So, as I mentioned, last night the DSi Shop went live and there were six titles available for download. Nintendo has posted their own news item about these, and if you put your DSi online by October 5, you'll get 1,000 free points to start your DSiWare adventure. I've grabbed all six, which was a bit more than 1,000 Points.
The DSi ships with a DSi Shop menu item, but you'll need to accept Nintendo's online agreement and download a system update to access it. (The system update also adds the Data Management option to the System Settings, which allows you to copy data to and from SD Cards. At this time, downloaded applications do need to be in the DSi's main memory to run; they won't run off SD Cards.) A few menu-navigations later (reading the user agreement left me in the System Settings app, which could disorient a less determined user) and I was watching Mario, Luigi, Peach, and Toad in their Super Mario Advance getup tossing blue "bits" into a progress box. When it filled, the box gift-wrapped itself, and I got to "unwrap" it on the DSi Menu. It's the little touches.
Art Style: Aquia was one of the first titles I downloaded, and it's probably my favorite of the bunch. I'm a sucker for the Art Style series already, of course, but this is an intriguing little puzzle game with great longevity for a mere 500 Points. There's a tower of blocks reaching from the top of the top screen to the bottom of the touch screen, and you use the d-pad and buttons to rearrange them and create rows and columns of three or more. The trick is that you line your blocks up vertically, then push them into one side, which moves rows over and pops other blocks out on the other.
Making matches lets a little diver who's swimming down the right side of the screen go deeper. As time passes, the screen darkens from the top down, obscuring rows that you could otherwise use to make more matches, if you could only see them; if the entire screen darkens, your diver runs out of air and croaks. (There is an out in the form of special air blocks that can be lined up to replenish the air supply and re-brighten the playfield.) When the diver reaches the bottom, you get a short round wherein you have to align a few pieces into a shape using the same controls before you actually clear the level. Definitely the best of the initial crop; colleagues I've showed it to agree.
The other 500-point title, though, WarioWare: Snapped!, is a piece of crap. I was actually pretty excited for this one, having seen little video snippets of the coin-capturing mode... but it let me down, hard. One of my pet peeves in gaming opinion is how some games get labelled as "tech demos"; Elebits springs to mind. Well, Snapped! earns the demo moniker fair and square—and that's only if you are able to convince its dodgy Eyetoy-style silhouette recognition that yes, your face is a different color than the wall behind you.
I did manage to get it working by pulling a poster down off the wall, but regretted doing so. There are only twenty microgames in here, and they're barely WarioWare at all. There's no rapid-fire, no speed-up. Just a few barely-wacky activities involving moving your body around. You pick one of four categories, try make the camera recognize you, and play through five games. One I failed at because the system lost track of me. I didn't bother finding a friend to play the last group of games, because I wanted to still have friends afterward. In a sort-of-amusing fashion, it shows you shots of you playing the games after you're done, but it doesn't save any of it. Avoid wasting even your free points on this garbage. I spent free points on it, and I feel gypped.
So before I besmirch the name of WarioWare entirely, let me bring you back to the original on Game Boy Advance. Remember Pyoro and perhaps Pyoro 2—the arcade-style bonus games where you run a little bird back and forth avoiding and taking out falling beans with your tongue or by spitting seeds, before they land on the ground (creating an impassible hole) or on you (ending your game)? They're both in the 200-Point Bird & Beans, just renamed. Nothing's changed here other than a slightly bigger playfield thanks to the DSi's resolution; but that's really a good thing, why mess with a classic? $2 gets you access to the bean-catching or seed-spitting score-challenge goodness anytime.
$2 will also get you Master of Illusion Express: Funny Face, a little sampling from Master of Illusion featuring a single trick that you can play on your friends (pick a card and have a face you draw on the DSi say what the card was) and a bonus bit where you have a card trick played on you. I'm not getting a whole lot out of this, personally, but it could potentially be neat for kids, I think.
Brain Age Express: Math is the most expensive, weighing in at 800 Points, but there's actually an appreciable amount of value here. There are eight training games and a Brain Age test, all having to do with math. Calculations×20 and Calculations×100 make up the first two, just to warn you, but the other two I've seen so far are new, as far as I can tell (and I used to play both Brain Age games religiously). Brain Age fans will dig having it around. It's got a little bit of camera integration, too, putting your photo on your (single) profile and sticking a commemorative photo into your Camera photo album for presumably having a low brain age.
You can also pick up the Nintendo DSi Browser for free. While it's a marked improvement over the original Nintendo DS Browser and pretty decent overall considering the state of most mobile browsing tools, it still tends to choke and drag the more complicated your pages get. Opera's famous single-column mode is back, though, and it is perfect for reading this one really great site that I read daily. Since it's free, it's worth a spin, even if you don't end up using it much.
So, in summary: If your tastes line up with mine, definitely get Aquia and Bird & Beans, and consider Brain Age as well. Avoid WarioWare: Snapped! at all costs, or you'll hate yourself in the morning. It's a reasonable launch for DSiWare, though it's not as impressive as WiiWare's LostWinds by any stretch. I hear good things about this Moving Memo, though... so, stay tuned.
The DSi ships with a DSi Shop menu item, but you'll need to accept Nintendo's online agreement and download a system update to access it. (The system update also adds the Data Management option to the System Settings, which allows you to copy data to and from SD Cards. At this time, downloaded applications do need to be in the DSi's main memory to run; they won't run off SD Cards.) A few menu-navigations later (reading the user agreement left me in the System Settings app, which could disorient a less determined user) and I was watching Mario, Luigi, Peach, and Toad in their Super Mario Advance getup tossing blue "bits" into a progress box. When it filled, the box gift-wrapped itself, and I got to "unwrap" it on the DSi Menu. It's the little touches.
Art Style: Aquia was one of the first titles I downloaded, and it's probably my favorite of the bunch. I'm a sucker for the Art Style series already, of course, but this is an intriguing little puzzle game with great longevity for a mere 500 Points. There's a tower of blocks reaching from the top of the top screen to the bottom of the touch screen, and you use the d-pad and buttons to rearrange them and create rows and columns of three or more. The trick is that you line your blocks up vertically, then push them into one side, which moves rows over and pops other blocks out on the other.
The other 500-point title, though, WarioWare: Snapped!, is a piece of crap. I was actually pretty excited for this one, having seen little video snippets of the coin-capturing mode... but it let me down, hard. One of my pet peeves in gaming opinion is how some games get labelled as "tech demos"; Elebits springs to mind. Well, Snapped! earns the demo moniker fair and square—and that's only if you are able to convince its dodgy Eyetoy-style silhouette recognition that yes, your face is a different color than the wall behind you.
I did manage to get it working by pulling a poster down off the wall, but regretted doing so. There are only twenty microgames in here, and they're barely WarioWare at all. There's no rapid-fire, no speed-up. Just a few barely-wacky activities involving moving your body around. You pick one of four categories, try make the camera recognize you, and play through five games. One I failed at because the system lost track of me. I didn't bother finding a friend to play the last group of games, because I wanted to still have friends afterward. In a sort-of-amusing fashion, it shows you shots of you playing the games after you're done, but it doesn't save any of it. Avoid wasting even your free points on this garbage. I spent free points on it, and I feel gypped.
$2 will also get you Master of Illusion Express: Funny Face, a little sampling from Master of Illusion featuring a single trick that you can play on your friends (pick a card and have a face you draw on the DSi say what the card was) and a bonus bit where you have a card trick played on you. I'm not getting a whole lot out of this, personally, but it could potentially be neat for kids, I think.
Brain Age Express: Math is the most expensive, weighing in at 800 Points, but there's actually an appreciable amount of value here. There are eight training games and a Brain Age test, all having to do with math. Calculations×20 and Calculations×100 make up the first two, just to warn you, but the other two I've seen so far are new, as far as I can tell (and I used to play both Brain Age games religiously). Brain Age fans will dig having it around. It's got a little bit of camera integration, too, putting your photo on your (single) profile and sticking a commemorative photo into your Camera photo album for presumably having a low brain age.
You can also pick up the Nintendo DSi Browser for free. While it's a marked improvement over the original Nintendo DS Browser and pretty decent overall considering the state of most mobile browsing tools, it still tends to choke and drag the more complicated your pages get. Opera's famous single-column mode is back, though, and it is perfect for reading this one really great site that I read daily. Since it's free, it's worth a spin, even if you don't end up using it much.
So, in summary: If your tastes line up with mine, definitely get Aquia and Bird & Beans, and consider Brain Age as well. Avoid WarioWare: Snapped! at all costs, or you'll hate yourself in the morning. It's a reasonable launch for DSiWare, though it's not as impressive as WiiWare's LostWinds by any stretch. I hear good things about this Moving Memo, though... so, stay tuned.