It was my childhood love for Nintendo’s handheld consoles that lead to the purchase of the Nintendo DS. I had an amazing time with both the GameBoy Color and the GameBoy Advance and expected another amazing experience. Nintendo did not disappoint. The handheld console combined the new qualities of a touch screen with cross-compatibility for old GameBoy Advance games. There was an option to use either the top or bottom screen for GameBoy Advance games. I chose the top screen for GameBoy Advance games as a default.

In addition, new features such as Pictochat and DS Download allowed for multiplayer fun without a link cable. Pictochat was pretty much an AOL chat box only for people with their DS in close proximity to each other. While this limited function was not too great at parties where you could already talk face-to-face, it was great for road trips on the school bus (where everyone had to sit down) and when playing on different floors of the same building (depending on the construction material). The DS download option allows other players that have a DS, but not the DS game to play to with the player that has the game. This is limited to certain multiplayer games that have the feature enabled.

The newest feature of the DS was dual screen capability (part of the handheld console’s name, Dual Screen) with the bottom screen being a touch screen. The device also came with a stylus to touch the bottom screen with (Pretty revolutionary to me since this was before the stylus came to mobile phones). Two more buttons, X and Y, were added to the already existing A and B buttons giving the right side button layout a configuration similar to a PlayStation 2 controller, except without the triangle, circle, X, and square. The start and select button were also crammed in on the top right side, which had the benefit of making them easily accessible. The power button was placed right above the D-pad on the left side. While this made the power button easy to reach when you wanted to turn on the DS, it also made the power button easy to press accidentally in the middle of playing. Nintendo rectified the issue later in the Nintendo DS Lite by having the power button on the side of the DS (Though they had to change the trapezoid shape of the original DS into a rectangular prism).

The Nintendo DS marked Nintendo’s movement away from cartridges in their handheld consoles. They replaced the outdated technology with new chip-based hardware that appeared similar to an SD card. The new DS games were thinner than the GameBoyAdvance cartridges making them easier to store. With the upgraded hardware came the option of wirelessly playing with others, a welcomed improvement since I did not know many people who had link cables.

Some of the early games utilized the touch screen to great effect. Kirby Canvas Curse and Pokémon Dash both required heavy use of the stylus to play the game. I bought Kirby Canvas Curse to continue my love for Kirby games since Kirby Nightmare in Dreamland and Kirby Air Ride. Canvas Curse turned the original Kirby into a round pink sphere without the arms and legs for tons of rolling fun. I bought Pokémon Dash for the same reason of loving the series and wanting to see if they would do anything new with it. In Pokémon Dash, the genre is transformed from a turn-based fighting game to a triathlon-like racing game.