Entry posted by Hawks
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I decided I will start reviewing random things that I have purchased that I think people might possibly care to read. I shall start with the Nintendo DSi and some of its accessories and games.
Nintendo DSi
I give it a 9/10. It serves its purpose as a game-playing device, and does more than that. I know people scoff at the .2mpx cameras and sometimes at the Nintendo name, but it's surely worth the $169.99 US for it, especially if it's your first time with a Nintendo portable, or any portable. I bought it because I felt it was time for me to have something nice that would hopefully last a long time; the DSi fit the bill. I've loved Nintendo's games since forever (I own a Wii and GameCube as well, and had a NES for a long time) and I wanted in on the amazing amount of awesome DS games. The ability to download games is a huge plus for Nintendo; I can get some versions of cartridge games without paying the full $20-$30 for them. I can also start turning my DS into a sort of tiny laptop, if you will. There are useful apps with a Nintendo theme, such as the Animal Crossing Calculator and Mario Clock. There is a free animation app and free web browser. I only buy the things I want. Later on, I'll review the DSiWare I've downloaded, but now we've got the other features to discuss.
The DSi is also the first Nintendo portable to support SD/SDHC expansion, up to 32GB with current firmware. You can store your pictures on it, and listen to music you've loaded onto it. Certain games and apps can store profiles and information on the card to swap with others. Unfortunately, the DSi only accepts AAC format, so if you've got lots of .mp3s, you need to convert them. It's worth it though, the sound quality is excellent, both from the on-board speakers and through the headphone jack (even with lousy $12 earbuds). There's a few toys that let you speed up/slow down your music and play with the pitch. It has a selection of visualizations which match the beat and bass of the music, and L and R sound effects.
The DSi keeps the DS's mic and adds a decent sound recording device, but you are limited to 10 seconds at a time. The two 0.2 megapixel cameras are useful for quick shots and for playing around with pictures and faces using the built in 'filters' and doodle software. You can also directly upload pics to your Facebook account (with 1.4US firmware). Pictures are transferable back and forth between an SD card and the internal memory. The dual screens are 3.5" rather than 3", and as a result, the DSi has slightly larger dimensions. It is thinner than the DS Lite, due to the fact that the GBA slot has been removed.
The DSi charges rather fast (~2 hours to full) but apparently has a slightly shorter battery life. I have no problems playing on the lowest brightness setting indoors, but outdoors there's no point really. The ability to hot-swap with no risk of damage is nice too.
The reason the DSi gets 9/10 is a ) the loss of the GBA slot, and b ) Nintendo's policy against homebrew. I'd like to buy an AceKart, but not knowing that it'll continue to work after a forced update doesn't make me want to... They've given us a lovely SD slot, and only let us play music and store pictures on it. I'd love to download apps, roms, and such from the Internet, put them on a card, and play them in my DSi; so I ask for an update to treat the SD slot more like a drive on a PC. I think many homebrewers would like that very much also, and it'd get rid of problem a; I could just download/buy the roms. (Nintendo offering GB/GBA games through the DSi Shop would be acceptable as well- this would require enabling saving to an SD from the Shop.)
Now, on to accessories!
I've purchased two things; your run-of-the-mill Clean & Protect Kit, and a NERF Armor DSi Case. The Clean and Protect kit I purchased is listed on Amazon here. I bought it at Target for $9.99 (they were out of black, so I got red.) It contains two screen protectors, a game card case which holds up to 4 DS games, 3 red styli, and a little red cloth with the DS box logo thing printed on it. The cloth is not great, I don't use it for anything but keep it in my IKEA 'random electronics case'. The screen protector instructions weren't clear, and I couldn't tell which went on which screen. They work fine if you can get them to fit correctly. The styli and case are general things, not much to say about them; they're the same across the board really.
The DSi Nerf Armor is epic. I had trouble holding on to my DSi for long periods of time since it's so thin. This fixed it and finally got rid of my fear of dropping the thing and breaking it. It also matches the color of my stylus/card case which is semi-useful. It's listed here on Amazon. I got it at Wal-Mart for basically the same price. The foam is pretty durable and my only complaints are that the SD slot is kind of hard to access and the camera lens cover (on the outside) is a bit hard to pry open without tearing the foam. All of the important ports are accessible, the headphone jack and volume control are recessed in about a half inch due to the thickness of the foam. The back is very open, it's no problem to change cards or charge it.
Now we have the DSiWare software. I've downloaded a number of titles, as I received 1000 free points for logging into the shop before October 1st 2009 (in the US it's over, but this promo may still be running in other areas of the world). To start, I downloaded the Opera Browser (free), PictoBits (Picopics or summat in EU/JA) (500), Animal Crossing Calulator (200), and Mario Clock (200). Between my purchase of the DSi and that of a Points card, Nintendo released FlipNote Studio (free) and I downloaded it. Last week, I purchased a Points Card (2000 points, $19.99US). I downloaded Castle of Magic (500), ELECTROPLANKTON: Beatnes (200), and Touch Solitaire (200).
Opera Browser for DSi: Free
7/10
This is a good little browser for simpler websites; you can't really check e-mail with it though. It does not support flash, java applets, and various other bits of code. The iPod Touch version of Facebook works well on it, it's the best example. The DSi only has some 216Mb of RAM, which figures into a lot of its issues with the browser and Internet in general. It uses a built in search engine (Google or Yahoo) which is nice if you need to look up something fast. The new forum software does not recognize it as a mobile device and as such doesn't switch the skin automatically; any of the normal skins won't load. It's free, so what else can you say about it?
PictoBits: 500
Art Style: PiCOPiCT (EU, JA) Art Style PiCTOBiTS (NA)
10/10
This is by far the best game I've ever played (next to Tetris.). It combines elements of Tetris, classic NES games, and the abilities of the touchscreen to create a highly addictive puzzle game. Pieces fall from the sky, and you must pick up the 'bits' (which collect up on the bottom) to complete a square or rectangle of at least 4 bits. The bits that were matched fly up to the top screen to begin creating an 8-bit picture from a classic NES game. The music is amazing; it includes a music mode which lets you listen to the music (duh.). It's remixes of the originals, still with that NES sound-chip feel. There are two completely new tracks, the opening theme and the credits theme.
If you download only one game, PiCTOBiTS must be it.
Animal Crossing Calculator: 200
9/10
It's a calculator. With an Animal Crossing theme. There's not much to it. It has a unit converter as well, with a highly random age converter (from human to dog, hamster, horse, etc. years). The shop description says 'See your favorite Animal Crossing characters'... The only one I've seen is Tom Nook, and I've tried a lot of stuff. Which is why it's only 9/10.
Mario Clock: 200
10/10
It's Mario, and it's a clock, it's music, it's a game. Mario runs along the top screen, which displays the current time in digital (12 or 24h) or analog format. You can control Mario (or Luigi's) motion to a certain extent; you can speed him up with B or jump with A. After you collect 100 coins, it resets, sends a mini-Mario/Luigi to the clock area, and you collect more coins. After collecting 1200 coins, you are rewarded with a little cutscene. It is all done in classic Super Mario Bros. style, the 8-bit NES art. You can set up to 3 alarms, and the alarms give you the option of the theme music, the starman music, or the underwater theme as alarms, and you can also use a recorded sound.
FlipNote Studio: Free
7/10
This is portrayed as a useful tool for jotting down notes and also creating flipbook style animations. I don't like it much. The interface is slightly confusing and the app is rather slow. The fun bit is uploading your creations to Flipnote Hatena and looking at other people's flipnotes. Last I saw, it's a way to get around some of the restrictions of the DSi; it lets you add music and there are a lot of them that are just music. It's kind of like a wannabe YouTube for the DSi. The Hatena site was rather slow and had a lot of issues when loading; I haven't gone on it in a while, so I don't know if it's been fixed.
Castle of Magic: 500
9/10
This is the only non-Nintendo DSiWare title I've downloaded. It's a port of the Castle of Magic game for iPhones and whatnot. The game itself is full of homages to classic video games; there are gems to collect, and when you get 100 you get a free life, if you're carrying gems and you get hit by an enemy, you don't die. Wizzy (the main character) can jump on enemies' heads and butt-slam/stomp the ground. It follows the storyline of 'evil wizard steals girl, boy must rescue girl, boy gets cool powers to rescue girl with', which is kind of repetitive, but okay in this game. There are a few cutscenes leading up to boss battles and such, and the commentary is really dorky and the font is not rendered particularly well. It's a fun little game with five worlds with 3 levels and a boss battle in each. I've not finished it yet, so I can't comment on the ending.
It has a really odd (and a really annoying) feature. In certain levels, you must take a picture of an item that is a certain color to get a power-up needed to complete the level. After dieing a few times, this need to constantly take another picture is annoying.
You can also take random pictures of things and the game will map them onto items and enemies in the game (this is a feature unique to the DSi version). This is just odd and slightly disturbing.
ELECTROPLANKTON: Beatnes: 200
9/10
This is the single 'instrument' Beatnes from the DS game ELECTROPLANKTON. Beatnes makes NES-chip type sounds when you touch different parts of them with the stylus. It lets you create really interesting custom musical compositions. You can't save them though. The tracks/levels included are Mario, Kid Icarus, NES Medley, and Robot. There is also an audience mode where the plankton just make the noises, you don't have to poke them. For $2 it's well worth it if you, like me, have an obsession with NES games and music.
Touch Solitaire: 200
10/10
There's not much you can ask for from a solitaire game. This one is published by Nintendo, and I got it because of that and also because I heard the '5-in-1' version is not that good. It includes Spider and Klondike solitaire, two modes, easy and normal/hard, for each. It tracks how long you've played it and how many games you've played and won per day. It also records your total wins and displays these in the DSi menu in the app icon. It features the cat mascot from the Wii News channel.
My next reviews will be regarding headphones and a few DS games.
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