Import Review: Nintendo DSi – Everything you need to know

Four years ago, Nintendo let the original Nintendo DS loose on the Japanese public. In 2005, the rest of the world joined in on the fun. So now, nearly 4 years later and despite Nintendo having already released one update to the DS line, it has introduced another. While the DS Lite turned the DS from an ugly duckling to a sleek and stylish piece of consumer electronics, the DSi takes the DS and adds more fun and games to the package. But is the upgrade worth your money? More inside

So, in short, what is a Nintendo DSi? Its the third iteration of the DS line its not a new console by any stretch of the imagination and it retains the core processor, graphics ability and even the boot up screen hasnt changed that much. But the DSi takes the DS Lite and adds bigger screens, louder speakers, two cameras, media playback, built in web browser and DSi Ware however, this all comes at the expense of the GBA slot. But youre not here for a list of features, you want to know how they work. So lets continue…

First off, lets talk about the DSi losing the shine of the DS Lite- yes that outer shiny shell is gone, replaced with a matte and slightly rough casing. If you have one of the dual-toned DS Lites youll get the feeling of the bottom and inside of the casing all over the DSi. This means while you wont be spending your time wiping away finger prints the DSi feels like it may get scuffed rather easy (I have already collected a few). The system feels sturdy but the design will be a subjective thing as the DSi is plain as day. Thats not to say it’s ugly, just that youll either love the new design or hate it.

As the pictures suggest the DSi is slightly taller and wider then a DS Lite, but youll only ever notice it side by side. However, even though its taller and bigger the DSi is slimmer and thats mainly thanks to the lack of a Gameboy Advance slot.

The build quality of the DSi is what you would expect from Nintendo, sturdy and firm. The much maligned hinge from the DS Lite has been binned and replaced with a less snappy but more resilient hinge so I doubt well see any broken hinge reports like we saw when the Lite launched.

So now let’s look past the outside of the DSi and open it up. At first glance youll look at it and go hey whats different apart from the two huge looking screens. Turned off, the screens look absolutely huge, like two liquid crystal lakes waiting to be filled with that pixely goodness. Now, youll probably go to the side to turn it on like a Lite, nearly everyone I have given it to has done so and taken minute to look for the power button; but that is placed next to the bottom screen on the left. Dont worry about hitting it by accident though, as it takes a fair amount of pressure to hit and doesnt get in the way when playing.

As I mentioned before the DSi boots up pretty much the same as the DS and DS Lite, the warning screen and that familiar bing is there with a slight change where the i appears on the DS logo. The first thing youll notice is the new menu but well get back into that later. So how do games look on bigger screens with the same resolution? The answer here is absolutely fine, there is no stretching of pixels, no borders or anything like that, just two bigger screens filled with colour and on some games like Kirby Super Star Ultra looking like living breathing moving cartoon it simply is awesome. The screen now has five levels of brightness with the highest one perhaps a little too bright with colours looking a bit washed out in some lighting situations, the next one down however is the same brightness as the Lite which wasnt that bad to begin with.

So one thing on the Lite that disappointed me was the speakers, they were a step back on the DS Phat and much too quiet to use anywhere in public. With the DSi Nintendo have not only ramped up the speaker volume, but the quality of the speakers is clearer and sharper. The method of volume adjustment has changed to a toggle switch on the left hand side of the unit; users of the Gameboy Micro will be familiar with this. The volume switch also has a nice stealth feature for when you want to play some late night DSi, simply hold down own the volume rocker and the system will boot up with no sound. The other is a welcome addition, simply hold down select while pressing up or down and you can change the brightness. Headphones and microphone support have not been altered as the port is the same.

The most obvious new feature on the DSi apart from the new look are the twin cameras the system has. Featured on the inside of the hinge and the top of the case, these two VGA cameras provide you with the ability to take photos either pointing at yourself or away from yourself. The cameras are not meant to replace your digital camera and are even lower resolution then some mobile phone cameras, the reason for this perhaps is that the DSs CPU cannot handle photo processing any larger than this even with the boost in power. (The DSis CPU runs faster on DSi features such as the camera, all DS games still run underclocked back at the same speed). The idea of the cameras on the DSi is to have fun with your photos, its not meant for the family portrait but in fact the camera features a bunch of different on the fly editing effects for you to edit whats being displayed on screen.

Picture 1: Mario Statue up close, Snake sneaks in behind.
Picture 2: City on Smoggy Day.
Picture 3: Designed to show, fore, middle and background as well as text.

So instead of taking a photo then playing around with peoples faces or drawing genitals on your friend you can do it in real time as the camera lens is on, you can prod and poke peoples faces and make their eyes bigger, colour replace people shirts by simply tapping on them, add pre made moustaches and anime eyes on people and the camera will detect all in real time, we had a few problems getting it to work in some lighting conditions but in others it was more favourable. Other modes including comparing how much two people look alike (in percentage) and merging two peoples faces together. Of course if youre not into all this fancy pants photo editing the DSi can just take photos either via the touch screen or using either of the triggers. Photos can be saved to either SD Card Gallery or an inbuilt memory gallery as the DSi features 256 blocks of inbuilt memory. This memory is shared with the DSi Ware and inbuilt memory on the sound recorder.

The other big audio part of the DSi is the music player and audio recording, yes we refrained from calling it a MP3 player not only because it doesnt play them but it doesnt work as a MP3 player in the traditional sense. You cant close the lid and listen to music so unless you can listen to music with a DSi open as a music player its rather limited. However thats not to say the addition is mostly useless it works and works well but more as a novelty, with the trigger buttons allowing you to edit in effects while music is playing and the touch screen allowing you to change the pitch and speed of music played back. Also included in the software is the ability to change what the music sounds like to a couple of predetermined effects, you can make it sound like a radio, like its in a hall, trumpet, chip tunes or even remove the voice. These effects work better on some songs then others, but as I mentioned previously its for novelty value only.

These functions also transfer to the voice recorder, the voice recorder wont replace your dictation machine either as clips are limited to 10 seconds only. Again its really only there for a novelty and while you probably wont whip it out to try it all the time its great to show off to people. Certainly no reason to run out and get a DSi though, the next two features were covering here might be.

The other big addition to the DSi, is the online store with DS Ware. Currently there is nothing on the store apart from a free Opera Browser, which like the original version previously released on cartridges is rather slow but still not entirely unusable. Getting onto the store is easy enough, simply tap on the icon in the menu and if you havent setup your Wi-Fi it will ask you to do so, if you have, into the store you go. Like the Wii Shopping Channel the store has a catchy tune in the background and navigates pretty quickly depending on where you are connected. Well have more on the DS Store and DSi Ware in a different review as soon as it launches.

Pictochat and Download Play return to the main menu as well but it seems Nintendo was a bit lazy on this front and has just patched in the old versions. Pictochat can now send colour in the form of a rainbow but other than that the interface for Pictochat and Download Play are unchanged. Perhaps Nintendo forgot to do this, perhaps they dont care, but to see the old DS interface creep back in is jarring. Perhaps this will be changed in a future firmware update, yes the DSi has those too.

Speaking of Wi-Fi, while the DSi menu, Shop and Browser can all connect via the updated WPA security, all older games will still use the original WEP settings this is due to the Wi-Fi connection software actually being implemented per card rather than on the system. Some game may support it in the future but well have to wait and see on that.

Nintendo says that battery life on the DSi is down, and if youre using the camera, music player or the browser id say thats the case as these functions seem to use more of the CPU. This, coupled with the bigger screens and the increased (optional) brightness it seems recharging is more frequent, but if youre just playing DS games the decrease is less noticeable.

So is the DSi any good? Well its a DS with a ton of new features and possibilities thrown into it for what will probably be the same price. Should you jump now and import one from Japan like I did? Probably not, there is serious language barrier not to mention the lock on the DS Store. If youre in the market for a DS, it may be prudent to wait or you could just jump in and get a DS Lite they are the same console after all in essence. Should you upgrade from your DS Lite, well thats up to you.

The fact remains that Nintendo has again taken the DS platform to another level, while there is a couple of niggles, or you may not like the new matte design on the DSi, it offers a wealth of new experiences for you to have on the go, but at the same time it feels like youre a test dummy for something bigger with Nintendos implementation of some things experimental.

Look for the DSi to hit Aussie shops sometime in the second half of next year.