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"Innovative Nintendo?"

Well, the DS has been shown, whoopee, I bet Dringo wet his pants this afternoon.

So, anyway, this dual screen malarky, revolutionary? A brilliant change to the way games are played by the industry?

Well, guess what, I don't agree, and I'm going to be called a Sony fanboy, or at very best, an anti-Nintendo zealot for it ;)

Anyway, here's my gripe, there's nothing revolutionrary about the DS what-so-ever. People are talking as though they have never seen dual screen hardware in gamers lifetime, well, I hate to dissapoint you all, but the dual screen handheld format was tried, tested and loved by us golden oldies a little short of 20 years ago.

[URL]http://www.infa.abo.fi/~buck/misc/gizmos/pix/nintendo.game+watch.mickey+donald.open.jpg[/URL]

This picture shows a NINTENDO Game And Watch handheld single game device from almost TWENTY years ago.

[URL]http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/05/12/nintendo_ds_comms/[/URL]

This image shows an almost identical looking handheld game platform, released by the very same company, but claim this dual screen arhitecture to be new, revolutionary, and well, good.

I'm not saying there may be some niche elements available to gamers, but I feel that most games developers will not use the additional screen for anything useful. Football games will have a top down radar, metroid will have a map, mario kart will have the track and player positions, basically world information about locations and the layout of the world will be used on this screen.

There is a good reason for this too, people can only concentrate their vision to a single focal point at a time. No one can concentrate on both of those screens at the same time, so one screen will be used for gameplay, and the other for displaying information.

This is a good thing given the paltry size of the DS screen, it means the game screen can be uncluttered with HUDs and the like but concentrate solely on letting the player play the game.

I will be truely amazed if anyone on this forum can come up with an original gameplay dynamic which could actively use the two screens of the DS in a way that could not be done on a single screen.

I'm even thinking of having, say, a heat sensor camera on the top screen, and a normal view on the bottom. This would be done MORE effectively on a single screen as a current day frame rate is at a higher reresh rate then the ability of a person to change their point of focus from one screen to the other. Sinply hitting a button to change views whilst focusing on a single point is a more natural way of playing a game.

So, I suppose I have set myself up for a fight by challenging the might of Ninetndo, again, but surely there are more innovative things happening in the world of gaming than a twenty year old handheld design being rereleased to a massive fanfare with no clear cut example of how this creates a revolution.

Nintendo should be commended for spinning up some dust to hide Sony's far nore impressive PSP handheld entertainment device.

The PSP is much more of a students system, good games, good movies, good sounds, wireless and one decent big widescreen which will let people who commute, or like to enjoy the comforts of their bedroom in some glorious sunshine.

The DS is not a gaming revolution, it's a bit like 90s pop music, a remix of something old people liked twenty years ago, just with more colours and more marketing hype. Take the DS with a pinch of salt, it's not worth the hype.

Yeah but it does... if the DS looked as good as that I'd be creaming myself.

Dringo wrote:
> The PSP does look brilliant.

*cough*

Good god. Dringo complementing something non-nintendo?

;)

What Edgy said about leaving room in the flip top for an analogue stick would be fine. An analogue stick can pretty much do anything a D-Pad can do, except for beat-em-up move combinations, but that's a small loss and you want a joystick for that anysway.

They COULD turn the touchscreen into one but that would probably be tricky and would get thumb marks all over your screen making it slippy...
And you wouldn't be able to use the screen for the game instead! :-)

If they've said there will be one then perhaps they're working on putting it in now...

The PSP does look brilliant.

The touch screen/stylus is basically an on screen analogue stick.

I think that using the other features of the touch screen (push, stroke, tap), rather than using it like a mouse, will prove more successful and enjoyable, mainly because it would be hard to physically use the D Pad and the stylus constantly. That analogue stick/pad thing on the PSP looks sweet by the way. Unless you can accidentally brush it with the joint of your thumb while using the D Pad. That would be rubbish.

I'd like to see an analogue stick... as Nintendo were bragging about it i expected to see one.

The stylus may make up for it.

My solution for that would be to have the stick no taller than the thickness of the DS when it is closed.

Cut a hole into the top part (assuming there's no important circuitry there that can't be re-routed) to equal size of the widest part of the stick.

Then, when the DS is closed, it is still fully protected with the stick locked in position by the upper half.

I think the lack of an analogue stick may be to do with the flip top design.

They would have to come up with a way for the stick to be removable, fold into the face, or have the top section deep enough for a hole to be made for it to fit into when closed.

I'm sure they could have come up with a solution, even a flat analogue disc woul be better than nothing at all.

The DS is still a prototype... it'll look different... and maybe feature and analogue stick. Though with a touch sensetive screen we maybe asking too much.

I don't really think you'll need an analogue stick. The + D-Pad is a joint cross so you'll easily be able to press in any direction.
But, i bet Nintendo are releasing a DS SP with a analogue stick a few months after the release of the DS. That would really tick me off =)

What ever the outcome, i'm still pre-ordering one of these Innovative DS machines.