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Nintendo DS

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File:Nintendo ds touch.jpg
Nintendo DS

The Nintendo DS (which is short for Dual Screen, although Nintendo has also promotionally said it to be short for Developer's System, due to the ease of development for the handheld), is a dual-screen portable handheld game console developed and manufactured by Nintendo. Its code name was Project Nitro. The DS has a vertical clamshell design, similar to some Game & Watch video games, and the Game Boy Advance SP. The Nintendo DS comes in five colors: Silver, Charcoal/Black, Blue, Pink, and White.

The handheld is unique in that it has two screens (as opposed to most which only have one) and also that it incorporates a touch screen (although it should be noted that it is not the first handheld to do it — Tiger's Game.com also incorporated a touch screen). Nintendo hopes that the new features present in the machine will provoke unique game development, attract developers, appeal to both older gamers and non-gamers alienated by normal input methods, and allow Nintendo to retain its status as leader of the handheld game console market. Nintendo is currently competing against Sony with their (PSP) PlayStation Portable (although representatives from both companies have said that they are not directly competing as each system targets a different audience). The system's promotional slogans revolve around the word "Touch": in the US, Australia, and New Zealand, Touching is Good; in Japan, Touch!; and in Europe, Touch me!.

Functionality

The Nintendo DS's primary function is as a video games console; no multimedia support is included, although Play-Yan, a special Game Boy Advance cartridge that can read a SD memory card and play movies and music, is available in Japan (see Accessories). The system is hoped to provoke more original development of titles in an industry that Nintendo perceives as being stagnant. Nintendo believes that the unit's unusual dual screen format will inspire creative game design by developers, both its own and third parties. While the most obvious unique selling point is the pair of screens, the system also includes some unexpected input devices: a microphone and touch screen functionality on the lower screen. To date, many games have used the touchscreen to emulate analogue joystick or mouse. The DS also supports wireless connectivity, using 802.11b (Wi-Fi) [1]. As of March 2005, no games have implemented online functionality, but several are reportedly in development, including versions of Mario Kart and Animal Crossing.

Creating your own DS Games

There are 2 different ways to go about creating your own games for your Nintendo DS machine. Creating a game on any system requires an extensive amount of knowledge in C++ Programming, Graphics Design, and it is also useful to have experience in music composition and plot development. If you would prefer to go about it officialy then you can go here, however Nintendo only except official companies with a game development team, and sufficient experience in certain areas. An easier method is to use publicly available knowledge from this site and use the tools available to create your own games. With this method you use a Passme chip which plugs in to the DS slot with the main DS cart sticking out underneath.

Releases

North America and Japan

The system was launched in North America for $149.99 USD on November 21, 2004, in Japan for 15,000 yen ($135) on December 2. Well over two million preorders were taken in North America and Japan; preorders at online stores were launched on November 3, and ended the same day as merchants had already sold their allotment. Initially Nintendo planned to deliver one million units combined at the North American and Japanese launches; when it saw the preorder numbers, it brought another factory online to ramp up production. Nintendo originally slated 300,000 units for the US debut; 550,000 were shipped, and just over 500,000 of those sold through in the first week.

Both launches proved to be successful, but it is interesting to note that Nintendo chose to release the DS in North America prior to Japan, a first for a hardware launch from the Kyoto-based company. This choice was made to get the DS out for the largest shopping day of the year in the US (the day after Thanksgiving). [2] Perhaps partly due to the release date, the DS met unexpectedly high demand in the United States, selling 1 million units by December 21, 2004. As of the end of December, the total number shipped worldwide was 2.8 million, about 800,000 more than Nintendo's original forecast. [3] At least 1.2 million of them were sold in the US. Some industry reporters are referring to it as "the Tickle Me Elmo of 2004". [4] In mid-December 2004 Nintendo raised its estimates of sales by March 31, 2005 (the end of the company's fiscal year) to 5 million units worldwide. As of March 14, the DS had sold 600,000 in Europe, setting a sales record for a handheld.

As is normal for electronics, some were reported as having problems with dead pixels in either of the two screens. Return policies for LCD displays vary between manufacturers and regions, however in North America, Nintendo has chosen to replace a system with any number of dead pixels under warranty (typically a display must contain more than a certain number of dead pixels to qualify for warranty replacement). Policies followed by Nintendo in Japan are believed to be somewhat stricter.

North American launch games

The following games were released within the system's launch period (the 30 days starting from November 21, 2004).

At launch there was one pack-in demo, in addition to the built-in PictoChat program: Metroid Prime: Hunters - First Hunt (published by Nintendo). It continues to be bundled with the system as of March 2005, and reportedly will be packaged in with the system until Metroid Prime: Hunters is released.

Japanese launch games

The following games were released at same time as the system's first release (December 2, 2004).

In the launch period, the following titles were released.

Europe

The DS was released in Europe on 11th March 2005, for £99.99 in the United Kingdom and €149 in the rest of Europe. Prior to this, a limited supply of DS units were available in a package with a promotional T-shirt, Metroid Prime: Hunters - First Hunt, a WarioWare Touched! demo, and a pre-release version of Super Mario 64 DS, through the Nintendo Stars Catalogue; the bundle was priced at £129.99 for the UK and €189.99 for the rest of Europe, plus 1000 of Nintendo's 'star' loyalty points.

The European version of the DS, like the US release, is packaged with a Metroid Prime: Hunters - First Hunt demo.

European launch games

Australia/New Zealand

The DS launched in Australia and New Zealand on the 24th of February. It retailed in Australia for $199 AUD and in New Zealand for $249 NZD. Like the American launch, it includes the Metroid Prime: Hunters - First Hunt demo.

Australian/New Zealand launch games

Design and specifications

Technology

The handheld unit has a mass of approximately 275 grams. It features two separate 3-inch TFT LCD screens, each with a resolution of 256×192. The lowermost display of the DS is overlayed with a touch screen, utilizing a stylus or the user's fingers, a first for a games console. The DS has a wrist strap that doubles as a thumb cover for use in place of a stylus. The console uses two separate ARM processors, an ARM9 main CPU and ARM7 coprocessor at clock speeds of 67 MHz and 33 MHz respectively, with 4 MB of main memory. The system's 3D engine is theoretically capable of drawing 120,000 polygons per second, with a fill-rate of 30 million pixels per second.

Games utilize a proprietary solid state flash card format resembling those used in other portable electronic devices such as digital cameras; this semiconductor technology is said to be far cheaper than conventional cartridges and can be used within a system without moving parts to jar out of place when dropped. It is currently capable of supporting cards of up to 1 gigabit (128 MB) in size. The unit features wireless networking capabilities for multiplayer games or chat using Wi-Fi. The current software does not use IP, thefore preventing Internet play features and use of Wi-Fi routers with the DS, however future games can implement an IP stack and therefore support online gaming.

Inputs and outputs

A Nintendo DS beneath a Sony PSP for comparison.

The DS is the first portable console from Nintendo to incorporate stereo speakers. In addition to the touch screen, the DS has, to the left of the lower display, a traditional four-way control pad (with a narrow Power button above it), while to the right are four action buttons (with narrow Select and Start buttons above) A B Y X, following in the footsteps of the SNES controller. On the back there are the L (Left) and R (Right) buttons, also following the style of the SNES controller. Perhaps the most innovative use of the touch screen is for the emulation of other controls. For example, with use of the previously mentioned "thumb stylus", it can emulate a analog joystick, or with the conventional stylus, its behavior can replicate a computer mouse. The system also includes a built-in microphone. While it has only been used for simple volume measurements, Nintendo has suggested will be used for communication over a wireless network, and controlling games programmed for speech recognition.

Operating system

Nintendo's own custom firmware boots the system: from here, the user chooses to run a DS or Game Boy Advance game, use PictoChat, or search for downloadable games. The latter is an adaptation of the Game Boy Advance's popular "single cartridge multiplayer" feature, adapted to support the system's Wi-Fi link capabilities: players without the game search for content, while players with the game broadcast it. In November 2004, Nintendo announced its entry into the feature animation business, suggesting that theatres showing these features could install kiosks to broadcast game content to Nintendo DS units via this same feature. In March 2005, Nintendo tested broadcast kiosks in Japan, allowing players to download a demo of Meteos or extra songs for Daigasso: Band Brothers.

The PictoChat program, which is permanently stored on the unit, allows users to communicate with other DS users over the wireless network by text, handwriting, or drawings, using the DS's touch screen and stylus for input; an on-screen keyboard partially covers the touch-sensitive area while using this mode, allowing for typed, as well as written, messages.

The DS's main menu also features an alarm clock and the ability to set preferences for boot priority (booting to games when inserted, or always booting to the main menu), GBA game screen usage (top or bottom), and user information (name, date of birth, favorite color, time, etc.).

There is currently an ongoing project aiming to bring the Linux operating system to the DS [5] which will be derived from µCLinux. Due to the complexity involved in reverse engineering the proprietry Nintendo technology (notably due to (encryption and lack of hardware specifications) this project has not yet produced a working product (as of April 2005).

Compatibility

GBA game slot on GBA (above) and DS (below). Legacy GB software will not fit in the DS.

Initially, the console was reported to be incompatible with games designed for Nintendo's present Game Boy Advance (GBA) handheld, but details announced at the E³ trade show in Los Angeles in May 2004 revealed the opposite; while the new DS cartridges are smaller and fit in their own port, the machine has a separate cartridge port accepting Game Boy Advance games (including Majesco's Game Boy Advance Videos), although Game Boy Color and original Game Boy games are incompatible with the DS, due to a slightly different form factor and its lack of the Z80 processor used in these systems. This may be an attempt to separate the DS and Nintendo's established Game Boy line of handheld consoles; the GBA, for example, included the aging processor primarily to run legacy Game Boy games. It may also simply be to keep the DS's price down; including another chipset would likely have significantly added to the cost of producing the unit.

Though the DS no longer has the Z80 processor, several projects have started to emulate this platform. One such product is the freely available Goomba emulator, website here [6].

The handheld does not have a port for the GBA Link Cable, so multiplayer or GBA-GameCube link-up modes are not available in GBA titles. Similar connectivity, using the DS's wireless capabilities, will, however, reportedly be possible between the DS and Nintendo's successor to the GameCube, based on comments made at GDC 2005.

Accessories

Although the secondary port on the Nintendo DS does accept and support Game Boy Advance cartridges, Nintendo has emphasized that its main intention for its inclusion was to allow a wide variety of accessories to be released for the system, the compatibility to Game Boy Advance titles being only a logical complementation due to the similar architecture of the two systems. Possible accessories are GPS receivers, television tuners, as well as a variety of accessories already included in certain Game Boy Advance cartridges such as tilt-sensors, solar-sensors, and vibration generators.

Nintendo have announced the development of an adaptor which will allow the Game Boy Advance SP and Nintendo DS to play MPEG-4 videos and MP3 music from SD (and possibly MMC) memory cards. The adaptor bears a superficial resemblance to the AM3 player (which allowed playback of pre-recorded movie files from read-only memory cards on a GBA); the memory card slots into the right hand side of the adaptor, which then plugs into the cartridge slot of the parent console. The adaptor has its own integrated headphone port, but uses the parent console's power supply, controls, and display. It is estimated that it will offer over 15 hours of MP3 playback and 4 hours of MPEG-4 playback from a fully-charged GBA SP.

The adaptor will launch in Japan in February of 2005 for approximately 5,000 yen ($47.47). As of 2004, Nintendo did not announce plans to sell the unit outside of Japan.

Speculation regarding additional features

The DS has been the subject of a cryptic "promotional campaign" reminiscent of the Haunted Apiary promotional used to generate buzz for the Xbox game Halo 2, although not put out by Nintendo itself.[7] It consists of a series of heavily modified images. While the meaning of the hints given about the system has not yet been explained, some believe the DS will be able to communicate with other DS systems in the vicinity, extending to create a long-range mesh network connecting DS players over large geographic distances. Yet others link a heavily modified image of a marionette bearing the legend "find me" (with a faint "s" after the "d") with a possible Xbox Live-style frontend for handling online gaming. An image of a child using a DS console near a dog has been claimed to be promoting the game Nintendogs, of which little is known (although it is hardly a secret).[8]

This campaign originated on the forums for the Warp Pipe system, from anonymous insiders who claim to know a great deal of interesting information but who are limited by a non-disclosure agreement, as well as Warp Pipe founder Chad Paulson. However, it is not clear whether the users', or even Paulson's, information is genuine.

It has since been discovered that the advertising is related to a service called "Demasked" which will supposedly come out soon. Its website can be found here[9].

See also


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