A few weeks ago I bought my first new* gaming system since 1997 - a first-gen Nintendo DS. I bought the first-gen model for the larger form factor, though it turns out that the Gameboy Advance slot on the second-gen DS leaves the carts sticking out a bit, which means that my "bigger is ergonomically better!!" attitude is correct for the hardware as well as my hands.

The DS has crazy-awesome battery life (it's Long, and Even Longer in GBA mode, as it's only using one screen), an excellent library of titles (which includes the entire GBA library sans multiplayer ability), and is just as portable as my iPod. At 130$ for the system and 15-40$ for games, it's extremely well-priced, and the availability of a string of SquEnix ports and updates for the GBA and DS makes for hundreds of hours of brain-sucking fun for less than the price of a new video card.

Hell, the fact that I don't have to spend 120$-600$ on upgrades every few months just to play games released six months ago makes it more than worth the price tag. The technology is still non-optical, which is further cause for a change of underwear - one of the things that really pissed me off about the Playstation was load time, and the fact that load times are only getting longer as games get more complex has done nothing to ingratiate me to them- the worst I've had to deal with on the DS is a tiny bit of slowdown on a couple of GBA games, and that's it.

Unfortunately for this post, I'm still waiting on an Amazon order containing a couple of DS games to show up. Once they're in, I'll be able to soak in the dual-screen goodness and formulate a more experienced opinion of the hardware - and after Pumpcon, I should have something to say about the system's WIFI abilities. Until now - and until then - I've been using the system as a big ol' GBA for buckets of Final Fantasy IV Advance and Final Fantasy Tactics Advance. I've also run through New Super Mario Brothers in single player, which is something I intend to write up whenever my blogging chops start oozing back into the headmeats.

* Okay, so a few years back I bought a used SNES (which then Disappeared) and a second-gen Playstation, which is still banging around somewhere and gets used - rarely - for Puzzle Fighter. By "new" I mean, you know, a system I haven't owned before.