Taste-Test: Nintendo DS

I want to make a little confession right off the bat. When I heard that Nintendo was planning on making a standalone system to go with the GBA and GCN, I was a little skeptical. Ok, more than a little skeptical. Thoughts flew in my head of the infamous Virtual Boy, which nearly turned Nintendo into the laughing stock. How in the Hell could Nintendo create something totally new? The GBA already owned the handheld market, and the GameCube, while not the strongest system in gaming today, was more than capable of competing with the PS2 and XBox, regardless of outside opinion. Why ruin that by coming out with another piece of crap flash-in-the-pan system that will be lost and forgotten within six months of its initial release?

Then info about the DS was released. Although most looked at the specs in awe, I was still a little skeptical. What, really, was the point of a system with two screens? As more info trickled in, however, I became more and more excited. And then we saw it.

The first thing I love about the DS is the touch screen, simply because it played so much of a part in most of the games. It was awesome to point and choose which area to attack, what card to pick, etc. etc. Picking where to shoot was really cool in Metroid Prime: Hunters, but the coolest way it was used was in Wario Ware, where players used the stylus and touch screen to achieve a variety of tasks, all which looked very cool. The graphical quality was amazing as well - playing Mario 64X4 was astonishing; at it was incredible to see the 3D quality graphics on a handheld system. As such, many would then point to the PSP's graphical quality. It might not has the same power under the hood, but it may also be able to be made and sold at a lower cost than Sony's PSP, which can ultimately help in the worldwide market place. The current sentiment betwixt friends is that they plan on purchasing a DS well before, if at all, they purchase a PSP.

What I would have liked to see, however, were some of the other features; such as voice recognition. Also, it surprises me that even though the system is 3D, there currently is no analog stick, nor does it appear there will be. It was strange to use the Stylus in Prime: Hunters, especially since you had to shoot each time you turned. I also wished that Mario DS and Mario Kart DS (the two games I'm most excited about) were playable as well. Still, in every way, shape, or form, this is going to be an amazing system. I'm going to buy one, all of my colleagues are going to buy one, and to be honest, you should buy one too.

Eric Jones