The first part of a six part series on the development of MechAssault: Phantom War for the Nintendo DS has been posted to IGN.com. While gamers have probably seen development diaries for more complex games on the PC and next generation consoles, the DS seems like an interesting platform to develop for; there are new technologies on the console, like the dual screens, and the touch screen, but a lot of the rendering hardware is limited in ways that hearken back to previous generations of non-portable consoles. So, this installment deals somewhat with the challenges of working with the limited 3D rendering power of the console, and the trade-offs that must be made to fit the content and graphical detail into smaller spaces than most developers are used to. It is interesting that the difference between the 512 megabit and 1024 megabit cartridge is not merely size, but also memory access speed. Hopefully, more of the technical challenges will be addressed in future episodes, giving gamers much more insight into the smaller end of console development.