I'll probably trade the DS I have now for the DS Lite whenever it comes out. I have to say that the black one is the one I'd get. It looks better than my grayish old one. The overall style of the DSL looks better and I like how they but the power button on the side b/c sometimes my finger would slip from the Dpad and I would accidentally press the start button. I'll definitely get this.

You heard correct. I ended up sticking on a screen protector with the original DS which I purchased in january, and I had this gigantic ugly brown air bubble at the bottom left of the screen. I was so pissed off that I returned my DS for another one.

I don't use a screen protector on my current one, and I've been playing Ouendan on it. There's a few vague scratches, but you can't see them directly and they really aren't visible while you're playing games. If only they bothered to make the touchscreen durability on CD's and stuff which is prone to scratching.

On the plus side, this is good. Since the DS Lite will have different levels of brightness, this means that scratches will be even harder to see. I don't think screen protectors are worth it, in fact I'd be willing to say that they're a bit risky.

I put my protectors on with no such bubbles, although I probably got lucky considering that many of my friends have had problems with them. Still, I'll probably put protectors on my Lite when I get it as well, for the same reason they're on my current one.

Basically, no matter how careful you are with your shit, there will ALWAYS be friends to fuck it up.

- WraithTwo -

Question all...are NDS's have regional restrictions? Namely, if I get a non-US NDS, will I be able to play US games on it (note, I am guessing this is the best thread since this is a DS discussion thread)?

The DS has less protection than a rapist.

Sorry, bad example. Handhelds usually don't have region restrictions though.

Sure can. I own games from Australia, Europe, Japan and America. It's great. They're fully compatible multiplayer too.

Yes sir, region free. I want to try out Jump! Superstars, though..

Okay, here's a better question. Suppose I get an NDS IQue...what can I do about charging it? IQue's NDS's are 220V I believe...which may lead to aproblem with charging...

The charger is the same as the GBA one. If you have a GBA you can just use that. Otherwise buy a charger from Lik-Sang or whatever.

Can someone recommend a game that's high in the replayability and/or length department? GBA games are fine too. I'm currently looking at:

Tetris DS
Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow
Gunstar Super Heroes
Densetsu no Stafi 4 (Legend of Stafi 4)
Jump! Superstars

I've purchased Astro Boy: Omega Factor and it should arrive in about a week and a half. I'd like something alone those lines, regardless whether it's DS or not. Stafi 4 is something probably nobody knows, so here's a clue. Jump! Superstars looks pretty neat, but I'm afraid I lack the WiFi knowledge to get it up and running. I also highly doubt somebody from New Zealand playing with japanese people wouldn't lag.

Dawn of Sorrow is what I'm currently looking at. I've completed Aria which was neat, even if I really disliked the bosses. I hear it has a New Game+, as well. But yeah, can't decide.

Stafi is something I've been meaning to look into for a while now. If someone had the roms I'd play it even if it's in Japanese. The game just screams to me, a Kirby fan, that it should be played. If I liked it enough I'd import the 4th game for DS.

I don't know who told you Jump! Superstars used the Nintendo Wifi Connection but they're wrong. Only regular wifi between DS in the same room for that game. You must be thinking of Bleach DS which is the only fighting game for DS in Japan that I can think of that takes advantage of the NWC. And basically just like normal NWC you just have to be able to connect your DS to the Internet via wireless router or USB dongle to play it. There of course might be some lag since you're connecting to Japanese servers but then again there might not. The idea of NWC is that it's worldwide. I don't know if they have it all set up in one place or not over at Gamespy.

Their rom numbers are 1143, 1609, and 0579. I'm horrible at finding rom sites but I know for a fact that #roms-isos on efnet would more than likely have them. It plays alot like Kirby, but it's more of a "Friend has a problem, find item for friend, friend gives you ability, find more friends with problems, find more items for friends, friends friends friends" thing. But yeah, I stayed up all night the other day playing the original(0579) and I really enjoyed it.

It is a bit "for kids" ubt that really doesn't matter. I'd classify it to be on the same level as Kirby. The japanese is irrelevant, even though you talk to people. There's maybe 5-10 pages of japanese, but it's much like Ouendan - you can see the plot without text.

Well, what's Jump! Superstars like without multiplayer? Nobody I know around here has a DS and even so, they would definitely not have this game - so I believe multiplayer is out of the picture. I've seen some videos of it on youtube and it looks really neat, even though it's basically a cluster of anime gimmicks.

Awesome. I'll have to go find it when I'm not feeling lazy then. =)

Jump! Superstars has plenty of multiplayer but you have to realize that it was made before DS games began implementing the Nintendo Wifi Connection. If you liked playing the 1 player mode of Super Smash Bros Melee you'll probably still like Jump! Superstars. I don't know if the game allows for download play but that might help you out if you ever have a friend with a DS who is interested if it does.

The DS does have an online fighting game, called Bleach DS: Souten ni Kakeru Unmei

It's made by Treasure, who made Astro Boy Omega Factor and Gunstar Super Heroes. It's obviously a different genre than those two, but I find people who love one Treasure game seem to love pretty much all of them. So whatever.

And Dawn of Sorrow fucking rocks. Personally I found it loads better than Aria. The thing is, I found the default control scheme a little wonky, so I reconfigured it to make sense. The bad news is when you go back to play Julius mode (which you unloack after you beat the game) the controls go back to default and you can't change them, so it makes playing that mode a chore :( That seriously hurt replay value for me because my brain is simply not compatible with the default control scheme. But whatever, Julius mode didn't look to be nearly as fun as the main story anyway.

I'm not interested in Bleach DS at all. I don't like anime much. Especially Naturo/Bleach and all that rubbish. Jump interests me for the SSBM style, and for a few characters.

If I wanted a Treasure title, I would purchase the recently released Treasure Box, with Alien Solider/Dynamite Headdy/Gunstar Heroes, but I'm on a tight budget so that's out of the picture for now.

A new game has appeared. Purchase? Seiken Densetsu: Children of Mana, $20 from play-asia. 5 days until the special ends. I'd rather not buy a japanese RPG, as they're quite lengthy and in japanese, but according to a portion of sites; it's rather import friendly. There's videos on youtube, too. It's only $20, and there isn't even a release date set for america.

The question here would be, should I bother with it? I'm pretty pissed at japanese games which are heavy on the text side, since Sakura Taisen 3 was never released outside of asia(and that was very, extremely holyfuck lengthy in the text department) but I think I can manage here.

I really don't want to fuck this up. Should I go for Children of Mana, or save? Dawn of Sorrow is still looking good. Naturally, if you complete a series title, you're going to want to play other titles from that series. However I still have a burned copy of Symphony of the Night if I'm really desperate.

I'm not too worried about Jump!'s multiplayer side, but it's single player mode looks interesting. Thing is, Jump, Dawn of Sorrow, Stafi 4, and Tetris DS will all set me back roughly $45-60 US, depending. Seiken is only $20, or let's say $26 with postage. Even though it'll take probably over two weeks to get here(and that means, by then I'll probably have enough for Dawn of Sorrow, Jump or Stafi) I'm still quite interested.

So, thoughts?

Bloody hell, I had this entire thing written up before and I magically decided to press the back button. God.

I'm pretty damn confident that Children of Mana will get translated and brought over to at least the US. If it doesn't make Austrailia you'll at least still be able to import it in a language you understand. I'd say wait.

Meanwhile Jump! Superstars is almost guaranteed unless the US suddenly gets overwhelmed with new anime from that game to never make it over here.

Nintendo for some reason or another never bothered bringing Stafi over here despite the huge success of Kirby. I doubt they'll bother bringing over Stafi and they wouldn't be cool enough to do a compilation of the first 3 GBA games to make up for not supporting it in the past. I think a Stafi compilation and Mother compilation would definitely liven' up the dull GBA lineup we have over here at the moment. They better fucking bring Mother 3 over here or they are going to get their ears chewed off. So yeah if you liked the other Stafi games you might as well import the fourth one because that's going to be the only way you'll be able to play it.

Yeah, I hate when that happens too.

Elixir, if you must get either Jump or Bleach, I'd recommend Bleach.

I bought Jump while I was in Japan last summer, and unless you have people to play it with, it's very boring. The Single player campaign takes less than a full day to beat, but to be fair unlocking all the komas (characters, assists and items that you use on the bottom screen) could take weeks. Unfortunately, the AI really sucks and the download play is very limited. Out of the maybe 40 playable characters, you'll only ever use around 5.

Bleach is lots of fun, though. The play is a lot smoother than Jump. I'd say it's somewhat of a mix between Smash Bros and Marvel vs Capcom. You have over-the-top super moves, air combos, but it's all in a hectic 4 player battle. Online is a bonus, though I haven't tried it. Download play is good and bad. Takes forever to load each match, but any player connected to you (locally) can play as any character you've unlocked and on any level. In Jump, you're limited to the same 3 combinations of characters.

On the other hand, you said you don't care for Bleach, so if that's the case, I'd skip on both. But now you know the differences between them if you decide to get one.

It's come down to Stafi 4, Dawn of Sorrow, or Seiken Densetsu: Children of Mana. I really don't know which to aim for.

You're right about Jump, after checking around it's mostly a multiplayer game. I probably won't look in to Bleach since I'm not too keen on the Nintendo WiFi scene, they haven't even made hotspots in New Zealand yet.

I'm seriously considering Seiken Densetsu. Here, have a look at these videos and try to tell me it doesn't look interesting. Apparently there's only one town, and it's mostly free-ranged RPG fighting. Looks quite interesting. Although I really dislike the though of owning a japanese RPG due to the language barrier, this doesn't seem to be an obstable.

However I can't say for sure if Dawn of Sorrow or Stafi would be more of a worthy purchase. There's also a higher price for those, too.

Even though I really hate it when they constantly churn out redesigned systems, the DS Lite has about enough features for me to warrant an additional purchase.

My question though is when do you think is the best time to sell my old DS, in order to net the maximum amount of cash for the Lite? It would be great if I didn't have to pay much, if any difference for the Lite by using the cash from the old DS. And where would be the best place to sell it? When the GBA SP came along, Gamestop had a pretty good deal when I traded in the original GBA. I only had to pay about $20 extra after the trade-in. I'm not sure I'll get a similar deal this time though.

Rumors have it that the Lite will release in the states during May. More news will be announced at E3. As soon as the release is announced, sell it A.S.A.P if you want, give or take just a few days after it's announced. So..I'm guessing, late April/early May you can sell it? I think you can get about $80 worth of credit. Maybe it's less..

My friend did the same thing when he sold his original GBA.

The best place would be Gamestop, hands down.

The import price for the DS Lite right now is seriously a joke. But as soon as it's announced for outside of japan, I'll be selling my blue DS. The Ice Blue SD Lite looks nice, and now that I've seen some video reviews I'm convinced it's better than the original.

Of course it wouldn't be logical to own both models at once, the larger buttons is what I'm sold on. The current buttons are what is only to be described as "clicky" and that irritates the hell out of me. The brightness is a bonus, as is the battery life.

Speaking of battery life, it's actually better to own a DS Lite if you're looking for value for money. Considering the batteries will last longer in a DS Lite, this means you won't need to have a battery replaced once a year or whenever it dies.

I'm not too thrilled on the price tag, but assuming it's going to be released worldwide, it won't be much of an issue.

Yay! Screen from Famitsu reveals black DS Lite,

http://www.gccafe.com/news/media/sta...u-BlackDSL.jpg

http://ds.ign.com/articles/704/704875p1.html

The DS Lite is out June 11 in US (White only). It'll retail for 129.99 (no word on any reg DS price shifts)

- WraithTwo -

White only is a big turn-off. I was already on the edge about getting one, but I won't even consider it unless they release more (better) colors.

Wow. Guess who was wrong? ;)

I like the white, but I hear you. If anything, Nintendo is going to release a red, and a blue Lite in the states. I'm hoping to see a black Lite..that'd be awesome.