In fact, without Game Boy Advance games capability, the DSi seems like a big step backward for Nintendo. The DS Lite's biggest strength for me was being able to tow around two games at once - one classic GBA game and one newer DS game. This loss of functionality alone made the DSi a hard sell for me. While the DSi is more Wii-like in its online connectivity (with an online store and internet browser), I have yet to see killer-app software made exclusively for the DSi - something that would force me to buy the hardware.
Instead of an awesome gaming coming along for the DSi, I instead find myself upgrading for a different reason: my DS Lite broke. While technically still functioning, a faulty D-Pad and a cracked hinge finally gave me enough reason to buy a new DS. I sprung for a DSi for no real reason other than I could, and I'm glad I did.
Not even a week old, I have found a new love in my DSi. While I continue to avoid many of my older, well-played DS games, it is the newer functionality of the DSi that I am enjoying.
For one, the hardware isn't that bad. A little thinner than the DS and perhaps a little lighter, it feels great as a tech toy. The larger screens are the same resolution as the DS Lite's which means those 256 x 192 pixels are stretched out quite a bit, making the DSi' screen's a bit pixelated. Still, the larger size is appreciated for my fat fingers. The touch screen seems much more responsive too, closer to an iPod touch than the older DS model.
The internet browser on the DSi is not half bad. While no Mobile Safari, it's fairly capable of handling "Web 1.0" and text-heavy pages, although the screen resolution means you see a very tiny speck of any webpage at once. The camera on the DSi can pretty much suck it: photo quality is on par with a 2000-era cell phone. This is sad, because the ability to instantly post pictures to Facebook is definitely a selling point that perked my interest in the DSi. It will suffice for quick, random snaps.
Thus far, from a hardware persective, the DSi is about what I expected: a marginal upgrade over the DS Lite with a media-heavy focus.
By far my favorite feature of the DSi so far is a free application available from the online store called "Flipnote Studios." This application is the Mario Paint of the new millenium. As where I spent more time on Mario Paint than any other game on the Super Nintendo back in the 90's, I can see myself losing months of my life to Flipnote Studio: it's a quick-sketch notepad that can be "flipped" through to create basic animation. The concept is simple, the idea basic in every way possible, but it has exposed a creative side of me that has been dormant for nearly a decade now. While rudimentary animation is the most likely outcome of my little sketches, I find it useful to storyboard writing ideas, plot points in my fiction, or as a vehicle to express my nearly impossible-to-understand imagination in visual form. In short, I now feel that Flipnote Studios is the reason I bought a Nintendo DSi.
And as long as I'm cranking out little short animations, I'm okay with that.
See some of my work here:
B3 out.
No comments:
Post a Comment