Collection essentials #592-595: Nintendo DS, Nintendo DS Lite, Nintendo DSi & Nintendo DSi XL

Nintendo’s Game Boy utterly dominated the handheld gaming scene for well over a decade, starting in 1989. Perhaps because of its success, and also perhaps for the sake of low prices, in the latter part of that time Game Boy devices were able to get away with being rather underpowered. The original Game Boy launched with roughly comparable specs to Nintendo’s primary home console at the time, the NES. But as home console technology rapidly improved, the power of Game Boy machines increased at a much slower rate. NES and Game Boy were both 8-bit machines, but 1998’s Game Boy Color (despite some improvements) was still only 8 bits while Nintendo’s current console had jumped all the way up to 64. The Game Boy Advance in 2001 was noticeably more powerful, but it was still more or less comparable to the power of a Super Nintendo, which was a machine that was only really a year older than the original Game Boy. 

A big change was due for the handheld market. 2004 is the year when it would happen. The highly successful Game Boy Advance merely turned three years old that year, but Nintendo was already prepared to push the envelope. They announced the Nintendo DS, a far more advanced and technologically-impressive device, their first major handheld game system to not bear the “Game Boy” name. 

So what sets the Nintendo DS apart? Of course, there’s the super obvious fact that the system has two screens. Not only that, but the one on the bottom is a touch screen, and since this was before the smartphone era, that sort of thing wasn’t very common yet. This opened up many gameplay possibilities. The system would include a stylus to be used with the touch screen, as it wasn’t meant to be touched with your bare fingers (though that does work, it’s not as precise and risks the screen getting dirty faster). 

The DS also has a main menu with a variety of features, such as a clock, calendar and alarm. There’s a chatroom feature called “Pictochat” in which users can wirelessly connect to other DS systems (no more link cable accessory required) to communicate. There’s “Download Play” so that you can join in with local friends to partake in certain multiplayer games by downloading data from one of their games so you don’t have to own your own copy. And a nice icing on the cake is that the DS is backwards-compatible with Game Boy Advance cartridges, though it’s not compatible with original Game Boy or Game Boy Color cartridges or most Game Boy Advance accessories (including the link cable for multiplayer). The DS was also the first major gaming system to be able to connect wirelessly to the internet via Wi-Fi, allowing for easy online multiplayer.

Game Boy Advance cartridges were already tiny, but Nintendo DS takes the shrinkage even a step further, as its games come on remarkably miniscule square-shaped “game cards” that are barely an inch wide or tall. These little game cards packed a big punch, though. In terms of power, DS is not as powerful as the GameCube which was Nintendo’s main console at the time, but it is roughly comparable to the previous generation’s Nintendo 64 and generally a little more impressive. The biggest difference is, despite the small sizes of the game cards, they can hold far more space than was possible in those big Nintendo 64 cartridges, alleviating a lot of the issues which caused major disadvantages for the Nintendo 64 against its competitors using CDs that could hold far more space. 

Despite Nintendo’s persistent dominance in the handheld gaming sphere, there were some doubts about the Nintendo DS early on. A major factor was that Sony, after a decade of dominating the home console scene, was finally putting out their first handheld at around the same time, which boasted many features and more-impressive graphics. An unstoppable force was finally coming to take on the immovable object, that being Nintendo’s handheld gaming supremacy. Additionally, while the original DS was technologically impressive for its day, it wasn’t the prettiest-looking device out there. It looked a little too big for a handheld, and it felt less portable due to its size and weight, as it wasn’t so easy to shove it into a small pocket and felt like a brick when in one. The initial game library for the first few months wasn’t too bad, but it lacked an obvious “killer game” to rope people in.

Despite the doubters, DS had a pretty good first full year in 2005, in which over 10 different games released that went on to sell over a million copies. But that turned out to be just a warm-up, as 2006 proved to be the year that the DS skyrocketed to incredible new heights. Perhaps the biggest reason is that Nintendo would produce a much-improved new model of the system: the Nintendo DS Lite. This redesigned DS was far better than the original in practically every way. It wasn’t so bulky, it looked much nicer, the buttons felt nicer, and most importantly the screens were brighter and much prettier. The DS Lite won over many more customers. I remember one friend of mine who initially didn’t care for the DS at all, but couldn’t help but be impressed once the Lite came out. 

The DS became a runaway success, and as of now it is the third-best-selling game system of all-time, and number one when it comes to dedicated handheld game systems. A key component to its success was that it had extremely wide-ranging appeal to casual gamers of all age groups. The touch screen made it very approachable, and many games aimed at casual audiences sold in the millions such as Nintendogs, Brain Age and Animal Crossing.

A third version of the DS hardware probably wasn’t truly necessary, but we’d get one in 2009 called the Nintendo DSi. This version has some significant differences; most immediately noticeable are two cameras, and now users can take photos and use the touch screen to fiddle around with them. The screens are bigger and even brighter than the Lite, with a difference that is quite noticeable side-by-side. The DSi also had an online storefront so users could purchase and download games and apps by connecting to the internet. It’s not all positive for the DSi, though, as this version sacrificed the GBA cartridge slot, making it incompatible with those games. This also can be a problem for certain DS games which utilize the slot in various ways. A year later, the final rendition of the original DS came out, the DSi XL, which as it sounds is pretty much the same thing as the DSi only with far bigger screens. There isn’t clearly an objective “best” model of the DS, but for the majority of the system’s library, I’d say the DSi or DSi Xl are the best options.

As a Nintendo kid, the DS was a huge part of my gaming life for many years. I don’t remember how I first heard that it was coming out, whether it was on the internet somewhere or in the pages of Nintendo Power magazine. But I do know that I was immediately impressed and knew that I needed one. I bought one on launch day, I supposed before game system scarcity at launch was really a thing. I immediately loved the touch screen, which I controlled with my finger for a while before I realized you’re supposed to only use the stylus. I also bought the DS Lite and DSi on their launch days as well, happily. I spent countless hours on those machines on various games I’ll be covering in the coming weeks, as well as for playing GBA games as well.

The original “fat” DS and DS Lite you see in the photo are not my originals from back in the day. My younger sisters quickly took an interest in my original DS, and used it to the point where they scratched up the touch screen real good, so my parents decided to buy me a new DS and let them keep my old one with the scratched-up screen. I didn’t wind up keeping that replacement DS, as I’m pretty sure I sold it to buy the Lite, but I think someone in my family still has that original fat model that I bought way back in 2004. As for my original DS Lite, it got pretty beat up and broken from getting dropped once or twice. The DSi you see in the photo, though, is indeed my original.

The DS is most definitely still worth checking out. Because the hardware is pretty unique, it’s not easy to faithfully port or remake many DS games onto other platformers, so that gives more incentive to actually get and play one. With such a great library filled with games that I have treasured memories with, it’s obvious that DS was going to be on this list. I just happen to be the type of maniac who wants to have all four versions of it! Stay tuned for upcoming posts about my DS favorites, and feel free to comment with some of yours.