The new Nintendo DSi, released today.

**Mrs. Morris** · 04-05-2009, 02:42 PM

Alright, so first thing I did of course was run to Walmart and buy it. Fuck you anti-walmart bastards, my mom works there and I got almost $20 off the price with her discount.

So far, I'm going to have to give it a 8/10 and the reason at the moment that it's not 10/10 is because they took away the ability to play GBA games, and without the GBA slot this means NO RUMBLE PACK and NO GUITAR HERO. Boo. Not that I've ever experienced either of those, but still. That's just 1 point. The other 1 point is the matte finish. I hate the feel of chalk, and the matte finish gives me goosebumps when I feel it. :(

The differences between the DS and DSi become apparent as soon as I take the game out of the box. Other than the obvious camera on the outside. The matte finish is the first thing I notice when I grab it, as the feel of it is really just....bleh. I like the glossy finish of the other systems better.

So, I open it up, turn it on, and it walks me through the whole "welcome, who are you?" type thing. I make a user name, make a 'phrase' (Haven't figured out what for yet?) tell it my birthday, country, language, all that fun stuff.

The first thing it wants me to do after that, is take a picture. YAY. That's why I bought this thing, right? Cause it has a camera...Wait no...TWO cameras. Duh. So, there I am on the screen, and it's ready to take the picture. Uh...No, I don't feel like taking my picture right now. Lets switch this up. *clicks the switch button* Sweet. Now it's focused on the outside camera. I point it at my mom, and SNAP. Voila. My mom is now my DSi background. Before taking me to the main screen, it reminds me that if I take more pictures that it will alternate between these to use as my background picture every time I turn the game on. I like this.

The quality of the picture, even though is only .3mp, actually looks very sharp on the DSi screen. I'm happy with this as well.

Nintendo DSi Sound

So....Now what? Here I am at the main screen...Hmm....Well, I just seen what the camera does, so lets click this bird thing. "Nintendo DSi Sound". What is this, sound setting? *click* I haven't got a clue what this is. But there are sound waves at the top, and the wiggle according to the sound it hears. Oh okay, so it listens to me. Neat.....Wait....Did I just hear something squeak? Wtf was that?

So after a few minutes of discussing possibilities of this squeaking noise with my mom, I figure out it's a playback of what it's hearing....Except really fast and really high pitched. Wut? So I look back down at the bottom screen....OH. It all makes sense now. There's a bird sitting there. This bird is MOCKING me! We laughed a lot once we figured it out. Too cute.

It's more than just a bird mocking you though. There's the option to play music with your SD card, or to record and edit a sound. I haven't played music with it yet, so we're going to go on to the record and edit part. What you do, is obviously, record a sound clip...I'm going to do a clip of music. You can only do up to 10 seconds.

From there there are two more options. The first one is a tool that will allow you to do 4 things to the clip. Speed it up, or slow it down. Make it high pitch or low pitch. So, you can either make it high pitch and fast, high pitch and slow, low pitch and fast, or low pitch and slow. Ever need a voice changer to leave someone a message? Here's one for ya. There is also the option to play the clip backwards.

The second option is where you have preset voice changers. You have the options to make the clip sound like: Parakeet, Robot, Helium, Electric fan, Tunnel, Transceiver, High harmony, Low harmony, Synth harmony, and the following which I find amusing, Trumpet, Whistle, or Buzzer. This also gives you the option to do any of these while playing the clip backwards.

Nintendo DSi Camera

Back to the main screen, lets head back to the first option on the list (aside from settings or inserting a game). The camera option (Common now, this is the reason you bought this thing, right?). The neat thing about this, is you can take pictures like you would any normal cheap camera, or like a good phone camera. After taking a picture, you can have it save directly to your SD card, and upload it to your computer where you can do whatever you want with it. So keep the DSi with you, never know when you're going to find that kodak moment!

Anyways, so after clicking on the camera application, the top screen is a calendar which keeps track of what days you took pictures on. I took a picture of my mom today, so there she is on April 5th. On the lower screen you have the option to save in your SD card, or to the system, you can check out the calender in more detail, where you can select a date and see all the pictures taken on that day, as well as write a memo.

Two more options, these are the ones we're waiting for. Camera and album. Self explanatory, but album takes you to your album of pictures, camera takes you to the camera. It also tells you below the option how many more pictures you have room for. The system starts off with room for 412 pictures. So, lets go check out that camera.

HI THERE. Right off the bat, you'll find yourself on the screen. WAVE. You now have 11 options to play with the picture you plan on taking.

Normal
Self explanatory, want to just take a good ol' picture? This is where you go.

Distortion
This is fun to play with. While you have your subject on screen, You can grab the subject with your stylus and warp and distort it however you want.

Graffiti
This allows you to draw on the subject with a variety of colors and 3 size options, if it doesn't have a color you like, you can select a color from the camera screen. (Want purple? Aim it at something purple, then you can select that color). Or you can add a variety of stamps to the picture...Hearts, music symbols, stars/shines, little circles, flowers, Clovers, stem leaves, puppy prints, talking bubble, or action bubble.

Color
Simply makes it black and white, tap on it to give it more color.

Colorpad
Not too amused with this one... It might be handy if you have something colorful around. Basically, while aiming at a color, you tap it, and it will attempt to shade the picture with that color. It doesn't do too good at it either.

Mirror
This gives you 3 options, each of which can be adjusted by touching and moving the direction of the reflections. You can either have 1 mirror, a triangular mirror, or a square mirror.

Mischief
This amused me before I even got into it in the sample picture. What this one does, is while you have a face steady on screen, you can choose an effect for it to add to the face. These include giving the face 2 types of mustaches, lovey-eyes, crying tears, cat face (adds ears and whiskers), big open mouth, cool sunglasses, pig nose, emo glasses, or big eyes. It does this on it's own, you do not get the option to place these things on the face, you just focus on a face, and it will do the rest for you by recognizing the face.

Emoter
Very simple, yet another one I found amusing. This will simply make your face happy, angry, or sad once it focuses on your face. Calls for a nice trick to play on someone who doesn't want to smile for the picture. MAKE them smile. bahahaha. The closer the face is to the screen, not far away, the better.

Merge
Alright, this one...I don't know. Take a picture of 2 faces, and it will give you the result of merging them together. I didn't care for the results of this one, but it probably didn't help that we had different backgrounds, and we had our glasses on. So, results may vary? After taking the pictures, and it merges the two faces, you have the option to make it look more or less like one of the faces. It starts at 50/50, but you can change that to look more like you, or more like your friend. After taking the picture, you can chose "morph" which will basically show picture 1 morphing into picture 2, and back again. This looks kinda cool.

Resemblance
Another fun one to take with a family member or a friend. One problem with this is I found it hard to get the dang thing to recognize two faces at once. You have to be pretty close to each other, and be the perfect distance from the screen. Apparently I'm more related to my husband (27%) than my own mother (19%).

Frame
Self explanatory, this simply puts a frame around your picture. There is this neat option though where you can use a picture of something else, cut out a face hole or something, and use it as a frame so you can stick your own face in it. Hard to explain. :(

Check out the DSi Shop!
Made this video, basically to show the similarities in the Wii shop vs the DSi shop.

**InSane** · 04-05-2009, 02:48 PM

Whats the first game you poped in there?

S0LAR ECLiPSE · 04-05-2009, 02:58 PM

I'm sorry but nintendo can kiss my arse. I mean, what is the use of having a camera on Nintendo DS? Why take away the GBA slot when you've JUST RECENTLY released a couple of games that need the slot? And the reason I will not buy one is because all they're gonna do is put a couple of updates on it within the next year and expect you to buy a new one. These are my opinions. I just don't think it's worth it. No one should take offense to this post, either. Anyone who's bought the console and is enjoying it, all the power to you.

Philian · 04-05-2009, 06:05 PM

DSi makes me splurge.
SD card will make me lawl, 8 gigs and boom i aint using my ipod anymore.
DSi blue's colour OMG!

i work at toys r us and i can get a discount so i basically pay shelf price.
i just need to earn maybe two paychecks before i buy it.

and ya i'm thinking in the dsi shop...
we're going to get the classics.
it makes perfect sense cause the dsi games kinda... ahem.

**DarkenedSky** · 04-05-2009, 07:07 PM

A friend of mine is supposed to be getting me a DS with Pokemon...now I'm hoping it isn't this one since I have GBA and GBC games...

Unregenerate Passion · 04-05-2009, 08:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DarkenedSky

A friend of mine is supposed to be getting me a DS with Pokemon...now I'm hoping it isn't this one since I have GBA and GBC games...

DS can't play gameboy color games anyways. Only advanced, you'd need an GBASP to play the color games.

As for all this talk of the DSi I think it's a ridiculous concept, all it's doing is placing a camera, with internet capability into younger and younger generations hands, and I said this in the other thread, it's a mistake waiting to happen, now I know it's going to become an argument about parents yadda yadda yadda, yes I know parents are dumb, so of course it's not Nintendo's fault.

I will not be purchasing one of these, I'm quite content with my DS lite and R4 chip so I have unlimited games. I think it's just a waste of money if you already have a DS, it's all gimmicks and shovelware. I give it a 2/10 mainly for the fact that it might have the redeeming quality of having better sound quality/brighter screen/better wifi/wireless capabilities.

**DarkenedSky** · 04-05-2009, 08:34 PM

Ew, glad I still have my SP then. I'll also stick with the regular SP since I do have some that will fit it as well. Damn Nintendo and their greedy ways.