Nintendo DS

The new “Nintendo DS”:http://www.nintendods.com/ was released today. According to Nintendo it’s not a direct follow up to the ever so popular Game Boy but more like an extension of their massive grip around portable gaming. Being the portable gamer that I am; I bought one.

I didn’t get into any of the “midnight launch crazyness”:http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000927021062/, I just rolled up to the local Best Buy before they opened and grabbed one off the shelf along with “Super Mario 64 DS”:http://ds.ign.com/articles/567/567976p1.html and “The Urbz: Sims in the City”:http://ds.ign.com/objects/692/692875.html. Should keep me busy at least for the next 48 hours until “World of Warcraft”:http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/ is released.

One of the main reasons I picked up the DS besides being a rabid Nintendo fan was it actually includes some interesting non-gaming features. The unit includes built-in wireless 802.11 networking which is only used for multiplayer gaming at this point. In the future though Nintendo has talked about allowing you to connect to a LAN and perform gaming online. I’m also hopefully that someone or Nintendo themselves will release an email/web browser client for the DS. The machine includes a chat program built-in as well as a calendar and alarm clock. Hopefully Nintendo will realize that they could offer a simple “Internet” game pak that would allow someone to fully use the wireless capabilities of the DS.

November 21st, 2004