Nintendo DS

The Nintendo DS (short for Dual Screen, though promotionally said to be short for Developer's System) is a forthcoming dual-screen portable video game console from Nintendo, scheduled to be launched in United States on November 21, 2004, in Japan on December 2, 2004, and in Europe during the first quarter of 2005. The DS will have a vertical clamshell design, like some Game & Watch games, and similar to the Game Boy Advance SP.

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Design and specifications

According to preliminary reports, the console will feature two separate 3-inch TFT LCD displays at a resolution of 256×192. The lowermost display of the DS will be a touch screen, utilizing a stylus or the user's fingers. It will also feature two separate ARM processors (ARM9 main CPU @ 67 MHz, ARM7 coprocessor @ 33 MHz), and semiconductor memory of up to 1 gigabit (128 MB). It also allegedly will have a 3D engine capable of drawing 120,000 polygons per second, implying a fill-rate of 30 million pixels per second. It is the first portable console from Nintendo (not including the Virtual Boy) to incorporate stereo speakers. The unit will feature wireless multiplayer capabilities, which may use either a proprietary short-range wireless link (supporting up to 16 players), or Wi-Fi. As for regular controls, the DS has, to the left of the lower display, a traditional four-way control pad (with a narrow button above it), while to the right are four action buttons (with two narrow buttons above). The system also will include a built-in microphone, which Nintendo has hinted will be used for communication over a wireless network, and controlling games programmed for speech recognition.

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Compatibility

Initially the console was reported to be incompatible with games designed for Nintendo's present Game Boy Advance (GBA) handheld, but details announced at the E3 trade show in Los Angeles in May 2004 indicated the opposite; while the new DS cartridges will be smaller and fit in their own port, the machine will have a separate cartridge port accepting Game Boy Advance games, although Game Boy Color and Original Game Boy games will be incompatible with the DS. This may be interpreted as an attempt to define the distinction between the DS and Nintendo's established Game Boy line of handheld consoles, by removing the aging z80 processor used in the GBA to run older games.

Though the DS no longer has the z80 processor, several projects have started to emulate this platform. The DS has enough power to do so, and the projects have already started because ARM9 is a known platform. It may also be possible to port and/or play games from the GP32 platform, which is also ARM9-based.

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