On Sunday evening, Nintendo held a special event in order to give gold and platinum Club Nintendo members a preview of the soon-to-be-released DSi. I was unable to make it, unfortunately, but our own man-on-the-scene, Matthew Green, was in attendance to give us the lowdown on what's what with the third iteration of the DS.
While he was largely underwhelmed by the presentation, he did come away with a nice bit of information with which to share. We knew some odds and ends about some of this stuff, such as the region locking and calculator programs for DSiWare, but there's some other goodies in store for those who lay out the cash to help Nintendo dominate the handheld market for awhile longer.
As we've heard before, Nintendo DSiWare will come in a variety of costs, including free: 0, 500, or 800 Nintendo Points ($0, $5, or $8) being the present plan. One might imagine this could increase at some point in the future, but for now, those are the price points you're looking at. At the very least, it's good to know that you won't be dropping a full ten bucks on any one item just yet.
We've heard that Nintendo is bringing back Opera, but it won't be included in the system's hardware. Fortunately, if you're eager to browse the web right out of the box, then you'll be in luck, as it will be available for download on launch day.
As for the calculators, you have your choice of oldschool Super Mario Bros., or something fresher with Animal Crossing's Tom Nook tallying your bells for a nominal fee.
I believe this part is new-- as a bonus for buying a DSi, you get ten dollars worth of Nintendo Points, i.e. 1000. That's a pretty sweet deal, but what can you spend them on? Funny you should ask, as our dreams are about to come true.
Unless I missed it previously, then the big piece of good news to surface from this event is that downloadable Game Boy and Game Boy Advance titles are coming. I'll just let that soak in for a minute. Finally, we may have a shot at playing some portable classics again, and without the hassle of gambling with eBay's counterfeits or peeling stickers off of GameStop's cartridges... which could also sometimes be counterfeits.
To start with, however, there will only be first-party Nintendo titles. Which, if you ask me, there is absolutely no problem with. Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins, Donkey Kong '94, The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening, perhaps Tetris... yeah, we're good here.
Just like everything else, though, these will be region locked. As a plus, you'll be able to save and run the games from an SD Card-- a feature we're still waiting on for the Wii. What's more, for those worried about space, the DSi will support SD Cards of capacities greater than 2GB, which is the current limit for the Wii.
I can't recall if this has been mentioned before, I know some mention of a soft reset of the hardware has, but a quick tap of the power button will operate in the same way as the "reset" button of consoles throughout history, returning you back to the main DS menu-- a feature I've long wished had been included in the previous versions.
So clearly, Nintendo is not only listening, but they're reading my mind, too. That's great! Well, unless they start sifting for ideas...
Note: I'll be watching you, Nintendo. Partly because, well, that's my job. But we'll all know the other reason why...
So now, the only remaining question is, has any of this swayed any of you to start hoarding cash for a DSi? Admit it, the downloadable Game Boy and Game Boy Advance games was the tipping point, wasn't it?
EDITOR'S NOTE: Nintendo called ***** up today and requested that it be known that some of the above information is not officially announced for North America and as a result, may not be completely accurate.
Specifically, they told us that you will not be able to play GB and GBA games directly from your SD memory card. Also, downloadable GB and GBA games have not officially been announced for North America (only Japan, so far).
Nintendo is holding their GDC 2009 key note speech tomorrow. Expect to be informed of the complete capabilities of DSi tomorrow. As always, ***** will keep you updated.
. Someone lock?