shortcuts

Wednesday, December 15, 2004

Nintendo DS Part 2

There are certainly things to like and be annoyed by with the new Nintendo DS. So it’s time for a rundown…

High points:
- Great battery life - plays for about 10 hours, charges in only 4.
- Excellent visability within the first-person field of view. Screen brightness is quite good.
- Tracking on the screen is highly accurate and fast, making it the perfect analog stick replacement.
- Sound processing is clear and the stereo image - especially for small speakers - is also quite good. The headphone jack has the volume control placed in the front, just below the user’s viewpoint. You can easily find it if you’re using it, but otherwise it’s not visable and your fingers won’t trip over it.
- Directional pad and buttons are nicely placed for thumb-rocking action as well as direct pressing. Shoulder buttons are large and easily found.

Low Points:
- Less visibility on the screen at a wider angle, but it is a personal player.
- The thumb pad is awkward to orient and then slips in gameplay.
- Power button placed directly over the directional pad can be easy to hit.
The boxed demo of Metroid Prime does a good job of showing off the processing power of the system - it seems more than adequate for 3D animation. Textures shades and colors gradients are handled well but I’d like to see more used of edge filtering across contrast areas like edges. This is a design issue with the program, I believe, and not the hardware since it does filtering in hardware. This would give the impression of less-jaggies, a technique I believe is used in the PSP on its small screen, to give the impression of higher resoltion. (The screens are similar in native PPI across the area, and while the PSP’s single screen is larger, allowing object to be drawn larger in more detail, the number of points of colors across both platforms are similar. Of couorse, as I Google quickly for numbers and find nothing, this could be bollocks).