Rumors had been circulating around the Internet that the US would see the Coral Pink and Black Onyx versions of the Nintendo DS Lite soon, and today Nintendo made it official. Starting September 13, both colors will be available to gamers in the United States, finally giving those consumers access to some of the larger palette of DS Lite colors available to users in other territories, and they will no longer have to pay upwards of $200 for an import unit.

Nintendo’s full press release continues below.

NINTENDO LAUNCHES NEW DS LITE COLORS AMID RECORD-BREAKING GAME SALES

Onyx and Coral Pink Follow Sale of 1 Millionth New Super Mario Bros.

REDMOND, Wash., Aug. 24, 2006 – The only thing more fun than new Nintendo® DS Lite hardware colors is trying to keep up with the breakneck sales of the software to play on the popular little portable! On Sept. 13, two new colors – Onyx and Coral Pink – join Polar White, which is enjoying its own incredible sales peak and getting noticed everywhere.

The new colors also complement numerous DS games, including New Super Mario Bros.®, which has hit the 1 million unit sales mark after just 12 weeks on sale in the United States. That’s an average of roughly eight games sold each minute continuously since launch, making it the fastest-selling DS title in the United States for a 12-week period. Overall, DS system and game sales are both up more than 300 percent in July alone.
“Not only are the DS Lite screen and battery life incredible,” says George Harrison, Nintendo of America’s senior vice president of marketing and corporate communications. “but the new colors just add another element of fun, allowing people to ‘personalize’ who they are by the color, or colors they pick.”

Several other DS games are burning up shopping baskets. Animal Crossing®: Wild World already has sold more than 800,000 units, and two brain games – Brain Age™: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day (sold 4 million units worldwide) and Big Brain Academy™ (nearly 2 million sold to date worldwide) – are part of a phenomenon of people wanting to feel as mentally sharp as possible by playing daily.

The best part for Game Boy® Advance owners is Nintendo DS Lite plays their entire library of up to 1,000 Game Boy Advance games in single-player mode.

The Official Nintendo Player’s Guide for New Super Mario Bros. is now available at retail. For more information about the game, visit mario.nintendo.com.

The worldwide innovator in the creation of interactive entertainment, Nintendo Co., Ltd., of Kyoto, Japan, manufactures and markets hardware and software for its Nintendo DS™, Game Boy® Advance and Nintendo GameCube™ systems, and upcoming Wii™ console. Since 1983, Nintendo has sold nearly 2.2 billion video games and more than 375 million hardware units globally, and has created industry icons like Mario™, Donkey Kong®, Metroid®, Zelda™ and Pokémon®. A wholly owned subsidiary, Nintendo of America Inc., based in Redmond, Wash., serves as headquarters for Nintendo’s operations in the Western Hemisphere. For more information about Nintendo, visit the company’s Web site at www.nintendo.com.