Nintendo Europe has announced several details regarding its planned launch of the Nintendo DS handheld. The most prominent news reveals that the Nintendo DS will launch in the UK on March 11 at a retail price of 99.
Nintendo Europe said it will bring the DS to market with the support of a 35 million marketing campaign littered with the slogan 'Touch Me!'. Nintendo said that it expects to ship a total of 650,000 DS units on launch and that each of those will come bundled with the Metroid Prime: First Hunt demo and PictoChat instant messenger software. Additional games will cost between 19.99 and 29.99. The UK launch on March 11 will be supported with the following 14 titles:
- Asphalt Urban GT (Gameloft/Ubisoft)
- Mr. DRILLER: Drill Spirits (Namco)
- Ping Pals (THQ),
- Pokmon Dash (Nintendo)
- Polarium (Nintendo)
- Project Rub (Sega)
- Rayman DS (Ubisoft)
- Robots (Vivendi)
- Spider-Man 2 (Activision)
- Super Mario 64 DS (Nintendo)
- The URBZ: Sims in the City (EA)
- Tiger Woods PGA Tour (EA)
- WarioWare Touched! (Nintendo)
- Zookeeper (Ignition)
Nintendo reminds us that the Nintendo DS is also fully backwards compatible with all 550 Game Boy Advance titles. Furthermore, Nintendo says that over 120 games are currently in development for the Nintendo DS. Some of the future software titles to look forward to include:
- Advance Wars DS
- Another
- Castlevania DS
- Jam With The Band
- Mario Kart DS
- Need for Speed Underground 2
- Nintendogs
- Retro Atari Classics
- Yoshi's Touch and Go