Super Mario - Jeff Ryan [89]
The DS’s guts featured a 67 MHz CPU designed for 3-D rendering, as well as a less powerful 33 MHz chip to display the 2-D graphics on half of the screen, and to emulate the GBA. What this meant was, despite the measly megahertz, the DS was capable of running a Nintendo 64 game. And what better way of showing this off than by repeating the GBA trick of launching with a Mario port?
Wisely, the launch team chose a more fondly remembered game than Super Mario Bros. 2 to port over: the 3-D marvel Super Mario 64.
Miyamoto had the chance to add in all the extras he couldn’t cram into the N64 game’s original release. Most of those ideas had been incorporated into Zelda or Star Fox projects, though, so he made new changes. The DS CPU could crank out more polygons, and didn’t have to rely on compression techniques. The gameplay was altered as well; instead of Mario getting different hats and exploring solo, he, Luigi, Yoshi, and frenemy Wario took turns exploring. Each character had distinct abilities, so what once required Mario’s Metal Hat now required switching to Wario.
The top of the screen was the 3-D game: on the bottom was a 2-D map, along with icons showing where all four characters were in relation to each other. Using the stylus while playing took some getting used to: some preferred greasy fingertips. The touch screen was also used for a series of Mario Party – esque minigames, which could be “won” by chasing after in-game rabbits. A modest multiplayer battle mode was helped out by an essential new option, “Download Play.” This let up to four DSes link up not only without a cable, but without four copies of the game.
The DS used a digital D-pad, which many disliked. Digital controls either send a 0 or 1, but couldn’t capture any fractional shades of gray in between. Analog control sticks, on the other hand, could slice a thumb press into 256 gradations. Just about every 3-D game was moved by an analog stick, so reverting to digital made the controls “sticky.” Hence Mario was tough to move around.
The most radical addition to the handheld might not have been the double screen, or even the touch screen. Keeping with the if-atfirst (and second, third, fourth)-you-don’t-succeed ethos, the DS included a way to get Nintendo gamers online. Technology and society had finally caught up with Yamauchi’s vision. People didn’t just dial up to AOL on a 14.4K modem, or access a swift T1 cable line: they bought new gadgets every year based on what they looked like, how small they were, and what they could do. Wireless communication was a key feature. A three-inch touch screen that collapsed to the size of a sunglasses case, with Wi-Fi access? That played Nintendo games? For $150? Sold.
Interestingly, Iwata’s first console was released in the United States first, on November 21, then Japan on December 2. The Japanfirst philosophy had changed, but only for this one console. Japanese tech buyers can be a fickle lot. Odds are Nintendo wanted its first launch site to be a big success. It spoke to Iwata’s nervousness about the DS that he changed the normal release schedule to front-load it with more positive press. The DS did turn out to be a slow initial seller in Japan, where portable doodads have to weather a much more acidic litmus test than in the States. This is, after all, a culture that recently spawned the keitai shousetsu literary genre, novels written on cell phones as epistolary text messages. Its standards might be insulted by Nintendo trying to cram Internet access into a gussied-up Game Boy.
The DS wasn’t aimed at kids who wanted to play Pokémon, though they were certainly welcome. It was aimed at adults, with their Black-Berrys, and cell phones, and MP3 players. Adults had loads of money to drop for accessories like a Bluetooth headset or a chromium skin. They would be into brief games: no long adventure campaigns, just something to kill five or ten minutes between appointments. They wouldn’t consider themselves “gamers,” but would routinely