Just when you thought Nintendo was becoming a stagnant they come out with the kind of groundbreaking innovation that made them the former king of the console.
the nintendo ds, short for dual screen hits american stores in 11 days to unpresedented demand for any handheld in history. the ds is proving so popular that several companies have stopped taking pre orders for the device, some 4 million units were originally destines to be manufactured by nintendo but word now is that the company is frantically trying to double that count becuase of the high demand.
The ds features several never before seen design elements for a hand held system. by dar the most unique of those features is the touch screen. game testers from gamespot magazine were recently wowed by the functionality of this feature when they tested an unfinished version of metriod prime hunters. In the words of the gamespot testers "it was like using a mouse in a PC first person shooter". The posibilities are limitless. In another game you had to blow out candles, yes you read right, you could literally blow out digital candles o the screen. the main difference between this and all other systems though is the unique perspective that two screens provide. metriod prime hunters (which btw comes packaged free with the hardware as a playable demo) the lower screen acts bascially like a pc touchpad giving u a virtual mouse, in ridge racer the racing takes place in the upper screen while the lower screen houses the map and a ton of stats, in the upcoming castlevania the lower screen lets u select and use magic items and weaponf automatically without having to pause, you simply tap the screen with your finger or the included stylus.
the DS comes priced at 149.99 usd and this price includes one free game metriod prime hunters-first hunt , it has an estimated 10 to 12 hours gameplay on a single charge.
