By Fred Topel | Image property of respective holders
Nintendo DSi
When I bought the Nintendo DS to play Guitar Hero On Tour, I became an instant fan of the system. The way games are adapted for its touch screen and button layout has been easy, intuitive and fun. With the latest upgrade, the Nintendo DSi, I was primarily interested in its online capabilities, the ability to download new games particularly. However, I will address its other features as well.
Review: Nintendo DSi
The camera is good compared to phone cameras. The ability to take shots from either side of the DS makes it great for the handheld self portrait. Setting up the internet connection was fairly easy. If you’ve set it up on your home computers, you should easily be able to input all the information it requires.
The web browser works fairly well too. Heavy graphic pages are slow, but just like on a phone. The setup of using the lower screen to zoom in on a section of the top screen makes sense. I’m sure Nintendo won’t like this, but I tested it out on some naughty sites too and it had no problem accessing them. You’ll just have to pick which private part you can focus on in the lower window.
Shopping for DSi downloads is easy. The muzac they play in the store is cute, as is seeing the Mario characters fill up the download status bar.
I used half of my first 1000 points to download Dr. Mario. Boy, did I forget how addictive Dr Mario is. So far, that’s all I’ve been playing. I’m really glad I’m using the latest state of the art system to play an old NES game.
The other minigames are fun too, definitely a good use of simple, addictive formulae for quick fixes. I’m not going to wave at my DSi to play WarioWare: Snapped but it works if you’re into activity games. For me the reflexes of Birds and Bees or the strategy of card games is more my speed. The soccer game is pretty cool, definitely as hard for me as any console sports game, but really, I’m just playing Dr. Mario.
My only disappointment is that they’ve done away with the Game Boy Advance slot. That is where the Guitar Hero attachment plugs in, so with the new system, I have lost the ability to play the game that I originally bought the system for. They’ll figure it out though. Until then, I’ll be downloading new minigames.
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