Nintendo DS First Look

New hardware is always fun. More than half of our lives spent as aficionados of gaming technology can't erode the fact that we love unwrapping new toys almost as much as we love playing with them. The carefully designed packaging builds the anticipation; the smell of a freshly manufactured piece of kit is as exciting as the smell of money to a gambler. The feel of a device in our hands for the first time, as all our expectations and misconceptions materialise or evaporate in the blink of an eyelid.

The Nintendo DS is a little bigger than you might expect.

Yes, we have our hands on them now, courtesy of a Nintendo event last night in London which handed out toys like confetti at a wedding but failed to inform us of an exact launch date or price point for the console. No matter; if you're a hardcore fan, you're probably already pondering a US import, and if not, you won't mind waiting.

We'll bring you detailed coverage of the console next week - how it works, how it plays, reviews of the games. For now, though, we'll say this; it's a little bigger than you might expect.

Okay, we'll qualify that. The Game Boy Advance SP has spoiled us. It's quite clearly the product of a long line of refinements to a basic concept, and it's the pinnacle of over a decade of the Game Boy. The Nintendo DS, on the other hand, is something new. It doesn't feel or look like an evolution of the Game Boy - it's a bit chunkier, perhaps a shade more modern, and distinctly not as fully evolved as the GBA SP was. It's first-generation hardware, but made by a master craftsman of handheld consoles, if you take our meaning. Flawed, but not with the kind of huge screaming flaws that Nintendo's handheld competitors make.

So, it's chunky, but not too chunky that it doesn't fit nicely into the pocket of your jeans; the game cartridges feel a little flimsy after the rugged GBA cartridges, but are actually very robust compared to the flash cards that you find in cameras and phones. These are minor flaws, and they pale in comparison to the things Nintendo has got right. The battery life is excellent - although we haven't had ours for long enough to really test this aspect (it says "First Look" up there for a reason), the screens are bright, vibrant and properly backlit, the D-pad is a joy to use, there's a proper headphone socket, and the speakers in the unit are surprisingly excellent.

As you might be guessing by now, this is the single best platform ever to play Game Boy Advance games on. They look far better on this screen than they've ever looked on a GBA SP or through a Game Boy Advance Player, and the size of the unit is just right for extended play without developing the cramp that those of us with large, ape-like hands often get from squashing our outsized digits around a GBA SP. You can choose whether you want to play them on the top or bottom screen, which is nice.

Of course, we're not here to talk about Game Boy Advance games, now are we?

The unique features of the Nintendo DS are threefold - you've got a touchscreen, you've got two screens, and you've got a microphone. We can't talk about the latter, because nothing we've got our hands on takes advantage of it right now. We can't talk much about either of the others, really, since we haven't had more than a couple of hours playtime, but if only slightly educated off the cuff comments tickle your fancy in places that don't make it feel uncomfortable, then here are some to be getting on with.

Firstly, we now understand why so many games use the second screen for a map and not a lot else. When you're controlling something like Mario 64 DS or Metroid Prime Hunters with the stylus or thumb-nub (which rapidly became forefinger-nub for us, as using it on your thumb is a rapid way to end up with the kind of hand-cramp that usually gets associated with frantic onanists), the second screen is largely obscured by your hand - using it for information critical to the action would just be awkward.

Secondly, the stylus input works remarkably well. Experience with playing FPS games on a laptop with a trackpad didn't exactly make us slaver in anticipation of Metroid Prime with a stylus, but it works a treat - pinpoint accuracy and intuitive movement are the order of the day. Even better are the mini-games like those found in Mario 64 DS, where the stylus is used in genuinely clever and innovative ways - and we're drooling at the prospect of Wario Ware DS already as a result.

The impressions we take away from our first few hours of messing around with the DS are mixed. On the one hand, it really does feel like a console which has the potential to play host to gameplay that we've never seen anywhere else. Playing with games that properly utilise the stylus and dual screen layout is a real pleasure, and if developers can get their heads around how to use them properly, the DS is going to be a fantastic little machine.

We also liked the setup of the system, which stores things like your name, date of birth, favourite colour (eh?) and a host of other information in its memory, and hopefully we'll see that used in some of the games as well. PictoChat, the built-in wireless messenger app, is also a hit around these parts - it works extremely well even with poor wireless signal, as does the multiplayer component of Metroid Prime: Hunters, so that's definitely one aspect of the system that Nintendo has got right.

On the other hand, the graphics on the system are going to be eclipsed by what the PSP is capable of. They're quite clear and crisp for the most part, around N64 quality, but lacking the trademark blur that games for that platform had, but certainly nowhere close to the near-PS2 quality we're expecting from PSP titles. We're also keenly aware that so far, we've only seen three pieces of software - PictoChat, which is great fun but isn't a game, Metroid Prime Hunters, which is only a demo, and Mario 64 DS, which is the only full game in our hands. A console lives or dies by the strength of its software line-up, and we simply can't gauge that just yet.

So there you go: Day One of the Nintendo DS, and we're feeling positive about the system overall, but with some reservations in our minds. Keep an eye out next week for our full-sized impressions of the console, its launch titles, and its prospects for the future. In the meanwhile, enjoy some hi-res shots of the Nintendo DS next to random items from our office - including the almost entirely useless revelation that the console is smaller than Sephiroth.