I have seen the Lite. It is glorious.
So it’s been a week with the DS Lite. I didn’t get it release day like the good Nintendo fanboy that I am, though. Very sad. I blame the Puerto Rican Day Parade, even though that had nothing to do with it.
Point is, I dropped the ball Sunday, which made the following three day journey to find a Lite and a free copy of Brain Age that much harder. Three days, two Best Buys, four Circuit Citys later though, victory was mine. The things I do to save $20. And, well, to get a DS.
Anyway, yes, it is glorious. It’s damn small. The comparison shots you see of it with the DS (the “DS Phat” as it’s been dubbed) don’t do it justice. Because in the pics you’re like “it’s not that much smaller.” And I suppose it isn’t, really. But when you actually hold it, it’s a different story. “Holy crap this thing is small,” you might say. Playing with one in the store doesn’t even get you ready, because there it’s nailed down and you can’t fold it up and put it in your pocket.
Size notwithstanding, the screens are ridiculous. There are four settings for the backlight. (There are four lights, one might say.) The dimmest setting is comparable to the what the original DS was like. And the highest setting has been accurately dubbed “death” (Cabel, by the way, is hilarious, and I recommend watching his reviews even if you don’t care about Nintendo).
Believe it or not, I think my favorite improvement over the original DS is the new stylus, though. The original DS had a very— dare I say— Japanese stylus. It was teeny tiny, and you felt like you could break it in half if you looked at it wrong. The new stylus is— dare I say— bigger and longer and more American. And I like it. On that same note, my least favorite change is the d-pad. It’s smaller, and doesn’t feel very sturdy. The buttons are way better, however.
Overall, it’s a very Apple-like package, as others have noted. Including my mother. It’s not quite up to Apple standards, though (which, some might argue, have been slipping as of late). The back has all sorts of writing on it, which isn’t aligned very nicely and juts up to the edge of the battery cover. The serial number is on a little sticker, and looks like it could get a hole punched through it if you’re not careful. The early white iBook clear plastic over white plastic look is good, but it’s not carried over to the top edge of the unit, which is a little weird. All these gripes aside though, the design is leaps and bounds ahead of Nintendo standards, so hopefully this is a sign of things to come rather than an aberration.
Now if you don’t mind, I’m going to go train my brain for minutes a day. (Brain Age’s website is almost as funny as Cabel’s.)
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