Got a Nintendo DS
Sep. 11th, 2005 12:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
progBought a DS, to nobody's surprise. It comes with a demo version of an upcoming Metroid game, and I bought Wario Ware Touched! and Mario 64 DS alongside it. Spent about $200 on all that, which is still $40 or so less than I would have dropped on a PSP with no games at all. Poor PSP.
* The sucker's huge and heavy, compared to the Game Boy SP I got two years ago. When folded it may be about the same dimensions as an original Game Boy Advance, but I don't have one here to compare it to. Unfolded, it's twice as tall.
* At first, I feared that you needed three arms to play some of the games. I'm coping with Wario (which uses only the touchscreen) and Mario (which uses the screen mostly for map viewing and camera control), but to play Metroid with the stylus you need to hold the system by its edge, so your thumb and forefinger can hit the hardware buttons, while your other hand uses the touchscreen. A few minutes of this and my nascent RSI flared up, leaving my wrist aching for hours after. Ouch.
I then discovered It comes with a "wrist strap" that is actually a thumb-strap. There is a plastic nub where your thumb goes, making it safe to rub around on the touchscreen. Both Mario and Metroid then allow you to emulate an analog stick on the touchpad by sliding your thumb around, but it's not the same; I kept finding my thumb up against the side of the screen in Mario, forcing me to recenter it and start sliding again in order to get the character to move. Lame.
* Wario is great, though not as good as the original. I feel mixed about its having a whole category of games that involving blowing into the microphone; there's no way I'm playing those on the subway. Much lamer is the fact that the unlockables are just flat and disappointing. The first Wario Ware had a whole bunch of cool, minimalist games that I still enjoy playing when I need a twitch; this one just gives you dumb little touch-screen toys like a one-dimensional scribble pad, a piano, and a metronome. A metronome?! Woooow. I get the impression that whoever put that collection together thought that the mere act of using the touch screen at all was already so fun that they didn't have to add much else. Bah.
* I really want to play Volity on this thing. Oh my gord yes. It's an ideal hardware platform for it. I am so not kidding.
* The sucker's huge and heavy, compared to the Game Boy SP I got two years ago. When folded it may be about the same dimensions as an original Game Boy Advance, but I don't have one here to compare it to. Unfolded, it's twice as tall.
* At first, I feared that you needed three arms to play some of the games. I'm coping with Wario (which uses only the touchscreen) and Mario (which uses the screen mostly for map viewing and camera control), but to play Metroid with the stylus you need to hold the system by its edge, so your thumb and forefinger can hit the hardware buttons, while your other hand uses the touchscreen. A few minutes of this and my nascent RSI flared up, leaving my wrist aching for hours after. Ouch.
I then discovered It comes with a "wrist strap" that is actually a thumb-strap. There is a plastic nub where your thumb goes, making it safe to rub around on the touchscreen. Both Mario and Metroid then allow you to emulate an analog stick on the touchpad by sliding your thumb around, but it's not the same; I kept finding my thumb up against the side of the screen in Mario, forcing me to recenter it and start sliding again in order to get the character to move. Lame.
* Wario is great, though not as good as the original. I feel mixed about its having a whole category of games that involving blowing into the microphone; there's no way I'm playing those on the subway. Much lamer is the fact that the unlockables are just flat and disappointing. The first Wario Ware had a whole bunch of cool, minimalist games that I still enjoy playing when I need a twitch; this one just gives you dumb little touch-screen toys like a one-dimensional scribble pad, a piano, and a metronome. A metronome?! Woooow. I get the impression that whoever put that collection together thought that the mere act of using the touch screen at all was already so fun that they didn't have to add much else. Bah.
* I really want to play Volity on this thing. Oh my gord yes. It's an ideal hardware platform for it. I am so not kidding.