>> Sometimes a little facelift and some body work makes all the difference and Nintendo found that out first hand. I'm Brian Tong for cnet.com and today we dive into the Nintendo DS Lite, the top selling portable gaming device on the market.
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>> A year ago Nintendo decided to redesign the body of its popular DS and viola, the DS Lite was born. It's a slimmer foreign factor that has an eerie Apple look to it and a brighter screen that makes it an item to lust after. It sleek body feels great and it's really easy to hold. Now the DS Lite's innovative design features two screens and it has a standard directional pad and buns. But the feature that makes it unique is the touch screen on the bottom. Now this opens up a whole new world of game play where you use the stylus to guide link through it's adventures or even chop up some green onions for dinner. Now even the microphone here comes in a play giving your pet dog commands or yelling objection in court; but guys you might not want to do that in public. Now the system also has built-in Wi-Fi so certain games will allow you to play against your friends in the same room, or with strangers over the Internet. Now the DS is a cartridge based system so that means load times are super fast, and the PSP just doesn't compare; and the system plays almost all Gameboy advance games by popping them into the bottom slot right down here. Battery life is great. Now running Mario 64 with a screen on its brightest setting and highest volume, our CNET Labs squeeze out 5 hours of game time. Now on normal settings, I can tell you you'll get a whole lot more; I'm talking about hours more. So where can the system improve? Well the DS Lite has decent graphics but it's not close compared to the graphic power of the PSP, but has game play over graphics and that's the identity Nintendo has stuck to, and I gotta say that it's working for them. Now we mention how it has built in Wi-Fi for online play and getting connected is easy, but getting connected with friends is a little more difficult because you have to enter in a 12-diti friend code--no game or tags, just this weird friend code. And finding gamers to play at random hours is a lot easier on consoles compared to the DS Lite. The DS Lite also lacks the video and audio playback that the PSP has, so it's not nearly as feature-rich if you're looking for a multimedia machine. But what the DS Lite does, it does great; it has great games and innovative game play that you can't find anywhere else for a nifty 130 dollar price tag. I'm Brian Tong for cnet.com and the slick design and gaming experience that you can't find anywhere else makes the DS Lite a top notch product.
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