I think I like Oscar’s Nintendo DS more than he does. He got Karts for christmas and I was blown away by how easy it was to set up with my wireless router so that I could play against other people on the web. Obviously I always come last.
But one of the hinges on the DS broke recently. Looks like a design flaw to me (considering the new DS Lite has a much meatier hinge). Glue would not work. I spent hours searching for replacement parts. Finally, I found a guy on eBay in Pennsylvania who sold replacement cases and would ship to Ireland. $24 plus shipping and a week or so later, I had the case. Then I discovered I needed a special screwdriver to open it. This time Lik-Sang came to the rescue and for a few Euro I got the screwdriver in the post less than a week later.
Last night we took apart the old one, moved all the bits over to the new case and were shocked to find that it worked! Fiddley as f**k but a damn sight cheaper than buying a new one.
But it got me thinking about the DS. It has two ARM CPUs and the main one has about the same welly as a Palm Tungsten T. It has two screens, one of which is touch senstitive and it has Wi-Fi. Would it not strike Nintendo to offer a web-browser as a plug-in cartridge? Or an MP3 player or a multitude of things other than games which would make use of all its features? I know it is outside of their comfort zone and they don’t want to make the mistakes that Nokia made with the N-Gage. But still, it is a PDA in all but software. I fell asleep with that thought in my mind. Anyway, I start checking blogs this morning and what do I find? Opera are releasing a browser for the DS!! Fan-bloody-tastic. Obviously, I ’ll be keeping that cartridge for myself and not letting Oscar anywhere near it. I can’t wait to browse the web at a wireless hot-spot in an airport using a kids toy. And Nintendo are going to release a digital TV receiver for it too. Not so awesome for us as we are now about 8 years behind on getting digital terrestrial tv in Ireland but would be tres cool for Freeview viewers in the UK.
PSP my bum.
[tags]Nintendo DS, DS Parts, DS Karts, Opera, Wi-Fi, PSP, Lik-Sang[/tags]
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