If you were one of the kajillions that bought Pokémon Diamond or Pokémon Pearl, you may have seen the new piece of hardware that Nintendo has finally brought to market: the official Nintendo DS Headset. Or, you may not have—finding one for myself was actually quite challenging, as nobody but GameStop seemed to actually stock the thing.
I'm not much for the Pokémons, but with Planet Puzzle League on the horizon (which, in its Japanese incarnation as Panel de Pon DS, supports voice chat) I figured I'd go ahead and grab one. I'd wanted the thing long before it was announced, since back when I was having trouble getting my Nintendogs to obey. These days I pull out Brain Age from time to time ("Blue. Blue. BLLUUUEEE! Broo? Ah, there we go. NO NOT YELLOW"), so I had at least one thing to try it with.
Putting the thing on is sort of awkward. I have to stuff my ear into the white bracket, pull my earlobe through, and swivel the earpiece into place. Or so I intend to do; the earpiece just seems to float above my ear without really settling in any particular fashion. The sound quality issuing from it, in all its monaural glory, is crap. I give it credit for being marginally better than DS speakers, but that's not exactly an accomplishment. I suspect this has a lot to do with its inability to settle into my ear. (Worse, I've noticed my ears ring after using it for extended periods, probably due to the volume I have it set to.) A stereo headband design would have probably worked wonders here, but alas, it was apparently not meant to be.
As for good old Brain Age, the headset mic does wonders. Even though I usually perform pretty poorly at other portions of the game when I've been away for awhile, the voice-powered portions such as the aforementioned Stroop Test and Voice Calculation I passed with flying colors. I never felt the need to yell, and was rather impressed to find that I could speak a wide range of volumes and still be perfectly understood. Score one for the headset.
There was one other thing I hoped the headset would help me with: those blasted games that were otherwise awesome but inexplicably require mic-blowing. The headset, unfortunately, utterly fails here. Perhaps because it's designed for voice chat, the mic doesn't actually reach to my mouth, stopping about an inch away in the case of me and my overly large head. While I suppose it's good not to carry your heavy breathing to your opponents, it's rather regrettable that it's effectively entirely impossible to blow into the mic when you do want to. I did find I could make a loud "CH" sound and usually get it to register in The Rub Rabbits!' blowgun minigame, but it took just as much effort as old-school blowing. Disappointing.
Of course, I couldn't complete my impressions without actually trying to chat—what the headset was obstensibly designed for. I borrowed a copy of Metroid Prime Hunters and linked on up to our own N-Forums' TheOneGuy. He couldn't tell when I had the headset in or out, strangely enough—I sounded exactly the same to him—even when I was sitting a mere two feet away from a noisy dehumidifier. I was forced to conclude that for chatting, the headset is really only useful if you want to speak to your competitors while looking away.
Based on these tests, I'd have to say the headset is really only useful if you're a big-time Brain Age player. Possibly Nintendogs as well—but I didn't really feel like raising puppies from scratch to test it out. As this turned out to be such a disappointment, I can only hope a third-party offering will someday offer actual stereo, up the sound quality, and give me a mic that can optionally be blown into. Or, maybe devs will stop making mic-blowing games. I suspect a better headset is far more likely.
I'm not much for the Pokémons, but with Planet Puzzle League on the horizon (which, in its Japanese incarnation as Panel de Pon DS, supports voice chat) I figured I'd go ahead and grab one. I'd wanted the thing long before it was announced, since back when I was having trouble getting my Nintendogs to obey. These days I pull out Brain Age from time to time ("Blue. Blue. BLLUUUEEE! Broo? Ah, there we go. NO NOT YELLOW"), so I had at least one thing to try it with.
Putting the thing on is sort of awkward. I have to stuff my ear into the white bracket, pull my earlobe through, and swivel the earpiece into place. Or so I intend to do; the earpiece just seems to float above my ear without really settling in any particular fashion. The sound quality issuing from it, in all its monaural glory, is crap. I give it credit for being marginally better than DS speakers, but that's not exactly an accomplishment. I suspect this has a lot to do with its inability to settle into my ear. (Worse, I've noticed my ears ring after using it for extended periods, probably due to the volume I have it set to.) A stereo headband design would have probably worked wonders here, but alas, it was apparently not meant to be.
As for good old Brain Age, the headset mic does wonders. Even though I usually perform pretty poorly at other portions of the game when I've been away for awhile, the voice-powered portions such as the aforementioned Stroop Test and Voice Calculation I passed with flying colors. I never felt the need to yell, and was rather impressed to find that I could speak a wide range of volumes and still be perfectly understood. Score one for the headset.
There was one other thing I hoped the headset would help me with: those blasted games that were otherwise awesome but inexplicably require mic-blowing. The headset, unfortunately, utterly fails here. Perhaps because it's designed for voice chat, the mic doesn't actually reach to my mouth, stopping about an inch away in the case of me and my overly large head. While I suppose it's good not to carry your heavy breathing to your opponents, it's rather regrettable that it's effectively entirely impossible to blow into the mic when you do want to. I did find I could make a loud "CH" sound and usually get it to register in The Rub Rabbits!' blowgun minigame, but it took just as much effort as old-school blowing. Disappointing.
Of course, I couldn't complete my impressions without actually trying to chat—what the headset was obstensibly designed for. I borrowed a copy of Metroid Prime Hunters and linked on up to our own N-Forums' TheOneGuy. He couldn't tell when I had the headset in or out, strangely enough—I sounded exactly the same to him—even when I was sitting a mere two feet away from a noisy dehumidifier. I was forced to conclude that for chatting, the headset is really only useful if you want to speak to your competitors while looking away.
Based on these tests, I'd have to say the headset is really only useful if you're a big-time Brain Age player. Possibly Nintendogs as well—but I didn't really feel like raising puppies from scratch to test it out. As this turned out to be such a disappointment, I can only hope a third-party offering will someday offer actual stereo, up the sound quality, and give me a mic that can optionally be blown into. Or, maybe devs will stop making mic-blowing games. I suspect a better headset is far more likely.