|  "Once again Nintendo is taking another leap by providing totally new game-play experiences," says Jay Cohen, Ubisoft's vice president of publishing. "Very characteristic of a Nintendo maneuver." More than 100 companies worldwide have received software development kits and are planning games for Nintendo DS. Games in development by Nintendo include a new Super Mario game, a Metroid(R) game, a WarioWare game and PictoChat, software that lets players send instant text and picture messages. Third-party publishers also have announced games in development, including a Spider-Man(TM) 2 title from Activision, a Rayman(R) game from Ubisoft, a SpongeBob SquarePants(TM) title from THQ, a Yu-Gi-Oh!(TM) game from Konami, a Sonic title from Sega, a Bomberman game from Hudson Soft, a Need for Speed(TM) game from Electronic Arts and a Pac-Man(TM) title from Namco.
"THQ has been a strong supporter of Nintendo's hand-held systems over the years, and with great success," said Peter Dille, senior vice president of worldwide marketing, THQ. "We look forward to the many innovations they are planning for the DS." The worldwide leader and innovator in the creation of interactive entertainment, Nintendo Co., Ltd., of Kyoto, Japan, manufactures and markets hardware and software for its popular home and portable video game systems. Each year, hundreds of all-new titles for the best-selling Game Boy(R) Advance and Nintendo GameCube(TM) systems extend Nintendo's vast game library and continue the tradition of delivering a rich, diverse mix of quality video games for players of all ages. Since the release of its first home video game system in 1983, Nintendo has sold more than 1.8 billion video games globally, creating enduring industry icons such as Mario(TM) and Donkey Kong(R) and launching popular culture franchise phenomena such as Metroid(R), Zelda(TM) and Pokemon(R). | A wholly owned subsidiary, Nintendo of America Inc., based in Redmond, Wash., serves as headquarters for Nintendo's operations in the Western Hemisphere. The system will have two processors, with an ARM-9 CPU running at 67MHz and an ARM-7 unit running at 33MHz. Retail DS devices will have 4Mb of main RAM (while debug development units will have double that), with additional chunks of cache and shared RAM for the processors and 656Kb of video RAM. The real surprises, however, come from things which Nintendo didn't even hint at in its original announcement. The system will possess decent 2D capabilities, but it also has a 3D graphics system which, the spec. claims, is capable of drawing 120,000 polygons per second, representing a fill-rate of 30 million pixels per second. |
| That figure hardly puts it into the same league as the PSP for 3D performance, but it's the first time that a Nintendo handheld has featured hardware accelerated 3D, and should open up significant new possibilities for games on the device. As, indeed, should the other two revelations on the leaked document: the inclusion of Wi-Fi and of a touch panel input device. Nintendo president Satoru Iwata had already indicated that the device would have wireless capabilities of some description, but most commentators expected that to be the short range Bluetooth system, rather that the much faster and longer-range 802.11 protocol. We wonder what kind of functionality Nintendo has in mind that could call for wireless connections over 50 to 100 metre distances. Sadly no further information is given about the touch panel (the spec' simply says "touch panel" in a section on input devices, where it is listed alongside the standard Nintendo handheld input system of d-pad, four buttons (A, B, L and R) and Start/Select buttons), but it seems fair to assume that one of the actual screens may be touch sensitive, which would again open up an intriguing number of possibilities for designers. The screens themselves are marginally more high resolution than the GBA, with two 256 x 192 resolution panels included in the spec., compared to the 240 x 160 panel in the GBA. Speaking of which, there's no indication here that the system will be compatible with GBA games, as has been suggested by many commentators, but equally the possibility isn't ruled out and the system should certainly be more than capable of running GBA titles if Nintendo wishes to do so. Of course, a single leaked screenshot of a Japanese document doesn't constitute hard proof of any description, and this document should be taken with a pinch of salt - but if it is a forgery, it's a rather good one (at least to our pidgin Japanese reading eyes). The Nintendo DS remains one of the more unusual propositions for a game console that we've seen for some time, but if the document is for real, the inclusion of 3D, wireless LAN and touch panel hardware certainly just made it a lot more interesting. |
