Nintendo DS Review

I'm making this review of the N-DS simply out of my personal impressions.

Controls:
The N-DS has a solid control setup, much like the super nintendo's or the PS1's. Unfortunately it's not exactly the most comfortable thing to hold on to. the L and R buttons can get in the way quite often. Most issues in the controls comes from the fact the thing is so damned small. There are two other control issues. The weight from the second screen makes one end heavy which causes some discomfort. The second other issues is that there's no joystick making 3D games difficult to control.

Sound:
Two words, beautiful and loud. The nintendo DS has stereo sound and hook-ups for both analog(standard) headphones and digital ones too.

Graphics:
First i gotta say that this system probably represents the very best in 2D graphics unfortunately that doesn't speak for the 3D. The 3D graphics are lower than the n64s but it CAN get away with it because of the small screen so you can't notice it. The dual screen feature is also, so far, gimicky. There are a couple things they can do with it. They could put the game across both screens or put maps and menus on one screen and the game on the other. But so far that's not much.

Touch-Screen:
This is perhaps the most gimicky part of it thus far. Having to control things using the stylus is plain uncomfortable. On a nice side the touch screen is extremely responsive. More so than those crappy sign pads that they have in stores nowadays for credit cards.

Wireless Connections:
Short-Range:
Short range wireless connections are responsive to say the least. Fast and responsive. Perhaps it's greatest ability is to just blow time away in a boring class using pictochat
WI-FI:
The N-DS has 802.11b wireless capabilities to play games over the net. Probably this is the best use for emulaters. People can be playing games from an emulater and from the real system with out any compatibility issues. It's a great feature.

Microphone:
I can't speak much about it yet because of lack of experience, but if the voice recognition technology is good enough it could make for some great game play.. ex. actually having to speak spells in a game to use them.

Backward Compatibility:
This system is fully backwards compatible with GBA but not GB(P), or GBC. The gba port also could double as a expansion slot for something else...?

N-DS GAMES:
This is where i come down hard on the system. Currently most the "games" released on it are technical demos. Any jerk from #dsdev could have made them. For what real games there, there are isn't much to say. There's Super Mario 64 DS which is mostly what it should have been to begin with. The controls in this game are borked because of no analog joystick, no z-button, and no c-buttons. If you can get over the controls the game is good. I've already beaten it. There's a couple other games not really worth mentioning. The metroid demo that came with the system was entertaining but showed us clearly why a metroid game was never released on the N64.

Last Impressions:
For those who bought this sytem, like me, you mostly bought a technical demo. I personally believe that nintendo was spending alot in R&D for the next systems and needed a quick return on it. This system won't ever get any really good games on it. Why you might ask? Nintendo has already announced the GBA2 which is what is really supposed to compete with the PSP. So what will become of the N-DS? It'll mostly be a PDA with a few mindless(pointless) games to waste time on. If anyone is a true nintendo fanatic this might be worth it at $150 or less.