So the big buzz today in Nintendoland is the release of the new portable Nintendo DSi. And you assume I already have one. Because if you know me, you know I have a Nintendo fetish (like feet, but not as tickly). Well, you’re wrong! I don’t have one yet.

Now I LOVE Nintendo! I waited in GameStops until midnight for GameCube and Smash Bros. Brawl. I conned a friend into trading me their DS for an old laptop. And how can we forget Buy Mii a Wii?

But with all that said, I can’t jump the gun and get a DSi right away. Why? I feel I’m too old for it. Read the rest of my post, and leave a comment if you agree or disagree.

Now, I’m not knocking it, the DSi is posting some impressive features. TWO cameras. Sound recorder. DSi Shop. SD memory. But I can’t make myself drop 170 US dollars on it now, because each feature is something I can already do or don’t honestly need, unless I’m a Twittering Tween (or a Twittering Ashton Kutcher).

Let’s break it down:

Camera. It’s nice, but it’s 2.3 megapixels. My new “SmurfBerry” (which is what I call my BlackBerry Curve) has 3.2. And I don’t think I’m in a position to spend extra money to see what my face looks like with a Mario mustache.

Especially since my “Stan Lee” mustache from Black Nerd LIVE is SO much cooler!

I like the whole camera thing, but how often will I use this? I can totally see a bunch of kids putting Mario mustaches, cat whiskers, and blingees on their friends, and loading them up on TwitPic. But I’m older now. Do I have time to do things like this?

However, I would like to put googly eyes on my income taxes. That would make them more fun.

Music. Now this was the part I was most interested in. I like the whole changing the music thing, including making something sound like an 8-bit game.

But I’m reading you can only save 10 second clips of your voice, and you can’t save the musical changes. I hope this is wrong, because I won’t be happy in life until I hear hip-hop that sounds like Mega Man background music.

Download games. I’ll stick to Wii for that. Well, until I run out of space. And this would be cool if Nintendo had some way to make the games you download on Wii play on DSi. But this is the company that just added talking to their machine, so, oh well. Where’s Animal Crossing when you need them?

Colors. Light blue? Seriously? The black looks nice but the light blue is fugly for a video game system. Unless you’re a Smurf of course.

And my biggest gripe about the new system… no backwards compatibility to GBA games. Hate to break it to you DS, but I think I only own like 2 or 3 DS games. So I don’t know how I would feel having to lug around DSi and my NES limited edition Game Boy Advance to play all my games.

Maybe I’m being too harsh on the DSi. I’d be lying to myself if I say I will never get the system… just can’t fathom getting it right away. Or maybe because I can’t afford it right now, I feel the need to knock it down a peg to stop my urge from buying it on the spot.

I mean, I really do like it. It sounds really cool, but I don’t know what I would do with all of it but go, “Well that’s cool.”

It’s like iPhone and Google Android apps. YES I SAID IT!!! As fun as it is to have some of those, which ones are really convenient? Like someone showed me they can download an app to their phone that gives the image of fogging up their screen. That’s awesome, an app that does something to our phones that we hate having done to our car windows!

So at the end of the day, I guess I just want technology I can use  rather than technology that just… does cool stuff. I appreciate it, but I don’t necessarily need it.

And that’s how I feel about Nintendo DSi. It’s cool, and I like it (except for it in light blue). But when it’s all said and done, it’s something you would go to middle school with and say, “Yo, dudes! Check out what I can do with your pic and voice? Extreme!”

And I’m just beyond that, DSi. I’m just beyond that.

Unless you go on sale, of course!

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This entry was posted on Sunday, April 5th, 2009 at 4:06 pm by Andre (Black Nerd Comedy) and is filed under FEATURES & OPINIONS. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.