The Nintendo DSi

So my 12yr old son's Nintendo DS was getting pretty worn and my 5yr old didn't have one yet and we were getting married so we thought we could buy the boys the new DSi for a wedding present, something to keep them occupied during the goings on and keep them from getting into trouble. Well it kind of worked...mostly :)

Anyways, we brought them home from the store and I went to work on them. It's pretty simple to use out of the box, but the first thing my son mentioned was that it doesn't have the old Gameboy Advanced port on the back. Not a huge deal, he'll just have to trade those in. Let me tell you though, if you get just one game for the DS, get Mario Kart. My 5yr old has a BLAST with it and they can play it together without owning 2 copies using system link.

So after they were done playing them for the day, I sat down at my computer, logged on to my Nintendo.com account and registered them online. First of all, let me say that one of the draws of these new fangled devices was that fact that you could download games online. I set up the wireless on the devices to match my router, which was actually quite simple. I have a DIR-655 that allows setting up devices using WPS - wireless protected setup. You activate it on the router and on the device, and it sets everything up for you. It's quite slick. After no time at all I was online with Nintendo. I was VERY disappointed by the lack of games available for download. The highlight apparently was the free internet browser, much like the one advertised for their Wii which was only free for a limited time. So the offer was, purchase a new Nintendo DSi™ system and access the Nintendo DSi shop by October 5, 2009 to receive 1000 points to spend online at the shop....on a grand total of 6 games. Although, they are supposed to come out with some new ones. My 12 yr old will like Brain Age: Sudoku.

Another complaint of mine about Nintendo is their support or general lack of it for existing wireless technologies. They are constantly way behind the times for wireless security. WEP was outdated when the DS came out originally, replaced by WPA and WPA2 for home wireless security protocols. Since WEP transmitts your key in plain text anyone with a wireless sniffer can access your wireless network without bothering with decryption. Now the DSi finally offers support for WPA and setup using WPS, but not as default, you have to use the advanced setup. The initial options still assume you are using WEP. In fact Nintendo's games that allow connection over Nintendo WiFi only allow WEP keys. So while now I can connect our DSi's to my wireless WPA protected network, I cannot connect their DSi Mario Kart to my Wii Mario Kart game if I chose to. Get with the technology Nintendo! Now that we can download stuff from the internet over wireless, how about downloading patches to our games to allow higher levels of wireless encryption?