My Experience with the DS, DS Lite, and DSi

This is probably going to be the shortest post of this blog. My experience with the DS, DS Lite, and DSi has been extremely limited, and chronologically this post is out of place since I didn't really get one until after I already had a 3DS. But since I'm doing these articles in the order of system release date, I'm putting it here, along with the pictures that wouldn't fit in the post about the systems. 


I remember on launch day an acquaintance of mine from Weber State got one along with Super Mario 64 DS, and he showed it to me. As mentioned elsewhere, during this period funds were very limited, and I didn’t have much inclination towards portable gaming at the time. I saw people with DSs and DS Lites here and there, and a couple of times I read up on them on the internet. Mostly I just wanted to try out the two Zelda games I was missing (Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks).


On two or three occasions, I got a chance to hold one for a few seconds, but nothing of any consequence. Here and there I would get to see someone playing something over their shoulder. My brother had a DS, and then he later upgraded to a DSi the same year my niece also got a DSi (Black Friday sale). 


But it wouldn’t be until almost a year after I got a 3DS that I would own a DS Lite. Avery and I both had a 3DS, and for Christmas we got Aurora a used DS Lite (with a Petshop game) and Logan a GBA SP. It was a red DS Lite with a Mario “M” on it, but the hinge had a crack in it that prevented it from staying open. Our solution was to buy a clear plastic case to put around it to add some friction to the hinge. It didn’t work super well, but helped a little. She had hoped to be able to communicate with her cousin from Idaho who had a DSi with it, but I couldn’t find any avenue for that to occur. 


A few weeks later, Aurora elected to upgrade her gift to a 3DS and pay the difference. The main thing that motivated her to upgrade was the prospect of having her own Netflix player, and perhaps the ability to send SwapNotes to her cousin in the future. Unfortunately, we had bought the DS from eBay, and the serial number had come off (a problem for these systems as the serial number was just a sticker on the bottom of the unit). So I decided to take it myself and pay her what she would have gotten for the trade-in. 

Mostly, I used it to play GBA games with a lit screen here and there, and occasionally a DS game. To help with the broken hinge problem, I put a red rubber band around the hinge, and it more or less fixed the problem; now it will stay open, but it won’t close the whole way. All it takes is to put something else on the DS to weigh it down in order to make it close. 

Because I was used to the 3DS style menu and always leaving it on, it was hard to get used to how often it needs to be turned off and on to change games or mess with the settings. 

The DS Lite was unofficially “Anne’s” for a while, as the rest of us in the family have a 3DS, so this way it can be said that everyone has some flavor of DS in our family. But the reason the quotes are around her name is because she didn’t really play it much (until I convinced her to play Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks). She has since inherited my old 3DS and plays it a lot more often these days. But with regards to the DS Lite, usually it’s just me playing it whenever I use it as a GBA. While the DS and DS Lite are basically the same thing with a different shell design, the DSi is different and I haven’t really played with one extensively to document all the differences and intricacies. We own several DS games, but I’ll be talking about them more on the 3DS section for obvious reasons.