Dogasu

I can't blame you, I read about it, and I want one when it hits the US.

Well, now I know better than putting my future DSi in the microwave. XD

I couldn't agree more about the GBA slot. Pokemon is pretty much the only good game out there that takes full advantage of it. Plus, it's not like a GBA is hard to come by. If it wasn't $300 for an import I'd get this thing right away.

So I finally got the DSi.

The first thing you notice when you take it out of the (really tiny) box is that the system no longer has the smooth, fingerprint attracting finish that the DS Lite has. Instead, it has a bit of a matte texture to it. The system isn't really too much different, weight-wise, from its predecessor.

The camera actually provided me with a good half hour of fun. I'm not going to use it for any *serious* picture taking, of course, but it is fun to play around with the face changer program (you can pull and stretch the image) and the program that tells you how much you look like someone else. It'll also be used for DSi-specific games (like the upcoming Wario Ware game), so it'll be interesting to see how that works out.

The sound recorder offered a similar amount of fun. I really doubt I'll use it all that much, though.

The music player is something I'm really excited about. Because, believe it or not, I have never owned an iPod in my life. The DSi won't play mp3 files (it only plays files in the AAC format), so you basically have to open up iTunes and convert all your files to the format before you can put them on an SD card and play them.

One thing I'm *really* happy about is that you can close the DSi and continue listening to your music, provided you have a pair of headphones plugged in. Which means I can stick the thing in my pocket and use it as if it was just another portable music player. Awesome.

Speaking of the sound; the speakers are, to me, noticeably better than the DS Lite's. The bass in battle theme in Chrono Trigger, for example, sounded a lot richer to me.

The system doesn't have the 2GB SD card limit that the Wii has; in fact, it's able to accept those SDHC cards that are able to hold like 32 GB. I doubt I'll ever need *that* much space, but it's nice that the option is there.

The DSi Shop is kind of bare right now because the service hasn't really launched yet (the first wave of games come out on Wednesday). The only thing available is the free Opera web browser. The interface was a little difficult for me at first, but after playing around with it for a bit I was able to get the hang of it. I would suggest using the mobile phone versions of some websites, though; the iPhone version of Facebook, for example, is much easier to go through on the DSi than the regular web version.

When the DSi Shop begins in earnest on Wednesday, the only game I think I'll be picking up is the Wario Ware game that appears to play a lot like those PS2 Eye Toy games. The rest of the software looks kinda crappy, though.

Like I said before...I really couldn't care less about the lack of the GBA slot. I already have like three devices that can play GBA games...I don't need a fourth.


Overall, I'm pretty happy with the upgrade and am interested to see how the DSi Ware works out.

I can't wait until it comes out. Seriously, other than pokemon and Guitar Hero, its not that big of a loss, and by that time, I'm pretty sure I've played out any GBA capabilities my Pokemon games may still hold

I just realized that I never got around to giving my thoughts about the DSi Ware.

So after you perform a mandatory system upgrade to your DSi and click on the DSi Shop icon, you're taken to a screen where you're told that you're given 1000 Nintendo points as a present from Nintendo. I was totally not expecting this at all, and I think it's a really cool thing for Nintendo to do. Hopefully, NoA will follow suit.

The layout is pretty similar to the Wii Shop Channel. By the time I was finished browsing, I walked away with the Ugoku Memo app (free), Utsusu Made in Wario (500 points) and Chotto Dr. Mario (also 500 points).

The Ugoku Memo game is a program that basically allows you to create cartoons on your DS. The entire bottom screen can be used as your canvas, with the stylus being used as your drawing utensil. Navigating frame by frame is accomplished by pusing the left and right buttons on the D-pad. The neat thing about this program is that after you draw an image, a light grey afterimage of the picture you just drew shows up in the next frame as a reference. From there, you can trace over it or make a small change to one element or whatever else.

You know how, when you're making a flip book, you tend to flip back and forth to make sure you're tracing everything properly and that the movements you're trying to animate actually look good? This program allows you to do that, basically.

There's also an option to just copy the entire frame over and over, meaning that you don't have to spend all your time tracing things. So if you want an image of a mouse waving at you, for example, you can just draw the mouse with only one arm in the first frame, copy that over and over, and then go back and animate the arm without the need to retrace anything.

The software has all kinds of brushes and colors and different things for you to try out, so there really isn't too many effects that you can't pull off here. There's an icon for photos and sound files on the main menu, making me think that you can add those to your animations as well.

Utsusu Made in Wario ("Made in Wario" is what "Wario Ware" is known as in Japan) makes use of the DSi's camera for its mini-games. Before you start playing, though, you're bombarded by a number of instructions. "Tilt the DSi screen about 120 degrees." "Put the DSi on a flat surface, like a table." "Don't move the DSi while playing." etc. This game isn't meant to be played in a moving vehicle, basically.

You have four characters' games to choose from. After you pick the level, the game asks you to line your face and hand up to an outline displayed on the screen, I guess so it can try to figure out where you are. You're given a few seconds to adjust the amount of distance between you and the DSi and to make sure everything lines up properly before a picture of you is taken.

Once that's out of the way, the micro-games start. Before each micro-game, you're given a pose to imitate (open hands, closed fists, etc.). The game's ability to actually determine where you are can be hampered by all sorts of things like bad lighting or other objects in the background (hint: don't try to play this game in front of anything round because the software will mistake that for your face), so figuring out what you need to do to get the DSi's camera to recognize you can be quite a task.

The micro-games range from moving your head so that the hats fall on you to massaging a woman's back with your fists to catching all the coins with your hands to moving toward the camera in order to get a closer look at whatever's stuck in someone's teeth to shaking the water off a shaggy dog's body. In other words, all the stuff you'd expect in a Wario Ware game.

Unfortunately, you're only able to do five games per session...after that, you're taken back to the title screen regardless of how well or how poorly you did.

At the end of your five micro-game segment, you're shown a slideshow of various images the camera's clandestinely taken of you over the course of the game. You know how, when you go on a rollercoaster in real life, you'll sometimes be able to get a snapshot of you on the ride? That's the basic idea here. Unfortunately, the DSi doesn't save these images for you, and they vanish after you shut the power off.

Utsusu Made in Wario is fun and all, but the variety just isn't there. The same games get repeated over and over again, and I'd say that after a good ten or fifteen minutes, you've played all the micro-games that are included. What's there is fun, but I still found myself sorely disappointed by the lack of variety here.

The final game I downloaded was Chotto Dr. Mario, which is pretty much a single player Dr. Mario game. The game pretty much looks identical to the WiiWare version, but it lacks any of the multiplayer (local or otherwise) that the console version has. It's still a fun diversion, though.