Gaming review: Two-in-one Nintendo DS is both a bit puzzling and dazzling

By Mark Rahner
Seattle Times staff reporter

NINTENDO The Nintendo DS, $149.99, the next step in the evolution of Game Boy, launches tomorrow.

E-mail this article Print this article Search archive Most read articles Most e-mailed articles

If the game addict in your family is talking about seeing double, hold off on the intervention. It's not booze, it's the new Nintendo DS ($149.99), available tomorrow.

The next step in the handheld Game Boy's evolutionary line is frankly a puzzling one. It has two screens.

We're not sure the gaming world was exactly crying out for a platform with two screens. But Nintendo, whose American headquarters are in Redmond, has guaranteed a Cabbage-Patchian holiday frenzy the old-fashioned way: by intentionally creating a shortage, releasing only a million by the end of the year. The move also gives the DS the jump on Sony's more hotly anticipated (and grown-up-oriented) handheld PSP, due in the spring.

The company has made the Redmond store Game Crazy the first in the world to offer the new toy. Located at 8867 161st St. N.E., the store will begin activities and giveaways at 10 tonight and begin selling the DS at midnight.

The DS is roughly double the size of the Game Boy Advance SP. Opening like a really thick checkbook, it's got a screen on each half. The bottom one is a touch screen that works with your fingers or, if you've got sausagelike adult flanges, the toothpick-sized stylus supplied.

The action on the bottom screen can be an extension of the familiar action on the top one — for instance, with maps or helping control character movement. But it also has a "PictoChat" feature that allows short-distance wireless interaction among up to 16 users — approximately 30-100 feet. You can send written or drawn messages along with multiplayer gaming.

At last, in the middle of an intense game of "Metroid Prime," we can send a lovingly hand-scrawled sad-face instead of a ready-made emoticon or those sideways-punctuation expressions.

In addition, its game cartridges are wafer-thin, but the DS will also accommodate Game Boy cartridges.

With a slightly higher resolution than its forebears, its impressive 3-D visuals are a universe away from the blocky stuff.

Mark Rahner: 206-464-8259 or mrahner@seattletimes.com

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

E-mail this article

Print this article

Search archive

More Entertainment & the Arts headlines...