The ‘DS’ is for Dueling Spouses
Several weeks back I decided to take the plunge and try out the new DS Lite. I was initially a little apprehsnsive — I never thought much of the original DS. Sure the screen was brighter than the one on my SP, but it wasn’t that much better, and the games didn’t look very interesting. Then I found out about Brain Age, and my interest grew. Then I saw some video of the New Super Mario Brothers game being played on the DS Lite with its “brighter than Destro’s head” backlit screen. The “to buy or not to buy” decision was a no brainer.
The hardware is impressive all around. The DS can produce “real” 3D graphics and sports two speakers so you can hear a game’s sound in stereo without needing headphones. Some games, like Animal Crossing, even offer “surround sound” as an option. While I wouldn’t call it surround sound, it does provide a very good approximation of positional audio. Another plus is the use of a standard headphone jack — the SP had a proprietary connector and came with very ugly headphones. While the battery life is impressive, we did have to buy a card adaptor to get us through some of our longer car trips. $10 well spent.
The Games
I don’t know a lot about Tetris DS because Lindsey is always playing it, and I haven’t had much chance to try out the 7000 new play modes in this version 
.
Brain Age does a good job of mixing fun into a game that just might make you smarter. While playing Brain Age, you hold the DS on its side, like a book. Some of the puzzles even utilize the microphone, requiring you to speak your answers.
The New Super Mario Brothers is just what it sounds like — yet another side-scrolling Mario platformer, and it’s terrific. Not only are there mushrooms that turn regular Mario into Super Mario, there is also one that shrinks him down to Micro Mario status, and yet another that turns him into a sort of “pituitary gigantism Mario” that takes up most of the screen.
From what I saw in ads I would never have thought that Annimal Crossing was going to be so addictive. Since we purchased it, It has supplanted Brian Age as our most played game.
The DS also plays GBA games, but not original gameboy games — I’ll have to keep the SP around for those. Playing GBA games on the DS is really where I noticed the quality of the DS’s screen. It makes the SP screen look like a monitor off an Apple II sitting at the bottom of a well, in a blizzard.
I was surprised at how small the game themselves are. Certain that I would lose them or that someone in the house might accidentally ingest them, I dug up an old Case Logic Digital Media Case. It makes for handy game storage:
Saying no to Crack
Unfortunately, after only a few weeks (though still time enough for Lindsey to complete the new Mario game — I’m still working on it) our DS had succumbed to the dreaded DS Lite crack of doom:
As it turns out, this kind of hinge crack has shown up on many DS units and caused such a hubbub that Nintendo has agreed to fix the cracked units for free. I called Nintendo a few days back and they did just that. A few days later, a shipping label arrived in the mail and I shipped my DS off for repairs. This was both good and bad. It was definitely good that the DS would be fixed, but how would I maintain my Brain Age, water my red turnip seeds, and finish world 8?
And Then There Were Two
This turned out to be a good time to buy a second DS — for Lindsey of course — to allow us to keep up on our Brain Age training and stay on top of our mortgage payments to Tom Nook while the other DS was in the shop. Our reasoning went something like this:
D: Where’s the DS?
L: Leave me alone; I’m playing Tetris.
D: I want to do my daily brain training.
L: Leave me alone; I’m playing Tetris online.
D: We have got to get another one.
L: Leave me alone; I’m not done playing Tetris.
After having the same conversation every day since we bought the first DS, we picked up a second one, complete with Tetris “Brain Teaser” skin:
Overall I am very impressed with the DS Lite. We play it every day.
