NDSi XLmnop

Normally I never buy a video game system as soon as it comes out. But on rare occasions I do. I did buy the Gameboy Slim. (Maybe I'll look it up before posting this.) Then it was a couple of months later the Gameboy Color showed up. I was cursing all the way to the cash register. I did wait a year for the Gameboy Advance.

I waited five years for the Nintendo DS. I was waiting for the price of new ones to drop to about $100. In the meantime I was snatching up games: Super Princess Peach, all the Castlevanias, and (of course) Megaman. Even after the NDSi, Nintendo still wouldn't drop the price. So I got one at a pawn shop for about $80. Plus tax, lotsa tax.

I enjoyed it , liked the games. You know me, I wouldn't be talking if I didn't have any complaints. First it's hard to see the screens, overuse of the stylus, and size. As I recall Nintendo switched marketing the NDS to adults right away, so why keep shrinking it? The original Gameboy was fine, when I was ten. Now It's unhandlable. (Gives no spelling suggestions.) Recently I unearthed a Game Gear, perfect size.

So when I saw the commercial for the NDSi XL during Raw my first thought was to immediately buy it. Unfortunately reality prevented me from immediately doing that until the weekend. So I go to Best Buy. All out. Had to wait another week and went to another Best Buy, SCORE!

Now the second thought was "Why 93%?" Wouldn't 50% or 100% do just fine? That's kind of an odd number. Is it some metric calculation that I can't comprehend? Maybe I should get out a tape measure and see. NNNNAAAAAAA!

The games look fine and that's what counts the most.

One thing I noticed right away was that the Gameboy cartridge slot was gone. Nintendo has it's reasons. I guess after over 20 years it was time to say goodbye. But, the were a few NDS games that have unlockables if you stuck in an old game. Another thing was the addition of the SD card lot. All I have to say is: "Let the hacking begin!" You know someone is out there right now trying to come up with an emulator to let the NDSi XL play Super Mario Land. Remember, it's the Memory Stick PRO Duo that allows all those hacks of the Sony PSP.

 An update on that. Upon further research it turns out that Nintendo locked down the OS. So you can't hack it to play all those old great NES and Super NES games.