When Nintendo released the DS handheld console it had to face a major obstacle – the Sony PSP. Not only did Sony’s new console sport PlayStation brands, but it also gave Nintendo an object teaching in design methods. Put simply, the PSP looked awesome and beautiful all lookers with a desire to get one, and that was before you even thought about the superior graphics, sound and multimedia functionality. Yes, the PSP had the DS out-gunned in almost every area, but there’s no doubt that the aesthetics of the DS were its biggest drawback.
Even hardcore Nintendo fans like myself had to confess that the DS was, i didn't want to say, ugly. At the time of its release I went as far as saying that I thought the DS looked like a Chinese knock-off, rather than an official Nintendo console. And as if the overall design wasn’t that bad enough, both the screens in the DS were quite dull, while the touch screen had a frankly annoying viewing angle. Again, when you compared the two screens in the DS to the single screen in the PSP there was no competition – the screen on the PSP was much bright, vibrant and a joy to behold.
Despite my early misgivings about the DS, I was always confident that Nintendo would come up with a better version, and that we’d all be asking ourselves why not launched this machine in the first place. After all, that’s exactly what Nintendo did with the GameBoy Advance. The original GameBoy Advance was a great step ahead from the GameBoy, but Nintendo’s decision to stick with a non-backlit screen proved something of a disaster, while the form factor made the Advance less pocketable than the outgoing machine. But when the GameBoy Advance SP came out, everything was different. Not only did you get a better quality backlit screen, but the clamshell design made the new console smaller and more beautiful. Now Nintendo has done the same thing with the DS and the new Nintendo DS Lite really made me ask the question – why wasn’t the original Nintendo DS like this?
