You can't buy a DS anymore--the DS lite pretty much replaced it.
DSi has downloadable content, a camera and a few other gadgets.
(If you want to download Japanese games you will need a JAPANESE DSi but you can still play regular Japanese games on an American DSi. )

DSiXL or DSiLL as it is known in Japan is a larger version of the DSi with better speakers and two games allready downloaded.
http://www.nintendo.co.jp/ds/index.html

I hope that was helpful!

spleenlol wrote:

I guess they come out April 5th?

I don't think you need to worry about the release date unless you're planning on taking a time machine back to last March.

you can still play regular Japanese games on an American DSi

DS games are not region locked and this remains true on the DSi, but DSi-specific games (downloadable or otherwise) are region locked.

spleenlol wrote:

hahaha oh wow I totally missed that what i read was a year old...

So I can play japanese games still on the DSi but if I want to download them it would have to be a Japanese DSi?

You can play Japanese DS games on an American DSi machine, but not Japanese DSi games.  Most of the games worth playing are still ordinary DS games. That could change in the future, or might not.

gyuujuice wrote:

DSiXL or DSiLL as it is known in Japan is a larger version of the DSi with better speakers and two games allready downloaded.

When are they going to release the DSPad?



[/geeky joke]

I just bought a Japanese DSi LL recently so I could download 立体かくし絵アッタコレダ and man, it was great.  Lots of easy-to-read Japanese and fun puzzles.  But, since it was only 500 yen, it wasn't very long.  I'm hoping they make a sequel.

There's already like 200 downloadable games, too!  It actually came with 3:  2 Brain Age games (In Japanese, of course) and a dictionary. (!)

The Brain Age games are in Japanese, of course, so it thinks my brain is really old because I'm so slow at reading. 

Yeah I was gonna get that Kanji Sono mama rakubi jiten. It looks really nice and super handy. Dictionary on the go!

The DSLite is slimmer, has differents levels of light, has the microphone in the middle (for better input), a bigger stylus, and better availability. However, the DS (Nitro) costs less (even back when the DS Nitro was new!) has a vertical stylus holder (making the stylus less liekly to slip out), and covers GBA games all the way (whereas the DSLite has them stick out about half-way).

The DSi does not have GBA support (as well as any accessories that use the slot),  uses more electricity, and does not support German, Italian, or Nipponese (in the Americas version, at least), but has a camera and respective photo altering software, a better Internet experience complete with cheap downloadable content (that increases in number every week), a sound recorder-player, a "reset" button (a re-programmed POWER button), semi-hardware light adjustment (a button combination), and bigger screens. The DSiLL (or DSiXL) is just way bigger, making such convenient for those times when others want to watch you play (or if you are playing Ooendan).

Same for PSP. You can't buy any downloaded content on the PSP if you don't have an approved card and they don't approve your card if your billing address is not in the country you are registered.

The bad solution is, if you are in some place of the globe that you can't import Japanese DS games without paying 4 times its value for the shipment, you can get your games in a Flashcard using R4DS or something alike.

As for PS3, getting Japanese games is a beach. I wonder why Japanese people don't sell used games on ebay like people in the US.

drivers99 wrote:

I have a DSi but it has the ability to update the firmware over the net. Doing so disabled my AceKard2i (an SD card reader for the DSi which lets you run homebrew apps (like ndsrs, an SRS program; although it was too much effort to use, I use iAnki plugin for Anki on an iPod touch instead), listen to mp3s, put text files on it to read, and yes, run downloaded/pirated software (or I guess you could use it so you don't have to carry all your cartridges with you. yeah, that's it.)). Fortunately I was able to fix it by getting a DS lite and running an update program from there.  The DS lite isn't updatable so Nintendo can't "fix" it to break your SD memory card readers.

oh i didn't think about doing srs on that... do you know of a compatible program with DSi besides AceKard2i? I don't have an iphone or anything and I think that srs on the go would be a great thing for me. specially if i had a DS that could us SRS.


EDIT:Besides AceKard2i because I'm guessing it's not compatible anymore?

Last edited by spleenlol (2010 March 09, 12:45 pm)

Acekard has nothing to do with the SRS program, or homebrew / 'other' apps/games in general. You just need a flash card for your DS(i), which come in a range of brands.
Other brands are the before mentioned M3 (i / DS simply / DS real) or R4 cards, though the latter suffer from bad quality copies sold, which is annoying.

Any decent card will support homebrew apps and what not, I personally trained my kana using some homebrew app on my M3 DS Simply