Nintendo DS - First Impressions!

This morning I had the opportunity to play Nintendo DS on a demo

kiosk at the Gamestop near my house. I was wondering if the system would be as good as I had hoped, and after playing it, I can honestly say that Nintendo DS is a great innovation and will be an outstanding handheld. The demo they had set up is the Metroid Prime Hunters: First Hunt demo that will be packaged with the handheld, which will probably be one of the early classics on the system.

The demo starts out by asking you to touch the lower screen to start, so I picked up the stylus and did so, the response time is great, it instantly took me to the game. At that point I was wondering how long it would take for me to get completely used to the controls, but that question was answered very quickly. The control scheme on Nintendo DS is so intuitive, it took me maybe a minute tops to get used to it. On this particular game, the cross pad controlled movement, pressing up or down moved Samus forward or backwards, and pressing left and right strafed left and right, allowing you to easily dodge incoming attacks, or move side to side while attacking an enemy so that others don't gang up on you. This is really no different from the GBA, but the really great part comes with the use of the stylus.

Using the stylus, the control scheme is very similar to a PC first person shooter. When you touch the screen with the stylus, Samus will shoot exactly where you touch the screen, it doesn't matter if the crosshair is pointed there or not. Dragging the stylus along the screen will change the direction Samus is looking the same way you move the stylus; if you move the stylus left, Samus will look left, if you move the stylus, Samus looks up, etc. This is very similar to the keyboard and mouse controls that many people prefer in first person shooter games.

The screens are actually opposite of what is shown here. The map is on the top screen, and the 3D image is on the bottom screen, which is the touch screen.

The buttons control various features, such as morphing into the ball, and probably also switching between weapons, although I didn't get far enough in the demo to get those features. It's surprisingly easy to fire at an enemy rapidly, all you do is simply touch it with the stylus wherever it happens to be on the screen, and if you're fast enough, you'll have rapid fire mastered quickly.

During the portion of the demo that I played, at least the top screen was used as a map, showing exactly where Samus was in the area, along with color coded doors so you knew exactly what they were, and the map updates in real time, so you can see exactly where you are in the room at any given moment. I had no difficulty seeing either screen, which is a nice improvement over GBA. I will have to wait until I get my system tomorrow and play in the dark to see how it compares to GBA SP when being played in the dark.

The graphics are outstanding, they're clearly better than the graphics of Nintendo 64, but not quite the quality you would expect on Gamecube. The framerate is solid, probably around 30 FPS on the Metroid demo, although it may have been slightly higher, and I noticed no slowdown on the part of the demo I played. Unfortunately at the Gamestop I went to, they had the sound muted on the DS I was playing, so I couldn't tell what the sound quality would be like. Considering it is stereo sound, when the previous incarnations of Game Boy only had one speaker, I can only expect the sound to be improved as well.

The graphics are better than Nintendo 64, but not quite as good as Gamecube.

DS looks to be a great innovation and a truly great system. Tomorrow when it launches, gamers will be treated to an outstanding system. I will have a more detailed review a few days from now after I've had the time to sit down and really test out all the features of the system.