Review: Nintendo DS Lite

Awesome flickr site on retro handheld games

Well, I finally got my hands on a nice sleek white Nintendo DS lite. Packaging and attention to detial of design was very reminiscent of Apple's ipod. The obligatory game for this handheld review seemed to be brainage since that was what everyone was talking about eversince Nintendo release the new updated DS product. Functionality, esthetics, playability, etc. from an adult's perspective will be given here based on brainage.

Let's first begin how I begin most of my posts, i.e. first a retro look back in time. Anyone recognize the handheld game pictured above? Yes, this was a highly prized toy when I was growing up. During the early high school years was when Galaxian II came out on the market. I was growing up in Bancroft, so I'm still not sure how I got my hands on one of these babies, probably through the Sears Christmas catalog. Anyhow, I got hassled too often at the arcade, and this machine allowed me to play independent of any nasty venues. Great color graphics, I think it was LED gas display because after a while the screen stopped displaying even with new batteries. The Galaxian also had great sound effects to go with the two person play capability. At that time nothing I thought was in the same class although there were plenty of other portable video games. Factors for that conclusion included design, playability, features(such as 2 persons could play), it was just the coolest Christmas gift any Atari, space invaders video game junky could treasure. I just wish I knew where it went.

Transport into the 21st century and we have voice recognition, hand writing recognition, touch screen, artificial intelligence, wireless network capabilities, the list keeps growing. I have a Palm III from the 20th century and graffitti was kind of cool at the time. But the DS touchscreen is very smooth. Sometimes however, the number 4, can give me problems, since if you pause too long or the DS moves to fast and it takes your first stroke and converts it to 2 before you can finish the middle line, that can be annoying. Anyways, the touch writing recoginition part just requires a little practice and patience. However the voice recognition can be a little more annoying depending on the game, which in this case is brainage. Before you can begin any of the games or puzzles, brainage wants to measure the age of your brain...sounds cool?
It does this by displaying 4 different words of color, as in red, blue, yellow and black, but the text is in one of the four colors that may or may not match the word. So the trick is that you are to say the color of the word, not the word itself. First I was graded at 62(old fogie, probably cause I wasn't paying attention to timing and that I wasn't pronouncing the color blue correctly. It would say "try again" 3 or 4 times on the blue colored word. At first I thought this was part of the test, repeating to make sure I was convinced the answer was right. But this feature only happens with the word blue. So, is there a bug in the voice recognition software? Or will later someone show my ignorant ways and explain the AI behind my stuttering "blue", "blue", "blue dammit!"



Not relying on the voice recognition feature in order to play sudoku was more than alright with me. Btw, I admit that I am a sudoku addict. Being able to take it on the road(the DS with soduko that is) to the cottage was very convenient. I could exercise my brain when I had nothing else to do, except relax :o). I tried sudoku on published paper books and magazines but found that less than appealing and motivating. I usually stuck to playing an online version written in java. Much more visually and interactively appealing. But the Nintendo DS lite, with a brighter and crisper screen display from the original DS plus new game releases such as brainage made the experience more aggreeable, and addictive. Including soduko into brainage was a nice surprise for this review. Brainage sudoku included some training exercises to get you to understand the basics of the game at 2 different levels, basic and intermediate. I suspect the separate DS cartridge solely running soduko included many more game panels and difficulty levels which I found myself wanting more of in the brainage version. On the long weekends I kept challenging myself to finish faster and faster with each game. A good sign of playability from both the perspective of the game device and the design of the game, in this case brainage.

Overall, I was very impressed with esthetics, design, playbility, and features of the Nintendo DS Lite. Although I will have to do a followup review of the wireless features and the game "big brain academy".