhelds through the years. They don’t have to throw away their previous game collections, as the DS will handle them. I haven’t tried an Advance game yet but I’m sure they work fine.

The battery life on the console is pretty decent, in the box you get a mains charger that plugs directly into the DS and charges the battery. The manual claims that you get 19 hours use of the DS on the lowest brightness setting. Having tried this, I can say that claim is about right. I suppose it depends on the game, for example I wouldn’t play Mario on the lowest brightness setting but something like Phoenix Wright is no problem at all.

My only gripe so far is that the games for the console are still as pricey as ever. On average you’ll pay £24.99 for a game. So far I’ve found the blurb on the back of the boxes pretty slim pickings so you can never make a good assessment on whether the game is ok for you without doing some internet research first. But like with all games consoles, once they become established you normally see a good back catalogue develop at lower price points.

So it’s so far so good for me and my DS. Currently I’m in the midst of defending an actor up on a murder charge as Phoenix Wright, next week I may attempt to conquer Mario Bros once and for all.

Summary: The gameboy has evolved