Wigglers Nest: State of the Nation DS Down Under

My Second Column is up and this one is sort of a Two-Parter with the next one coming out after the DS Arrives here in Australia. Also thats what this column is about the DS in Australia, Enjoy! Wiggler’s Nest by Lutomes

Welcome to my column, this will be the first of 2 segments covering the DS both pre-launch and post launch.

Right now there is one week remaining until the DS launches in Australia. There is still a poor game release list, however at least some of the stores are offering some better deals on the hardware and bundles. The current deal I’m on is a DS, game, accessory pack (inc stylus and headphones) and some discount vouchers for only $250 – damn fine deal if you ask me, call your local Toys R Us if you like the sound of it. What remains to be seen is how well it will actually sell here in Australia. Between my brother and I there will be a copy of Mario 64 DS and Wario Ware Touched, so combined with some of our old GBA games we should be ok until some real games come out.

Nintendo Australia has actually been advertising the DS at least, there was some heavy promotion at the Big Day Out, and more recently there have been some TV commercials. While I have been unfortunate enough not to have seen the commercials first hand, I have been told they were run during the Simpsons, CSI and Home Away and were the ads featured in the US “”Touching is Good”” campaign. To me this is perfect news, they are advertising in a good timeslot, and using non-kiddy promotional material. If you want to take a look at the ads you can view the US versions of the commercials Clip 1, Clip 2 and Clip 3. Now while this isn’t anywhere near as much effort (aka Money) as Sony is going to be putting into marketing their console, it’s a heck of a lot better than what Nintendo Australia does. So we can at least be grateful for that.

Now what about in-store promotion, well most of the retailers now have some kind of preorder pack, or at least some flyers on what they are going to be selling on launch. I remember when the DS launch date was first announced, I went around asking at a few stores what they would be selling it for – most of them said they weren’t sure but at least they knew of the DS. However one store which shall remain unnamed told me that she had talked to the Sony rep just that morning and that the console was going to be released in March and not Feb 24 like I had said. Now at this stage I was refraining all my urges to jump the counter and finish her off with the ball point pen I had in my pocket. I managed to calm down and explain that the DS was basically the next Gameboy and not a Sony product.

Now in the world of DS speculation there has been some interesting rumors to come out of the press. The first is a USB Wireless adaptor that will supposedly allow you to play DS games over the internet. In the weeks since a picture of this cropped up there has been no official word on it unfortunately, however I still remain optimistic that this or a similar device will come on the market. Nintendo has said they want hassle free play over the internet, and this would allow it to work without worry about compatibility with the hundreds of other wireless LAN cards already on the market. The next was a trademark registered by Nintendo in Japan “”V-Pocket”” now the main speculation is this will be the name for the Play Yan device that allows you to play video and music through the GBA cartridge slot. Though the exact use of this trademark is still in the unknown we all love to speculate.

What’s left to do now is just waiting till I finally get my hands on the DS. I’ll play till the batteries die than come here to post my impressions while the unit recharges. Though I have had a bit of a go in store, I’ve been trying not to play so that I get a fresh experience on 24 Feb. See you then.