Dual Street Dreams

Article Written by Zanthy Zae

To be honest, the Nintendo DS isn’t a very powerful machine. There’s another handheld gaming device (cough) that packs more horsepower, and even many PDAs and smartphones can out-calculate it. However, the strength of the DS is not its processing power, but its brand-new user interface. While PDAs have had a few touchscreen games, they have been ignored by major game publishers, so this realm really hasn’t been explored yet. The DS is the first mainstream gaming device to incorporate new methods of input – a microphone and a touch screen. Gamers and game developers are no longer confined to D-pads, analog sticks, and buttons as the only way to interact with a game. With this new interface, it becomes possible to do things that have never been done before.

Today, buttons are either pressed or not pressed (or partially pressed with analog buttons). D-pads can input 8 different directions, and analog sticks can take a wider range of motion, but still limited to a direction and a magnitude. However, a touch screen provides an entire field of precision, that you can touch anywhere you like. And not only can you tap the screen, but you can drag your stylus around to form lines or shapes, which greatly increases complexity. The microphone is also a novel addition. With it, you can yell, sing, whistle, or clap to it. Perhaps someone may even create voice recognition software so you could actually speak words and commands right into it, telling your in-game minions what to do. With such new possibilities available – one can only dream of what’s possible on the Nintendo DS…

A touchscreen with a real-time strategy game- the player can touch or circle the units he wants to control, tap where to go, and have truly precise control, rivaled by no console. The second screen could be used to display a radar, the current status, or even a view elsewhere on the battlefield. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to watch your base while simultaneously controlling your attack force? And don’t forget about wireless play for
multiplayer clashes – anywhere, anytime.

How about a football game? Well, I’m sure I’m not the first one with these ideas, but the touchscreen could be for drawing your own plays, and the microphone for calling audibles. A simulation game would be nice, too. Build a city, a planet, even a galaxy using the stylus to draw out whatever you want to create. An adventure game? Touch what you want to see, where you want to go. Puzzle afficionados could enjoy a barrage of entirely unique challenges when solutions are not limited to just directions and buttons.

There could also be totally new, genre-breaking games. Of course these are hard to envision, but the possibility is there. Such games as fresh as Pikmin, which mixed time and resource management with puzzle elements and combat. Or Wario Ware Inc., with its manic minigame madness. It’s impossible to predict what sort of innovation will be created, but one thing is for sure: The DS is the platform which has the largest chance of getting the most creative games, simply because current platforms use a user interface that has been around for almost ten years, while the DS alone
provides a new way to play. I really hope that the creative developers are thinking. What could Blizzard do? How about Clover Studios? Or Lionhead? Creating similar games to the past would be squandering the DS’s unique aspects, so it is really up to the innovators to lead the way.

Already, a few of the early games exhibit novel use of the breakthrough user interface. Wario Ware Touched takes the original to a new level with touch input. Pac Pix allows you to draw a Pacman then direct it with walls you also draw. Polarium’s puzzles are solved by drawing a continuous line over a grid of squares. Tiger Woods on DS has the player drawing a golf swing, rather than just pushing up and down on an analog stick or triple-tapping a button. The newly opened possibilities are truly endless. Hopefully these first games are but a glimpse to what will be done in the future.

Another great new feature of the Nintendo DS is its wireless abilities, which provide a greatly expanded arena for multiplayer games. Currently, multiplayer with portables requires additional hardware and a physical connection. A player would have to go to a
potential opponent, talk to them, and physically connect their GBAs using a link cable before a multiplayer game could be played. But now, with wireless built into every DS, no longer is multiplayer confined to those who carry around that cable. Instead, every DS that is sold is now another potential gaming adversary. With no physical connection required, it’s much more simple to initiate a multiplayer battle. There’s no need to approach in person, to stop, link up, and stay beside each other while playing. The new freedom makes it much easier to play against both strangers and friends. Your opponent could be in the next room, the next subway car, or across the park.

Single-card multiplayer allows any owner of a game to give a taste to anyone else in range. Anyone with a DS can now try before they buy, creating essentially what amounts to a viral demo. Plus, when the DS taps into Wi-Fi and the internet itself, you don’t even need to be close to your opponent to play, you only need to be on the same planet. Though worries that Nintendo will not fully implement online play are overblown, it really doesn’t matter- since every single DS is built from the get-go to jump online, it will take just one enterprising developer to ignite online play in a way never possible on the Online-by-Adapter Gamecube.

What can be done now on a GameCube, Xbox, PS2, and even the PSP, is more or less the same, simply because they all have similar input arrangements. Things have been this way for quite some time; there have been no major changes since the introduction of the analog stick with the N64. But the Nintendo DS is a new universe for those who are willing to try it. Personally, it seems that a lot of new games today are things I’ve done many times in the past. Sure, recent first person shooters are more refined than others
in the past, but it’s still just aiming, shooting, and dodging. The new action adventure? The same old exploration, puzzle solving, and some combat. What about the new RPG? Simply battle to strengthen your party, buy your equipment, and confront the very, very
evil nemesis always seemingly bent on destroying the [insert space-related noun].

What makes the DS great is that it allows experiences that have never been had in the past. Not just better graphics, new physics, but a truly new way to play games. And if the DS is just a precursor to Nintendo’s new home console, then there are exciting times to come indeed. When the new, unique features of the DS are truly integrated into games, then we will be immersed in entirely new kinds of play. The touchscreen, microphone, and wireless capability. They together will usher in a new era of gaming. And because of this I dream – I dream of what is possible on the Nintendo DS.

Zanthy Zae makes a guest appearance this week on DSA. Her column can be found regularly at GCA.nkjn