Why the Nintendo DS is your best buddy for air travel
Nintendo DS (2005)
Nintendo DS (2005)
I'd like to talk about air travel today. Don’t worry, I’ll only delve into a few cliches. I’m not gonna give you a load of guff about whatever the deal is with airline food. I’m just saying, summer has started, and that means we have to think like travellers.
I’m hoping you haven’t left it too late, and that you already have a holiday planned. Otherwise I’ll have to advise you to close this page and get to sniffing out the best last minute deals.
You’ll probably need to make that dicey decision about whether or not you really need to spend a tenner on travel insurance. And if you really are a last-minute Larry, your flight might be leaving in a matter of hours. In that case, you need to make sure you have the right entertainment for the plane.
After all, when you’re sat there for hours, what's your alternative? Listening to hard-luck stories from the old boy sat next to you? Not a chance. You can’t leave this one to chance. Once you get inside that dreaded tube, and your mind starts wondering what could go wrong today, what terrible fault could occur that will later feature on an episode of Air Crash Investigations, you've got to take your mind off it by turning to your entertainment.
But what to bring with you? A few books, a whole Kindle? That’s what the missus does. But the only books I liked reading on planes were Harry Potters and Artemis Fowls, and they don’t make those anymore. No, to this day, a Nintendo DS (whether you prefer to travel Phat, or Lite) is the ultimate companion for your plane stint.
Its compatibility and library of games, its backlight and its battery life all serve it very well. Most crucially, the DS was popular, cool and non-offensive enough to win favour with the casual crowd, who won’t take your silly Nintendo off you and beat you to death with it. Make no mistake, a DS is your only man for air travel.
You might try to counter this by saying, ah yes, but no, actually the Nintendo Switch lets you bring Breath of the Wild and Mario Kart 8 onto the plane. Well there’s a few things here, John - firstly, you might decide you want to get some use out of that ridiculous kickstand on the back of the Switch, but you won’t be able to do that, because the kickstand simply doesn’t work.
The Joycons also need wireless connection, and the very severe-looking stewardesses have already told you to switch all that nonsense off. Result, you’ll start trying to play a particularly vigorous game of ARMS, your way of evening the score against the crying baby next to you.
But then you'll end up sending the cockpit dials and dashes spinning like crazy, and the next thing you know, the plane has become as mangled as your spine in those chairs. You thought Joycon drift had a significant impact on manoeuvrability? Try flying a plane with no wings.
Plus there’s a relative lack of battery life in the Switch, which is something you'll need for the longer trips. I don’t want to hear about power banks or any of that stuff either - they just sound like more devices that might threaten the plane, and I can’t handle that. Nor could I handle the possibility of losing my temper with a Super Mario Maker 2 level and having to be forcefully restrained, brought off the plane in an emergency landing, and transferred immediately to Pedrinhas prison.
Finally, the Switch is still just a bit too valuable to bring away. If you’re going somewhere without a safety deposit box in the room and you've got a Switch to keep safe, you’re in trouble. Meanwhile, every household in western civilisation has at least 2 DS consoles present.
If gurriers were to break into your hotel room and started mooching around for cash, they wouldn’t even bother with your DS because even in whatever squalor they came from, they’ve probably already got two DSes, for trading Pokémon with themselves. I know this, because the exact situation happened to me - the robbers burst into the room and took my money, but they left my DS, and I suppose slightly more importantly my passport, well alone.
So for in-flight entertainment, the Switch is out. And you should have been with me in the old days, trying to get airborne play out of an old Game Boy Advance. Once night falls and the lights go out, forget it. Even a reading light couldn’t make that console’s screen visible.
Hence the DS is your only man. But I’d better come clean on something: I’ve hardly ever bought an actual DS game at retail, because it was just so easy to pirate, and there were so many great games to download onto it. If it makes things any better, I’ve picked up a few physical DS games by now, although typically at bargain basement prices.
For example, you can get one of my favourite little games, 42 All Time Classics, for quite literally two pounds fifty. But when New Super Mario Bros. still runs in the €30-€40 range, second-hand, who wouldn’t take a shortcut around retail? Honest, moral people who will go to heaven, that’s who.
One fault with the DS, which I’d have to say is on some middle ground between minor and major, mijor I’ll call it, is the battery light. Not the battery life, because that’s pretty decent even on my knackered old DS Phat. I’m talking about when you get that orange warning light on the battery, and then you just dunno where you stand.
I have read that the heartbreaking switch from green light to orange light happens when 30% of the battery is left, but I fancy it as far less than that. If you’re properly immersed into a game, and you find yourself stuck in some place without a charger, then you’d better be prepared for a sudden, depressing switch off. Like the power going out, but a hundred times more victimising.
As for the system’s games, there are bloody thousands of them. You could grab titles such as Stop Smoking with Allen Carr, or My French Coach, or 100 Classic Books. But I suspect lesser cultured folks like you would be more of a fan of Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars, or Zelda.
Well, like all great consoles, the DS has a "feel". It’s very difficult to explain and articulate, I’m afraid, but there are certain games which have an enormous DS feel - Mario Kart DS, New Super Mario Bros, Pokémon Diamond/Pearl/Platinum and Animal Crossing: Wild World all come to mind, all of them great games. The Zeldas weren't great at all, ruined by their controls, and the Kirbys and Yoshis and Sonics weren't much to write home about either.
The DS was tremendous on RPGs though, especially with a selection of Dragon Quest games, The World Ends With You, and even a European release for Chrono Trigger - I'd say it was about time for that game to hit Europe, but literally every other media outlet already made that gag years ago.
For me though, the DS was most significant for introducing one of my favourite series of all to the West - with four mainline games and two spin-offs, the Ace Attorney series had its greatest success on the Developer's System (or is that Dual Screen?). And if cross-examining parrots and debating about stepladders is too serious for you, then you can have bundles of anime adventures in Rune Factory instead.
When I mention the DS, of course, I could be talking about any one of the range: the DS Phat, DS Lite, DSi, DSi Lite... I don’t think it ever got as bad as the 3DS selection, but couldn’t they have given it a rest?
Actually, why would they let things go stale? Only the PS2 moved more units than the DS range. This thing was outrageously popular. And the DS certainly couldn’t play DVDs, or any other media beyond a seemingly infinite number of Professor Layton games.
The DS is games, games, games, and nothing else. It reminds me a bit of when people talk about certain automobiles being a “driver’s car” - is the DS, with its pure focus on gameplay (and I suppose, the wonderfully dainty Pictochat), a "gamer’s console"?
As opposed to the PlayStation Passat, which is for the humdrum, the practical, the people who don’t know a thing about what’s under the bonnet and don’t want to know...? It's a debate, though I didn't say it was an interesting one. But it might give you something to think about on the plane, when your DS battery light turns orange.
24 May 2024