Gadgetory

all the way back in 2004 Nintendo made a bold step along the undisputed leader in handheld consoles the Nintendo executives had a choice continue on with the extremely popular Gameboy line or tear up the playbook and start with a brand new 21st century design currently over 144 million DS models sold worldwide the Nintendo DS the second only to the Sony Playstation 2 as the best-selling video game console of all time to put that staggering number in perspective the entire population of the UK is a mere 61 million many attributed the success of the Nintendo DS to the still unique dual screen layout from which the portable derives its name all models of the DS share several defining features including a folding design allowing for two displays and a fairly compact form factor a normal LCD screen in addition to a bottom mounted touchscreen and a built-in microphone altogether these features open up a wide variety of possibilities for different styles of gameplay on November 21st 2004 antenna released the first D s often referred to as the fad DS this version borrowed a lot from the Gameboy Advance SP including a similar folding design rechargeable battery as well as backwards compatibility with Game Boy Advance games on the technical side of things it was vastly improved with two processors to run the dual displays a brand new smaller game cartridge along with support for Wi-Fi which meant that at last the Game Boy Link cables could be done away with in the last six years Nintendo has updated the DS Hardware three times the DS Lite brought a sleeker design to larger and brighter displays and much improved battery life this was followed up by the DSi a more substantial upgrade that brought even larger displays front and rear facing VGA cameras an SD card slot and a new UI that includes support for downloading additional software via the DSi shop lastly Nintendo released the DSi XL and nearly identical model to the DSi except for the much larger 4.2 inch displays now that the Nintendo 3ds has been released the end of the line is approaching for the DS while it certainly wasn't a perfect console by any means it definitely will be looked back on as one of the most popular consoles of all time