Yes, I am a nerd. Yes, I stood in line for two hours at Gamestop for the midnight launch of the DSi. There were more people there than I might have suspected, a large number of them being parents with their children who looked young enough to be out way past their bedtime. While eavesdropping, I heard many of the other people waiting in line conversing excitedly about how stacked their Draenei Shaman is with new equips.
Midnight came, and I got to be number 8 in line. My DSi was already paid for of course, in a large number of trade-in games, as well as the $70 credit that I got for trading in my DS lite for my DSi preorder. Gamestop employees began handing out systems, and I was literally bouncing with excitement as I got closer to the front of the line.
In the car, I could hardly wait to open the package. I discovered the “User Manual” weighed roughly five pounds, and immediately disregarded it. Sliding my new American-Exclusive-Blue-Colored DSi out of the foam packaging, I couldn’t wait to get home to play it.
(This photo is actually from the midnight launch of World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade. Apparently over 500 people stood outside in the rain to wait. lawlz.)
However, unfortunately, this excitement was short-lived. After playing with the new features, I realized that the DSi isn’t an amazing groundbreaking improvement over the Nintendo DS lite, or even in comparison to the original Nintendo DS. Of course, I had previously read many reviews warning about this aspect of the DSi, but I suppose I still allowed myself to become excited. The DSi has many new features, however, though they’re more “nice to have” then actually useful.
TWO CAMERAS
Both the inside and the outside cameras take fairly low-resolution pictures, though the camera doesn’t fail completely in low light (despite not having a flash). The camera is available with several different distortion features, such as blending, creating a kaleidoscope, or adding colorful frames to your pictures. The “Face-Recognition” features of the camera let you distort your face to resemble a few different emotes (such as ^_^), which I found ridiculously funny. After I was done taking pictures of myself with cartoon cat ears, I began investigating some of the other features.
SOUND
The DSi lets you record sound, then gives you many distortion options for this sound. You can add a beat, change the pitch, and even use the L and R buttons to add “percussion” to your sound. Of course, there is a feature that lets you make the “jump” and “coin” sounds from Super Mario bros. I also found this amusing. :-P
MUSIC
Supposedly, the DSi lets you play music while you game, similar to the feature included in the Xbox 360. It supports AAC format music files, though I haven’t yet gotten my DSi to recognize any AAC files from my 2GB SD card.
DSi – WARE
ZOMG INTERNET! Unlike the Nintendo DS, which charged around $30 for an internet browser, the DSi has a free internet browser available for download in the DSi Store. Once I linked my DSi to my Club Nintendo account, I got 1000 free DSi points for the store, which will buy one or two games.
Using the touch pad to poke around google was amusing for awhile, though the touch pad doesn’t always respond how you want it to. I found myself furiously poking at the text search box in google with my stylus before I finally got the opportunity to type something.
GAMEPLAY
Nothing is really drastically improved about playing games on the DSi, unless you count the larger, brighter LCD screen. This is actually something I really liked, but again, I’m a nerd, and like having the maximum amount of visibility to play games. :-P
PIRATES
If you are looking to use a flash card with your DSi, you’re in luck. Odds are, if you’re a dedicated pirate, you already know what I’m talking about. It’s been confirmed: There IS a flash card that works with the DSi. I, being slightly broke from the initial DSi purchase, may be buying one in the near future.
NO GBA :(
There are a lot of GBA games that I love. Golden Sun, Golden Sun 2, Sword of Mana, Pokemon Emerald… I actually have quite a large collection of GBA games. Sadly, the DSi has abandoned the ability to play GBA cartridge games, though we all saw this coming. I still have my GBA-SP, though, as well as another DS lite, so it’s not quite as sad.
….Well, for a verdict, the DSi is really fun to play with. However, as Patrick states in Gamer’s Review Corner, it’s an Upgrade to the NDS, not a Successor. If you have $180 to spend, or a bunch of game trade-in credit, it might be worth it for you. For me, I’m … satisfied with my DSi, though feeling slightly underwhelmed. Hopefully my faith in Nintendo’s ability to keep up with next-gen consoles will be renewed at some point. o_o
I’m too very sad that gba games won’t work. But maybe in some time there will be some way to use the SD slot in ndsi for something useful like that, I sure hope so!
I hope so too! I still have a lot of GBA games, I kept my old GBA for that reason… :-P
I got in a fight one time with a really big guy, and he said, “I’m going to mop the floor with your face.” I said, “You’ll be sorry.” He said, “Oh, yeah?
I think you are talented writer, keep us posting