DSi to Hit the States April 5

[John Funk]

DSi to Hit the States April 5

Nintendo's latest iteration of its ridiculously popular handheld, the Nintendo DSi, will be hitting shelves here in North America on April 5th.

Yes, Nintendo fanboys, you now have a date to mark on your calendars, though I wouldn't get in line just yet - at least not without ensuring you'll have someone to hold your spot while you go home to shower and sleep. Well, to sleep, anyway.

The DSi marks a greater leap in functionality from the DS Lite than what the Lite had over the original DS. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the DSi is a bigger change, because at least one of the modifications is a step backwards - the removal of the GBA slot, to be precise. All right, maybe it's not all that big a deal, since if you really do have a hankering to play Golden Sun or Advance Wars right this very minute, you can probably just dig up one of the other dozen or so devices lying around your house that can play GBA games.

The major modification for the DSi, of course, is the addition of a pair of cameras: one on the outside, and one on the inside that directly faces the viewer once the device is flipped open and games are being played. I'm not quite sure if I want the world to see the faces I make while I play Elite Beat Agents, personally.

Also, the DSi locks out the current crop of flashcarts, meaning that homebrew and piracy - at least, that sort of piracy - is out of the question for the time being. You can decide for yourselves whether that's a good thing or not.

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[Al_]

Loss of the GBA slot presumably means an end to the "Guitar Hero On Tour" series? Unless they come up with a way of slotting a similar bit of plastic between the game cart and console (and thus selling us a new accessory). It comes with a built in browser though, doesn't it, so there's no worries about the only other DS product to use the GBA slot.

Edit: gah, beaten to the GH comment. Supplementary: when will we see this in Europe?

 

[Rodger]

I'll probably trade in my old DS when this comes out. I'll still have a DS Lite, GBA SP, and GBA Micro (why the hell did I buy that one again?) to play Advance games on. Not that I will. In fact all I end up using the GBA slot for is transferring pokemon, which I can still do on the DS Lite. I'm also interested in seeing what the DSi store will have to offer. Might get some interesting things to download eventually, though the list of things it'll have at launch doesn't look overly appealing. The cameras I don't care about one way or another and I'm surprised they haven't caused any controversy (or if they have, I missed it) If the pictochat can cause controversy (mind you, only on Fox) then I'm sure giving kids the ability to take pictures of themselves will.

 

[Skizle]

im more interested in the online capabilities

 

[super_smash_jesus]

Not enough of a change to even think about trading in the DS lite. Online functionality straight out of the box is nice, considering it cost 40 bucks to buy the opera browser for the lite, but that and a camera really aren't that exciting to me.

 

[Jimtopia]

Eh, I may get this. My original DS went on the fritz 4 years ago, and I still have all my games. This seems like enough of an improvement over the original DS that it will be worth it.

 

[Harleycosmo]

...why did they do this to the ds again?

 

[Murmur95]

I would say it was a bad move cutting out flashcarts, that is one of the major selling points for me. Being able to use my ds as msn or use other small apps...hell i could even put linux on it.