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Nintendo DS

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File:Nintendo DS final design.PNG
The final Nintendo DS design, revealed July 28, 2004.

The Nintendo DS (which is short for Dual Screen, although Nintendo has also promotionally said it to be short for Developer's System, due to the ease of development for the handheld), is an innovative dual-screen portable video game console developed and manufactured by Nintendo. The DS has a vertical clamshell design, similar to some Game & Watch video games, and the Game Boy Advance SP.

Nintendo hopes that the new features present in the machine will provoke unique game development, attract developers, appeal to both older gamers and non-gamers alienated by normal input methods and allow Nintendo to retain its status as leader of the handheld game console market.

Games

The Nintendo DS' primary function is as a videogames console; no multimedia support is included, though an adapter for playing movies and music will be available in Japan at a later date (see Accessories). The entire machine has been constructed, from concept to completion, in order to provoke more original development of titles in an industry that Nintendo perceives as being stagnant. Nintendo hopes that the unit's unusual dual screen format will provoke creative game design by its own and third-party developers. While the most obvious unique selling point is the pair of screens, the system also includes some unexpected input devices: a microphone and touch screen functionality on the lower screen. These are being exploited in various ways by developers. A common approach is to use the touchscreen to emulate analogue joystick or mouse functionality.

For a comprehensive list of Nintendo DS titles, please see List of Nintendo DS games; for a list of those with Wikipedia articles, please see the Nintendo DS games category.

Release

The system was launched in the United States for $149.99 on November 21, 2004, and in Japan for 15,000 yen ($135) on December 2, 2004 and will be launched in Europe and elsewhere during the first quarter of 2005. While both launches proved to be successful, it is interesting to note that Nintendo chose to release the DS in America prior to Japan. This choice was made to get the DS out for post-Thanksgiving shopping.[1] Perhaps partly due to Nintendo's release date, the DS has experienced a vast amount of demand during the holiday season in the United States, with some industry reporters referring to it as "the Tickle Me Elmo of 2004." [2]

While Nintendo originally slated 300,000 units for initial launch, 500,000 were delivered. As is normal for electronics, some were reported as having problems with dead pixels in either of the two screens. While return policies for LCD displays vary between manufacturers and regions, Nintendo has chosen to replace any system with any number of dead pixels under warranty.

U.S. launch games

The following games were released at launch for the DS.

As of launch, there is one pack-in game demo, in addition to the built-in PictoChat.

Design and specifications

Technology

The handheld unit has a mass of approximately 275 grams. It features two separate 3-inch TFT LCD screens, each with a resolution of 256×192. The lowermost display of the DS is overlayed with a touch screen, utilizing a stylus or the user's fingers, a first for a games console. The DS has a wrist strap that doubles as a thumb cover for use in place of a stylus. The console uses two separate ARM processors, an ARM9 main CPU and ARM7 coprocessor at clock speeds of 67 MHz and 33 MHz respectively, with 4 MiB of main memory. The system's 3D engine is theoretically capable of drawing 120,000 polygons per second, with a fill-rate of 30 million pixels per second.

DS Games utilize a proprietary solid state flash card format resembling those used in other portable electronic devices such as digital cameras; this semiconductor technology is said to be far cheaper than conventional cartridges and is currently capable of supporting cards of up to 1 gibibit (128 MiB). The unit features wireless networking capabilities for multiplayer games or chat, which can use either a proprietary short-range wireless link (supporting up to 16 players), or Wi-Fi. The proprietary link is capable of a range up to 40-100 feet (30 metres), depending on conditions. The DS uses the IEEE 802.11 standard for Wi-fi, slightly modified for the proprietary link.

Inputs and outputs

The DS is the first portable console from Nintendo to incorporate stereo speakers. In addition to the touch screen, the DS has, to the left of the lower display, a traditional four-way control pad (with a narrow Power button above it), while to the right are four action buttons (with narrow Select and Start buttons above) A B Y X, following in the footsteps of the SNES controller. On the back there are the L (Left) and R (Right) buttons, also following the style of the SNES controller. Perhaps the most innovative use of the touch screen is for the emulation of other controls. For example, with use of the aforementioned "thumb stylus", it can emulate a analog joystick, or with the conventional stylus, its behaviour can replicate a computer mouse. The system also includes a built-in microphone, which Nintendo has suggested will be used for communication over a wireless network, and controlling games programmed for speech recognition.

Operating system

Built-in in each Nintendo DS is the PictoChat program, allowing users to communicate with other DS users over the wireless network by text, handwriting, or drawings, using the DS' touch screen and stylus pen for input; an on-screen keyboard partially covers the writing area in this. The DS' main menu also features an alarm clock and the ability to set preferences for boot priority (booting to games when inserted, or always booting to the main menu), GBA game screen usage (top or bottom), and user information (name, date of birth, favorite color, time, etc.).

Compatibility

Initially the console was reported to be incompatible with games designed for Nintendo's present Game Boy Advance (GBA) handheld, but details announced at the E³ trade show in Los Angeles in May 2004 revealed the opposite; while the new DS cartridges are smaller and fit in their own port, the machine has a separate cartridge port accepting Game Boy Advance games, although Game Boy Color and original Game Boy games are incompatible with the DS, due to its lack of the z80 processor used in these systems. This may be an attempt to separate the DS and Nintendo's established Game Boy line of handheld consoles; the GBA, for example, featured the aging processor primarily to run "legacy" Game Boy games.

Though the DS no longer has the z80 processor, several projects have started to emulate this platform. The DS has enough power to do so, and the projects have already started because ARM9 is a known platform. It may also be possible to port and/or play games from the GP32 platform, which is also ARM9-based.

The handheld does not have a port for the GBA Link Cable, so multiplayer or GBA-GameCube link-up modes are not available in GBA titles.

Accessories

Nintendo have announced the development of an adaptor which will allow the Game Boy Advance SP and Nintendo DS to play MPEG-4 videos and MP3 music from SD (and possibly MMC) memory cards. The adaptor bears a superficial resemblance to the AM3 player (which allowed playback of pre-recorded movie files from read-only memory cards on a GBA); the memory card slots into the right hand side of the adaptor, which then plugs into the cartridge slot of the parent console. The adaptor has its own integral headphone port, but uses the parent console's power supply, controls and display. It is estimated that it will offer over 15 hours of MP3 playback and 4 hours of MPEG-4 playback from a fully-charged GBA SP.

The adaptor will launch in Japan in Feburary of 2005 for approximately 5,000 yen ($47.47). Nintendo have no immediate plans to sell the unit outside of Japan.

Speculation regarding additional features

The DS has been the subject of a cryptic "promotional campaign" reminiscent of the Haunted Apiary promotional used to generate buzz for the Xbox game Halo 2, although not put out by Nintendo itself.[3] It consists of a series of heavily modified images. While the meaning of the hints given about the system has not yet been explained, some believe the DS will be able to communicate with other DS systems in the vicinity, extending to create a long-range mesh network connecting DS players over large geographic distances. Yet others link a heavily modified image of a marionette bearing the legend "find me" (with a faint "s" after the "d") with a possible Xbox Live-style frontend for handling online gaming. An image of a child using a DS console near a dog has been claimed to be promoting the game Puppy Times, of which little is known (although it is hardly a secret).

This campaign originated on the forums for the Warp Pipe system, from anonymous insiders who claim to know a great deal of interesting information but who are limited by a non-disclosure agreement, as well as Warp Pipe founder Chad Paulson. However, it is not clear whether the users', or even Paulson's, information is genuine.

See also

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