But unlike the Nintendo DS Lite, the Nintendo DSi actually adds brand new functions beyond the slight form adjustment: built into every unit are two digital cameras (one forward facing, one gamer facing) as well as internal writeable media and the addition of an SD card slot for digital downloads. So this is more than just a subtle update.
But where there were additions, one feature had to fall: the DSi removes the Game Boy Advance cartridge slot from the handheld. While many of you might not miss such an expansion port, as you'll read in the next few pages the removal is more significant than you might realize.
Using the DS Lite analogy one more time: there's no doubt in my mind that eventually the Nintendo DSi system will take over the dual-screen legacy. Enjoy what you have with the Nintendo DS and Nintendo DS Lite, because if you decide to upgrade to DSi – or if the DSi will be your entry handheld system – you'll lose out on these casualties of the inevitable system evolution .
Every Game Boy Advance Cartridge Ever Made
Release: 2001 to Present.
Back in 2004, the Game Boy Advance was king of the gaming hill, an untouchable monstrosity in a handheld package. Nintendo was taking a risk by introducing a second portable platform, especially during the GBA's successful run. Incorporating Game Boy Advance compatibility was more an insurance policy for gamers: if the DS failed, you still could play the hundreds of GBA games already available and still to come.
As history tells, the DS wasn't a failure. In fact, it had the adverse effect of killing off the Game Boy platform completely. There are still the stray Game Boy Advance games hitting shelves, but for the most part the party's over and what's left of Game Boy Advance in stores is backstock. Truth be told, the Game Boy Advance compatibility of the DS is a luxury that's just not needed.
With one exception, of course. And that exception is Pokemon. Pokemon Diamond and Pokemon Pearl, the DS-native Pokemon adventures, actually enabled GBA gamers to bring over their Pokemon creatures from the old handheld to the new one. In fact, there were a handful of critters that were only available through this transfer means. Hopefully Pokemon Platinum, the third DS adventure, will fill in that gap if and when it ships in the US.
The Bright Side: The Nintendo DS wasn't 100% Game Boy Advance compatible – it didn't support multiplayer nor did it work with 8-bit Game Boy games. You can still obtain the brighter Game Boy Advance SP clamshell system – with full backward compatibility to Game Boy Color and black and white Game Boy products. But chances are you'll be able to buy classic Game Boy Advance games through the digital distribution on the DSi, which will give you access to little-played games for cheap.
Motion Pack
Release: 2008
Used for: Tony Hawk Motion
Hopefully the announcement of the DSi wasn't a complete blindside to Activision. After all the company is still slated to release its motion pack-enhanced Tony Hawk's Motion to the Nintendo DS this November. Each copy of the game will come packaged with a DS and DS Lite-compatible cartridge that features Wii Remote-like motion recognition, so every tilt jolt and nudge on the system will be immediately recognizable in the game.
This game will be completely, 100% incompatible with the DSi system simply due to the fact that there's no way to plug this peripheral into the system. Had the DSi hardware incorporated accelerometers there might have been a chance for Tony Hawk's Motion and its built-in Hue Pixel Painter mini-game. But according to Nintendo, "motion" is something they've kept on Wii exclusively.
The Bright Side: As of this writing the game hasn't shipped yet, so we'll stay away from critiquing its quality. But if the game's successful on the DS Lite, a follow-up may happen. If that happens, Activision may consider the alternative: Motion add-on through an accelerometer built into the DS cartridge itself. These cartridges are already available to the homebrew crowd so it's certainly something that could see the light of day in the DSi era.
Guitar Grip
Release: 2008
Used for: Guitar Hero On Tour, Guitar Hero On Tour: Decades
One again, Activision takes a hit with the announcement of the DSi and its execution of the Game Boy Advance port.
Guitar Hero On Tour is this year's top-selling third party game on the Nintendo DS, thanks to several factors: the experience is, essentially, the console game shrunk down for portable play, and it has one of the coolest, eye-catching peripherals created for the Nintendo DS system.
Unfortunately, in designing the Guitar Grip peripheral, Red Octane and Vicarious Visions were focused on the current generation of systems: the original DS and the brighter DS Lite. With the Nintendo DSi, the Guitar Grip is entirely unusable since the device interfaces with the game through the GBA port. Heck, that's how the unit stays in place: it docks to the system through this slot, otherwise your system would simply fall to the floor. And then who'd be crying?
The Bright Side: A recent visit to the Vicarious Visions tells us we shouldn't be worried for the Guitar Hero franchise. A subtle wink and nudge from the people involved in the project seems to indicate that the engineers and game designers have everything well in-hand for Guitar Hero gaming on DSi, even if it means that there would have to be a new Guitar Grip created specifically for the system. Plus, camera support and downloadable content could enter the experience as well.
Thrustmaster Pedometer
Release: 2008
Used for: My Weight Loss Coach
Ever since Wii Fit hit the market, gaming on Nintendo platforms have taken on a "healthier" profile. Ubisoft definitely capitalized on the fitness momentum with My Weight Loss Coach, a portable instructor that encouraged anyone who played it to eat less and exercise more in order to maintain a girlish figure or to lose the extra poundage.
One of the ways the game did this was through a pedometer that you could wear around your waist. Each step taken was a point towards your goal in My Weight Loss Coach. But how did the game know how many steps you took? Why, you plugged it into the GBA slot, of course!
With the DSi, the peripheral turns into nothing more than an non-interactive counter. Sure, you can take pride in filling the four digit display with numbers by walking (or shaking the device, cheater). But if you want those steps counted in your weight loss program, you'll have to manually do it without the help of My Weight Loss Coach.
The Bright Side: Nintendo will be offering its own entry in the fitness category for the Nintendo DS, complete with its own pedometer. This one, however, is a small electronic device that interfaces with the DS wirelessly. Meaning, that it'll work with all DS systems, DSi included. Unfortunately, it will not work with My Weight Loss Coach. It had its time to shine.
Paddle Controller
Release: 2007
Used for: Arkanoid DS Space Invaders Extreme, Space Puzzle Bobble
One of the coolest add-ons the DS ever saw was the Taito-designed Paddle Controller, a device that brought back a control type not seen since the days of the Atari 2600. It was small and weighted, and felt great when spinning the knob slow and fast. It would be a perfect peripheral had developers secured the rights to old-school games such as Breakout, Warlords, Tempest, Major Havoc…the list goes on.
But the unit only worked on Taito games that featured the option for the device, and even then Taito limited its function for those games: Space Invaders Extreme didn't allow Worldwide Rankings if the paddle was used, and Arkanoid's single cart multiplayer took the function out of the equation to keep things fair between players. We may see the end of its support with Space Puzzle Bobble, an updated version of Taito's Match Three action puzzler on the DS system later this year.
The Bright Side: Unfortunately, it's hard to find an upside to losing the Paddle Control. We can justify the death of the peripheral by saying that Arkanoid DS sucked, and that Square Enix has no faith in the product to bring it stateside for a retail release. But the fact remains that it was a well-developed device that made Space Invaders Extreme one hell of a fun ride, and it offered potential for other knob-spinning game designs that will no longer come as is on the DS platform.
Faceningscan
Release: 2007
Used for: Face Training
First was Brain Training, then Vision Training. In Japan, they attempted Face Training on the DS. If you were worried about getting wrinkles or Crow's Feet around the eyes, this was the product for you. Clearly it was going after the female market.
The design revolved around a peripheral called the Faceningscan, a pretty Japanese name for "Digital Camera." The cool thing about this device was the software facial recognition: when you moved your eyes or mouth, overlays would follow the subtle motions to see how well you're following along, and rank you based on how well you strained your facial muscles.
The Digital Camera was limited to facing the player, so it could have never been used as a functional external camera beyond games that took pictures of the DS gamers themselves.
The Bright Side: If anything, the Faceningscan peripheral was probably the foundation to the hardware and software used in the DSi platform. It's probable that the current version of the Face Trainer will not work with the DSi system, but it's easy enough for it to be converted in an updated edition thanks to the built-in cameras. If you really wanted it.
Slider
Release: 2007
Used for: Mag Kid
There were many cool experimental concepts to come out of Nintendo, one of which was Slide Adventure: Mag Kid, a design where you slid a disc-like character in a top-down perspective. You didn't move via the traditional D-pad or touch-screen means. Instead, you slid the system around and the disk would follow your subtle or wild movements.
The game used this Slide peripheral that wasn't much more than an optical mouse. Plugging it into the GBA slot, the DS propped up off the table on the stand. The way the game was designed, it appeared like you were looking "through" the DS down at the table since the game moved at the same rate as how fast or slow you were sliding the system. It was a really neat effect.
The Bright Side: Mag Kid was a cool concept and gaming experiment, but it wasn't very portable: you had to rest your system on a table, which sort of limited when and where you played the game.
Memory Pak
Release: 2007
Used for: Opera Browser
A couple of years ago, the PlayStation Portable was really giving the Nintendo DS a run for its money. One of its claims to fame was the ability to go onto the internet natively through its built-in browser. To give the Nintendo DS the same ability, Opera stepped in and created a DS version of its browser.
The DS, however, isn't exactly a powerhouse system so Opera included with every copy of the product a memory expansion that made it work. It wasn't enough, though – the browser might've had the ability to download webpages but it did so at an absolutely unbearable speed. Surfing the internet needs to be an instantaneous process, and it wasn't anywhere near this on the Nintendo DS's Opera browser.
The Bright Side: You won't need the memory expansion pack on the DSi: the Opera browser is built into the DSi handheld, and apparently the new hardware has more memory and potentially faster processing, giving the new portable a faster internet experience. We'll hold off our praise until we check it out for ourselves.
Update Cartridge
Release: 2005
Used for: Band Bros.
It was a game that was planned for a US release but never saw the light of day: Jam with the Band was intended as the stateside version of Band Bros., a rhythm-focused music maker launched close to the premiere of the system in Japan.
The original Nintendo DS lacked built-in rewriteable memory, so to upgrade Band Bros. with an updated library of music, Nintendo created an upgrade cartridge for the game that brought in new songs through the Game Boy Advance port of the system.
Band Bros. has been turned into a sequel in Japan, but now you can go online for new songs and write them to the enormous EEPROM of the cartridge.
The Bright Side: Chances are you didn't have the original game, so you wouldn't have any use for the upgrade cartridge anyway.
Rumble Pak
Release: 2005
Used for: Air Traffic Chaos, Clubhouse Games, Custom Robo Arena, Diddy Kong Racing DS, Elite Beat Agents, Ferrari Challenge, GRID, Hotel Dusk: Room 215, Iron Man, Juiced 2: Hot Import Nights, Magnetica, Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time, Metroid Prime Hunters, Metroid Prime Pinball, Orcs and Elves, Picross DS, Race Driver: Create and Race, SEGA Superstars Tennis, Space Invaders Extreme, Star Fox Command, Star Trek: Tactical Assault, Super Princess Peach, The Legend of Spyro: A New Beginning, Tomb Raider: Underworld, Wario: Master of Disguise, WWE Smackdown vs. Raw 2008
Ever since Nintendo released the Rumble Pak for the Nintendo 64, every console has had built-in rumble in their controls. Handhelds are a different beast, apparently – none of the company's portable systems have had it inside the system. Rumble has always been optional. On the Game Boy it was a battery powered cart on a per-game basis.
For the Nintendo DS, Nintendo created a Rumble Pak specifically for the handheld, and gave it away with every copy of Metroid Prime Pinball. It definitely shook the system in games that supported it, but since it's an option that's not built into every DS, very few developers put the time into supporting it.
With the removal of the Slot 2, DS games won't rumble at all on the DSi.
The Bright Side: The Rumble Pak wasn't a quality peripheral: it was louder in noise than it was in motion. Nintendo of America didn't have much support behind the device, either: you can't even special order a DS Lite-specific version in the US so it can sit flush in the shallower cart slot. If you want that, you'll have to import one from other territories.
Card Scanner
Release: 2007
Used for: Mushi King
Hit any arcade in Japan and you'll see all sorts of cool battle games that feature scannable cards to pull in characters and their attributes. One of the most popular is Mushi King, the bug battler from SEGA.
Players collected cards from the arcades and could scan them into the DS version of the game to keep the battles going. This device was similar to Nintendo's e-Reader, though on the DS it left the main cartridge slot open so other games could utilize the peripheral. The cards were limited to basic barcodes, though -- not quite as elaborate as e-Reader's data-filled Dot Code format.
The Bright Side: It was a cool add-on that opened up DS ports of awesome arcade card battlers, but this had no chance of appearing stateside, what with the failure of Nintendo's own e-Reader.
Wave Scanner
Release: 2007
Used for: Rock Man Star Force
Just like SEGA and its Mushi King, Capcom had its own device to upgrade one of its DS games.
TakaraTomy and Capcom worked side-by-side to produce a device for the Nintendo DS that enabled players to scan in compatible cards into the three DS versions of Mega Man Star Force to bring in characters and powers.
Moving onto the DSi means that if you haven't finished Star Force and have a stack of cards, forget about getting help from your paper buddies.
The Bright Side: It only worked for one game, and only in Japan. Dollars to donuts you'd never even know this one existed.