A while ago, Nintendo announced that they were making a new gadget to be a successor to the very popular DS, and it was going to be named the DSi.
Here is what it's all about:
Well, it's here now (well, in Japan, that is) and
Dannychoo.com did a quick write-up of the thing.
We already knew that DS-cartridges were compatible with the new DSi, but I must say, I'm somewhat saddened that the R4 doesn't work any more; I do own a fair collection of original games (allmost all of them are Japanese, though), but the R4 is a great way of testing games, listening to music on the DS and playing homebrew.
Also, the GBA-slot is gone, meaning I can't play my copy of
Slide Adventure: Mag Kid on it, since you need the
slide controller for that (which fits into the GBA-slot), and the twist-knob controller for Space Invaders Extreme becomes useless as well.
It also would mean that you can't use the Opera cartridge to surf the web, were it not for the SD-slot they added. However, you can toss the Opera cart into the bin, since they added a web browser to the DSi.
An SD-slot means that they finally made it possible to have some serious memory on Big N's handheld, in order to listen to music, look at pictures (and taking them with the built-in cameras and pretty them up using the bundled software) and whatnot.
A pity that, according to Danny, the DS only accepts ACC-encoded music files (but we can work with that) and somehow does not show pictures coming from outside the DSi. So much for using the thing as a mini photo-album, which would have been great.
To add insult to injury, the DSi is localised (so playing European and Japanese games on the same device is impossible), the shape of the battery has changed, the charger connector is different and the charger itself is larger, thus disabling the use of your previously owned spare batteries, USB-chargers and whatnot, and needing a little more space in my Denki-box (the box I keep my Japanese electricity-stuff in; this way I only have to throw one box of cables into my suitcase, enabling me to power my chargers and laptop without having to buy new stuff), which is a small box to begin with, and therefore filled to the brim.
The DS lite was a great successor to the DS; it's sleek, has a clear picture and an added bonus of being hackable to do all sorts of stuff with it. I love mine to bits and it's a regular companion on my daily commute.
The DSi has some improvements (two cameras, enhanced screens, SD-slot, built-in software, stuff like that), but I don't think the DSi will become part of my life anytime soon; I have no real need for the cameras and so far, my regular DS lite works just fine.
Cheers, K.