The DS Revolution hit before the week end, and first impressions were favourable. As expected, just seeing them at Fi Club on Friday prompted a few more purchases, so I reckon now is a good time to post my experiences after a week end of play.
The card isn't totally straight-forward to set up -- once I figured out what needed to be done it was no problem, but I ended up going to the web site to find the install software to set up the microSD card after getting no joy from the bundled mini CDROM. The problem is more to do with documentation that talks about files that are not on the card and that none of the web site files mention in the filenames. To save you guys the hassle, just go to the web site and grab the latest kernel files from there, they've changed the way they name the files on the site in the new version and it's easier to understand now. Looks like the new files hide all but the game files themselves in the file list now, so it'll look better.
Play wise, the system is cool and it works pretty much how you'd expect it to. I can't see any way to get back to the card interface during game play other than just rebooting, but then that's the only way to get to the DS interface so that's as expected too. It has locked up a couple of times over the past couple of days (during Trauma Centre whilst using SELECT to skip the jibber-jabber is one I can remember), booted to OS saying no DS card inserted a couple of times (power down, latch card in and out again and power up fixes this) and a couple of white boots.
This sounds like a lot of errors, but I've been really giving it some welly and I've tried every game on the chip at least a couple of times ( I have 23 games installed). After a load of leaping in and out of games I have settled down to playing a few that I like, but that still involves a lot of rebooting and flicking from ROM to ROM. Based upon the massive amount of game swapping, I don't feel like this is a problem at all, and still really rate the product. My play has been changed by the sheer choice of games now. It's like running into an empty theme park when the gates open in the morning. So much promise.
And so the DS begins to 'feel' like the Playstation and PSP did after they were breached. Games used to have a heavy feel of value to them, and visiting the different sections of the different game shops in town was a fun part of my visit to town. Now, games come so freely, and in many cases, before the game shops stock them, the high street game shop is vestigial. I visited GAME today (OK, not a good example of a game shop, I'll admit) but it felt hollow and empty and pointless in there. I have all those games. Games now are less about justifying the amount that I had to pay to play it (making me feel guilty if I didn't complete it or didn't play it for a certain length of time) and have now become short ways to pass the time. I dip in and out of games on the PSP and the DS now at a whim -- 'done with this particular buzz now, want some point n click'.
Marketers work really hard to attribute value to things that inherently have no value -- CDs are a great example, the 'jewel case' that is supposed to be displayed like an object of value, the whole idea of building a collection of them and showing them off. (CDs fail even where they try so hard -- they are made of crappy scratchable material and the jewel cases are one of the flimsiest forms of packaging ever invented -- they snap, crack, scuff and shatter far too easily). The value isn't in the CD itself at all, the object of value is in the code, the software -- *that's* what the coders worked to create, the gamepak itself was stamped out of some machine. CDs, DVDs and Video Games all boil down to software, and reducing them down to their respective MP3s, AVIs and ROMs, while leaving the essential product completely unchanged makes them feel far far cheaper. Game play, while unaffected, feels lighter, less pressure to 'get through' a game. It has become more about play.
I think that when web enabled devices become more portable with better battery life and always on connections, the already amazing quality of freely available to play web based games (like orisinal) will become such that we will question why we used to fork out upwards of 30 quid for this stuff.
