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Nintendo DS Browser Mini Review
Posted by Josh Smith Categories: Hardware, Internet, Nintendo, Nintendo DS, Portable/Mobile,
On July 23rd Nintendo is releasing the Opera browser for the Nintendo DS and DS Lite in Japan. The package will retail for about $33 USD and includes a DS “cartridge” with the browser on it and a GBA cartridge which holds memory for the browser. An individual who has some connections in the Opera community was able to score some hands on time with the new browser and has posted his initial reactions.
When I started it up I was browsing in dual screen mode. Basically the page was fit to the width of the screen and the height spanned both screens. With an easy touch of the stylus you can switch into a “zoom” mode where you are presented with a picture of the web page on the top screen and on the bottom screen you can drag a box around to see in actual size what you need to view. You can also simply swap the screens so that you can type in text as needed where fields or check boxes etc. are presented.
Jon answers even more usability questions and includes a lot of other answers about the operation of a browser on the Nintendo DS. Anyone else have trouble reading that browser instead of Bowser? With the naming prowess they have recently shown us I am surprised its not called the Bowser browser.
Read More 
| Org's Tech Times
Gallery: Nintendo DS Browser Mini Review
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Nintendo Producer Takashi Tezuka Talks
Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: E3, Nintendo DS, Wii,
GameDaily was able to talk with Takashi Tezuka, General Producer for Nintendo Entertainment Analysis and Development (NEAD) at E3. In his career with Nintendo, Tezuka has worked on, in some capacity, a great number of the most popular games in the past twenty years. Including the Mario, Zelda, and Yoshi properties, and titles like Animal Crossing. He offers insight into the Wii, particularly the unique controller, and the reasoning behind including a speaker in the hardware. Tezuka also talks about Mario on the DS, stating that New Super Mario Bros. had been in the works since Super Mario DS was in development. He also lets slip that another 3D Mario game on the DS is a possibility. Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass was also discussed, and how its origins came largely from a desire of the developers at Nintendo to create another game in the distinct Wind Waker style.
Read More | GameDaily.biz
Gallery: Nintendo Producer Takashi Tezuka Talks
Happy 15th, Sonic the Hedgehog!
Posted by Michael Cardiff Categories: Corporate News, Nintendo DS, PlayStation 3, PSP, Release Dates, Wii, Xbox 360,
Sonic the Hedgehog, SEGA mascot and one-time rival of Mario, will be celebrating his 15th birthday today. Whether or not you love the little blue blaze, you have to admire Sonic’s contribution to the gaming world in terms of encouraging fast graphics processing and simple, intuitive play mechanics. To milk
celebrate the event, SEGA will be releasing 4 new Sonic-based games this year, including Sonic for the PS3 and Xbox 360 as well as Sonic Wildfire for the Wii, Sonic Rivals for the PSP, and a “special edition” of Sonic the Hedgehog for the GBA.
Sonic’s career has certainly gone a bit downhill in recent years - from the heyday of Sonic the Hedgehog for the Genesis and Sonic Adventure for the Dreamcast to the less-favorably-received current-gen Shadow the Hedgehog and Sonic Riders. Perhaps someday soon we can look forward to a New Super Mario Bros.-esque 3-D/2-D hybrid that will return the little fur ball to his former glory.
Read More | BusinessWire.com
Gallery: Happy 15th, Sonic the Hedgehog!
More Opera DS Details and Screenshots
Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Internet, Nintendo DS,
Following the previous announcement of an availability date for the Opera browser for the Nintendo DS, Game Watch Japan has posted a more in-depth preview of the software. First, there will be two separate SKUs for the DS Browser, one for the original DS, and one for the DS Lite, with the main difference being the physical size of the memory expansion. The DS original version will work for both the DS and the DS Lite, but the memory card will stick out by about 1/2 inch, similar to legacy GBA carts on the device. The DS Lite version matches correctly, but can’t be used on the original DS obviously.
As previously noted, the browser will make use of both screens, but will also provide a couple of different rendering modes to try and best fit content on the browser screen, most likely in a similar fashion to the wrap modes on Sony’s PSP. Opera DS also provides 5 levels of zoom, however, from 50% to 150%, so users can scale the screen to their preferences. Unfortunately, it looks like multimedia formats like Flash, PDF, movies, and sound are not supported on the DS; the PSP browser recently added Flash to its browser, and of course, has built in sound and movie playback support.
The Japanese version includes pop-up keyboards for Japanese and English characters, and also includes a character recognition mode for free form writing. Japanese character entry was shown, but it looks like there is also an option for English characters as well. Apparently, there will also be password protection for the browser, most likely to act as some kind of parental lock feature.
Read More | GameWatch Japan
Gallery: More Opera DS Details and Screenshots
New Mario Hoops 3-on-3 Screenshots
Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Nintendo DS, Screenshots,
Nintendo’s Official Magazine in the UK managed to score some screen shots of the soon-to-be-released Mario Hoops: 3-on-3 for the Nintendo DS. The game’s unique control scheme has been previously discussed, but here are some shots showing off some of the special moves and environments in the game. This adaptation of basketball may be the most “unique” interpretation of the game, with many of the classic Mario power-ups involved, and focus on using coins on item boxes to alter the game. Game stages look like they will also come into play, with icy fields and fiery arenas.
Read More | Official Nintendo Magazine UK via Nintendo Gal
Gallery: New Mario Hoops 3-on-3 Screenshots
Opera DS Release Date: July 24 In Japan
Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Corporate News, Internet, Nintendo DS, Release Dates,
Opera Software, fresh from announcing their Opera 9 browser for personal computers, announced today that the Opera Browser would be available on July 24th for Japanese users. The pricing was previously announced to be 3,800 Yen, or roughly $33. Since DS titles have no region lock, gamers should expect to be able to import this from places like Lik-Sang or NCSX.com. The memory expansion cartridge included with the browser was not addressed—two versions of this cartridge have been shown, one for the DS and one for the DS Lite, and it is unclear whether there will actually be two SKUs released when this hits the market. It will be interesting to compare this with the custom PSP browser; the DS would have the edge in vertical resolution, assuming the user is in dual-screen browsing mode, but offers only about 2/3 the pixels horizontally. The stylus input should be much easier to handle than selection via the analog pad on the PSP, and depending on how much memory is available in the RAM expansion, more pages might be able to cached in memory. Given that the DS has much less main memory than the PSP, the expansion cart will be critical to the operation of the Opera on the DS. Feedback was generally good at E3, and, of course, Japanese users and importers will find out come late July.
Gallery: Opera DS Release Date: July 24 In Japan
Mojodo DS Lite Game Buyers Guide
Posted by Josh Smith Categories: Nintendo, Nintendo DS, Portable/Mobile,
The good folks over at Mojodo have put together yet another Nintendo DS Lite essentials list. The list does a good job of breaking down major DS titles into 3 categories; Buy, Consider, and Skip. The titles are further broken down into touch based games, traditional games and multiplayer offerings. Recommended purchases include Trauma Center, Advance Wars DS, and Mario Kart DS to name a few. The focus on games makes for a great companion to 4 color rebellion’s DS Lite Buyers Guide and well worth checking out for new Nintendo DS Lite owners!
Read More | Mojodo
Gallery: Mojodo DS Lite Game Buyers Guide
New Tales Games Announced
Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Corporate News, Nintendo DS, PlayStation 2, PSP, Role Playing Games,
Today, Bandai Namco announced the next games in their Tales RPG series, with new screen shots of the games. Siliconera has some details, and Game Watch Japan has full coverage of the announcement by Bandai Namco in Japan. There are a few remakes in the list, including a “full voice edition” release of Tales of Phantasia for the PSP, a remake of the Playstation 1 game, which itself was a remade version of the original Super Nintendo release. The Playstation 2 will see another remake, this time of the original Playstation game, Tales of Destiny, with redone 2D graphics. Tales of Destiny 2 should also see a home on the PSP, some time in 2007, as a remake of the Playstation 2 game. The PSP also gets a new game in the Tales of the World series. Finally, the DS game, Tales of the Tempest was also previewed.
Read More 
| Game Watch Coverage
Read More | Siliconera.com
Gallery: New Tales Games Announced
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.
Read More | IGN
Gallery: MechAssault DS Developer Diary
Tic Tac DS Game Case
Posted by Josh Smith Categories: Accessories, Mods/Hacks, Nintendo DS, Portable/Mobile,
This past weekend I was in the need for a case for the few DS games I own, and luckily a Tic Tac case was nearby. After removing the Tic Tac wrapper and cleaning up the case a little bit, I was left with a carrying case that was perfect for toting 3 Nintendo DS games. It’s almost like all of these mint manufacturers plan for the re-use of their cases in the gaming community, what with the Altoids PSP game cases and all.
Read More | imjosh.com
Gallery: Tic Tac DS Game Case
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