133: The Life Nomadic With Nintendo DS

[Pat M.]

The Life Nomadic With Nintendo DS

"In Japan, loitering with a Nintendo DS is the mark of a productive citizen (one in six people in Japan own one) - I can barely get on a train without stumbling over a mess of high school kids battling Pokémon on their way to cram school. While it's well known that the DS can, with the right software, ward off dementia, count calories, help with cooking, function as a Korean and Japanese dictionary (with kanji recognition), teach yoga, browse the web, and all kinds of other things, the homebrew Nintendo DS scene is perhaps the most underrated aspect of the fastest-selling console of all time."

Pat Miller experiences life on the streets of Japan, homeless and wandering with a DS and little else.


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[REDPill357]

DAAAAAAAAAAAAANG!

I wanna do that on my DS!

 

[StolenName]

That's an excellent little story dude. If there's one thing I always wondered, with my five year VISA for the UK sitting next to me, how I'd cope with little funds and barely a place to live. Something tells me that in times of need, it'll be my DS and not my PSP to help me out.

Thanks for the tips dude and now I know who to blame if I successfully end up living on the streets!

 

[lorenzolio]

Awesome. I hope you typed that whole thing on your DS because I read that whole thing on my DS. Ok, not really. But I could have.

 

[anomalous_underdog]

This was why I bought a DS in the first place, and not for the games.

I was looking for an inexpensive PDA before, and I decided to buy a DS instead as it was inexpensive, had stylus input, wifi access, and you can program apps for it.

Just a note: DSOrganize's web browser is not only text-based; it has simple html formatting and loads images. Although AFAIK you currently can't save the html file or the images to your storage card. It also doesn't have cookies support, so I couldn't access my Gmail.

Bunjalloo(http://code.google.com/p/quirkysoft/wiki/Bunjalloo), on the other hand has cookies and can save html pages (I think). I haven't tried it yet.

Treasures of Gaia is in French. You can view it via Google translate:
http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fstravingo.over-blog.fr%2Fcategorie-10130040.html&langpair=fr%7Cen&hl=en&ie=UTF8

 

[DuoM]

I have to admit, back in the day it was the big fatty Gameboys that were unbreakable to most kids 8 and older. Then it became pocket sized to hide from the teacher easier. Then it was colorized for us to enjoy a better picture. Sharpened to a tip with more gameplay in the advance Incarnation and now it not only provides us with games, it provides us with accessibility. My god Nintendo could seriously make it in more than just the game industry...

 

[Arbre]

Although interesting, and a pleasure for a geek to see the DS altered to fit other activities, it's still a game machine.
I don't think it's that obvious that Nintendo could tackle other activities.
They may be able to make a transition, but I don't see it happening that quick. They still favour systems with simple access, and PDAs and other stuff like that are not.

 

[startswithK]

... now [Nintendo's systems] not only provides us with games, it provides us with accessibility. My god Nintendo could seriously make it in more than just the game industry...

It would be important to note that Nintendo does not approve of their systems being used for anything other than playing DS games (with the exception of the DS Browser, of course). So while it is endlessly cool that people have figured out how to do all this wonderful stuff, it was not Nintendo's intention in the least. In fact, they quite hate the R4 and other like-wise carts, as they easily enable emulation and DS Rom use as well. So its not really readily apparent that Nintendo could so easily do all this stuff themselves (though they likely could), because in reality, they didn't/aren't, its the homebrewers themselves. Nintendo merely provided them with a canvas.

 

[Le_Lisra]

Thank you for this wonderful little article.
Now I want a DS too, hehe.