Beyond the Rhetoric

The homebrew scene for the Nintendo DS is huge, arguably even bigger than the audience devoted to the Sony PSP. Up until now, however, the enthusiasts were a little on the “geek” side of things, and the Average Joe (or Jane) video game player was intimidated by all this talk of flash cartridges, clients, kernels, PassMe devices, and the like. Then along comes what may be the easiest system for the Nintendo DS to date: the outrageously-named but incredibly simple to use DS-Xtreme from DS-X.

Let’s get something out of the way. The primary reason why a lot of people would consider getting something like this is to play illegally downloaded games on their DS. Yes, the DS-X can do that and it makes the process idiot-proof, but — of course — technically they can’t sell the consumer on that feature. On the record, I don’t condone the practice, but I’ll leave it up to you to decide what you want to do.

I got a test unit to fiddle with, and have since posted up a review for Mobile Magazine. Here’s a short excerpt:

Pretty well any NDS “homebrew app” will run like a dream on the
DS-Xtreme. It may take a second or two for it to load, but as soon as
it does, there doesn’t appear to be any slowdown. I found this was true
both with BeUp (MSN Messenger) and DS Organize (a PDA-like tool).

For the full review, click here.

Filed under Video Games.