Play n Trade

IT’S PHYSICALLY SMALLER, BUT IT’S TOO BIG TO IGNORE

Posted by Play N Trade staff writer, 8th Apr 2009

Nintendo just can’t leave well enough alone.  They created the world’s most popular hand-held gaming system, the Game Boy, and then they decided “It’s just not perfect, yet.”  So, they went back to the drawing board and created the Game Boy Pocket.  It was just like the Game Boy, only a whole lot smaller and with a better screen and battery life.  Thus began their pattern of “improving” their portable systems.  It could be argued that each new “Game Boy” system was simply an improvement on the previous version.  They did keep using the name.  After the Pocket came one that was a little bigger but with a color screen!  Plus, it would still play all your older Game Boy games.  Madness!  Then, they gave it a different look by putting the buttons beside the screen and improving the power of the system.  They called it Game Boy Advance.  It was well-loved and bought by many.  Still, it had some problems.  The screen was hard to see unless you were in direct sunlight or under a bright lamp.  So, Nintendo created the Game Boy Advance SP (SP = Special).  It was now a clamshell design like many cell phones to protect the screen while it’s in your bag or pocket.  And, more importantly, they added a built in light.  Even the first light wasn’t good enough for the perfectionists at Nintendo, though.  There was a later version of the SP that had a light with multiple brightness options and a sharper screen.)  Next in line was the much smaller, but instantly forgettable Game Boy Micro.  It was tiny, just like the name would make you believe.  They even went so far as to give it interchangeable faceplates so that you could customize it to suit your own style (assuming you could find and purchase that mythical faceplate).  I think there was a watch company in the 80’s that tried that.  It worked well for inexpensive watches.  Not so much for the more expensive game system.  Oh, and did I forget to mention that it wouldn’t play older Game Boy games?  It would only work with Game Boy Advance specific titles.  (To be fair, the older games were actually larger than the system.)  But then, Nintendo shocked the world.  The next hand-held upgrade wouldn’t be called Game Boy.  This was to be a revolutionary change that would rock the world.  Nintendo said “If one screen is awesome, then two will be awesomer, and what if one of them is touchable!”  People all over the world laughed and said, “Oh, Nintendo.  You’re so wacky!  That’s just a silly gimmick.”  Then, the Nintendo DS (DS = Dual Screen) hit the shelves and… didn’t rock the world all that much.  It was a good system, but there weren’t a lot of games for it.  Plus, it was kind of bulky and really not all that cool looking.  A fruit-named company was wowing the world with its slim and trim electronics designs, and Nintendo said “We know what to do!”  And so, they overhauled and pimped the design to create the Nintendo DS Lite.  This time, it rocked the world like they had promised.  It currently sits as the best-selling game system in the world.  But again, Nintendo wasn’t quite finished.  They wanted more fun things to play with.  Sure, using a touch-screen was cool, but what if you could control it with your face!  And what if you could take pictures, video chat with a friend, listen to music, and switch games without having to turn the system off!  (That last one is a trick to keep you from doing something besides playing games!)  With these ideas in mind, they created the new Nintendo DSi.  (Apparently, the “i” in DSi stands for “individual” indicating the “personal experience for the user” and has nothing to do with the naming patterns of the aforementioned fruit-named company.  Uh-huh.  Riiiiight.) The only major downside to the DSi is the lack of support for the Game Boy Advance games and for some of the extra stuff people used that slot for.  (The add-on for Guitar Hero: On Tour, for example.)  If you don’t have a DS or DS Lite, you should definitely go for the DSi.  If you already have a DS Lite, you’ll probably be fine unless you are just dying to play some of the DSi only downloadable games.  (And if that’s the case, you might consider seeing a specialist.  Writing a paper on someone who is dying over the lack of playing specific games will probably make them world-famous.  Or a laughing-stock.)

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