OK, time for me to get this out of my system, cause GOD DAMN it’s been welling up in there for a long time. I’ve been holding off very well on blabbering on and on about the Nintendo DS, both on the site and in real conversation (though I did mention it every once in a while), and now I finally get to dedicate a whole post to the little guy. First off, let me say that it was worth every penny I paid for it. And the per-order paid off nicely too, as I picked up a slick t-shirt for doing so. I was surprised how nice a shirt it is compared to the last few Nintendo promotional shirts I’ve gotten. But anyway, I have some DS to rave about.
First, I’ll give my impressions of the system itself. That seems like the logical thing to do. I have to admit, it’s a lot lighter than what I thought, regardless of what any member of Penny-Arcade might have to say. Possibly just a tad heavier than the GBA SP. But not heavy at all. The screens look rather small, considering that the unit is actually rather large. But not too large. It’s just an SP with flaps on the sides. Ooh! And on those flaps are stereo speakers! The DS put out really good sound, and does some impressive surround effects. The buttons are about the same size as the GBA SP’s, except for the shoulder buttons, which have been increased to a size more reminiscent of those on the original GBA. The stylus is rather tiny, and it slots into a little niche on the back, right next to the game card slot. I think I’m doing a terrible job at this, so onto boot-up menus!
The boot-up stuff is really cool, and almost fun enough to play with by itself. On the initial power-up, you choose all sorts of options, ranging from date, time, your nickname, background colour preference, and language. Other things you can change include which screen GBA games play on, your birthday, an alarm, and even a little blurb for who knows what. You can also choose whether the system will start up any inserted game card immediately or go to the boot up menu first. The only thing I find weird about this is that when you’re finished with anything wired into the hardware (options, PictoChat, etc.), the system will turn itself off. There is no way you can stop it for doing this, and it’s slightly inconvenient that you have to manually turn it on again. Not too much of an issue though.
Oh, yes. And PictoChat seems like a pretty neat utility too, but I’ve had no-one to try it with, and nor have I come up with any practical uses for it other than for kids to screw around while in class. I mean, the wireless thing only goes so far, so you won’t be chatting with anyone out of earshot until they set up those magic hubs everywhere. It is fun to draw stuff though.
As you may know, the DS comes with a demo of the upcoming game, Metroid Prime Hunters. It’s no Metroid Prime, but it is really neat. If you’ve heard anything about it, it’s probably that you control Samus with the stylus. This is true, and it works very well. You can change the control settings to use the d-pad and the face buttons to move, but it’s much less convenient. You see, the stylus is not used to actually move Samus, but instead to aim. This proves quite useful for precision aiming, and since you have to tap buttons on the touch screen to change weapons and go into morph ball mode, it’s nice to already have something ready to hit the buttons when you need a quick weapon change. The game itself is very impressive, with some sweet (though slightly blocky) FMVs. The graphics are decent enough, and multiplayer is always a plus, especially for a demo. Only I have nobody to play with… Missions include a training run, a survival mode, and a morph ball race. All are slightly challenging, and getting a high score on each will unlock a bonus FMV that previews the full game.
You know that Super Mario 64 is my favorite game ever, as I’ve mentioned it more than once, and I couldn’t just get a new system without a game. So yeah, of course I bought Super Mario 64 DS. The only thing that would make it more perfect would be if the DS had an analog stick, but the d-pad works well enough. You could use the touch pad as a replacement for the stick, but I’m not comfortable at all that way. Like I said, the d-pad works fine. The game itself is exactly like the original, but with improvements everywhere. Four playable characters, 30 more power stars to collect, new missions, new levels, new bosses, and tons and tons of bunnies to catch. Plus improved graphics, multiplayer mode, and boatloads of mini-games. Apparently the DS doesn’t do texture filtering as well as it should but I neither know what that means nor did I notice anything overly ugly in the game, so I don’t care. Some nice additions include one mini-level that features music from Super Mario Sunshine and a new level that uses the surround sound effect as a part of a puzzle. Remember the lost woods in Ocarina of Time? Kinda like that, but you follow the speakers rather than which log had the loudest music. And a lot of the mini-games are really awesome too. Most of them are overly simple and get boring after a while, but some really stand out. My personal favorite involves dragging coloured bob-ombs to their appropriate mats. It’s really simple, but once the room gets flooded with bob-ombs, it gets very hairy. And considering that one mistake ends your game, you’ve gotta be really good once you pass the first few rounds. Definitely an excellent upgrade to the best game ever, and as one Planet GameCube staffer writes; “This is a finer 3D platform action game than you will find on any of the current consoles, much less any handheld system.”
And as much as I’d like to keep going on about all this touchy crap, I only really turned on the PC to figure out a really puzzling boss in Echoes (and I’m rather ashamed of myself for doing so), so I need to get back to that now. The only thing I’m disliking about the DS is that there is no way in hell for me to take screenshots from the damn thing. So I guess I’ll never be able to do a real review on any of the games. So yes. Off now. Until, oh, let’s say Saturday.