NDS Game Selector Switches it Up!
Monday, March 9th, 2009 at 8:22pm by Sean B.
One of the faults of portable gaming is variety – if you want to play more than one game while you are out, you have to carry around extra cartridges – and risk losing them. It’s no surprise then, to see the market flooded with cases of all colors, shapes, and sizes that help you keep your handheld and your games together – but Hong Kong Company BlazePro take DS cases a step further with the “Game Selector.” Encasing your DS in a plastic black enclosure, the “NDS Game Selector” plugs three DS cards into your console via switch and cable, allowing you to choose which one is sending it’s data to the DS. At first I wasn’t sure if this was awesome or pointless, but it could definitely save Animal Crossing addicts the hassle of constantly switching cartridges. A neat idea, and an inexpensive solution if you have cartridge-switching woes.
March 9th, 2009 at 8:43 pm
Handy!!!! I still have a lot of games to beat for my DS so if it works on the DSi then we’re in business!!!
March 9th, 2009 at 9:30 pm
Pretty damn cool, although I probably won’t get it since I really don’t travel so much that I need to constantly switch games on the go. Although this is pointless for people with flash carts since they can legally backup their games onto a microSD and play them through the flash cart. Its smaller and you can store more then 3 games (depending on the size of the microSD of course).
March 9th, 2009 at 11:43 pm
I have all of “my” games on a flash cart.
The first person to mess with me, gets a photo of me and all DS games beside the DS as proof. Just kidding. No seriously!
March 10th, 2009 at 12:07 am
I haven’t decided yet if I’m going to get one of these. It would be nice to have the option to select between something like Animal Crossing, a game that one would play every day, and any other set of games. Personally, I’m not of the likes to use a flash cart for anything except legitimate homebrew – if i’m going to buy a retail copy of a DS game, I may as well use the actual DS cartridge. I’ve never had console media fail on me before, so the need to “backup” my games is not pressing. Although, this would be a nice way to always have the dsOrganize homebrew with me for PDA use, AND be able to play my retail games without swapping out.
March 10th, 2009 at 9:40 am
“Although this is pointless for people with flash carts since they can legally backup their games onto a microSD and play them through the flash cart.”
Legally? Sorry, but that’s not true. Or at least that’s what nintendo says:
“Copying of any video game for any Nintendo system is illegal and is strictly prohibited by domestic and international intellectual property laws. “Back-up” or “archival” copies are not authorized and
are not necessary to protect your software.”
Anyway, I think having all your games in one card is the biggest advantage of playing pirated games on ds. I hope the DSi with its sd card slot comes close to this idea.
March 10th, 2009 at 10:55 am
thanks for the into frstOne.
hey cool, nintendo talking crap in legalise! check this out: “and
are not necessary to protect your software”.
Oh, they’re not. So a destructable material product doesn’t gain any protection from having digitzed backups. That’s cool. I’ll just tell that to everybody with family albums, tax records, and expensive video game collections. It’s ok guys. Your physical possessions will never deteriorate. I’ll go let my broken ass copy of Xenogears know right now. I don’t really need to though, because I BACKED IT UP.
March 10th, 2009 at 7:27 pm
What the hell? From an attachment to talking about flash carts??
I’m not nerdy, computer-skilled, or smart enough to back up games to an SD flash cart, so I’ll take this.
But i do agree that having digital copies of stuff does have its pros over hard copies. But there are cons as well: What if your digital copies get infected or damaged? And since you are using a cart, logically, the cart could get damaged too.
March 11th, 2009 at 12:46 am
This could be better than the flash cards if it lets you switch between games that are on. For instance turn on the ds and all three games get power and load up. Only one game is displayed on screen – which ever one you have the switch set to.
So you have it set to Animal crossing, it loads up you go searching for bugs, catch a few then pause the game. Flick the switch and straight away you’ve got Mario kart loaded up. You play a couple of races then pause the game and switch back to Animal Crossing unpause and see if any more bugs have shown up.
That would be sweet and save time even for people with flash carts.
March 11th, 2009 at 1:39 am
That would be neat, but I’m guessing that it can’t do that – in the end it’s just choosing what cartridge to transfer over via cable. Switching cartridges mid-game would be like ejecting your DS cart mid game.
March 11th, 2009 at 12:19 pm
This isn’t a fix for portable gaming – it’s a fix for NINTENDO portable gaming. The PSP has no trouble storing multiple games on a memory stick, legally. So can the iPhone, for that matter, but I agree that the iPhone is a crappy gaming platform.
Don’t get me wrong – I love my DS and my box of broken DS lites and phats that my kids have gone through. I just never understood why Nintendo didn’t make the DS Lite capable of this out of the box or through a firmware update. Having to buy ANOTHER DS (DSi) in order to have the ability to download games and store multiple games on a single cart is kind of sticking it to the gamer.
March 11th, 2009 at 12:55 pm
Fool Throttle:
From what I’ve read, the PSP “UMD on Memory Stick” is legal in the same “gray area” sense as storing multiple DS games on a Flash Cartridge. That is, it’s not a programmed “feature” that comes with the system, and that it’s spearheaded by a homebrew community that new firmware tries to block. Additionally, like the flashcards for the DS – it enables Piracy just as much as it enables the legally conscious gamer to carry around “multiple backups” of their purchased game. From what I’ve read, that is – the articles were written quite some time ago – it’s possible that Sony updated their firmware to allow the PSP to be open platform, but I doubt it.
March 11th, 2009 at 2:52 pm
Sean – you’re right in that the copying games from UMD to memory stick on the PSP is not technically OK with Sony, but I’m referring to the fact that you can download complete games through the PSP via wifi to the memory stick and play them from the stick. That’s totally legal.
I thought we were (at first) talking about the idea of carrying around multiple games without a bag of carts. If you want multiple cart or UMD-based games then yeah, it’s still that same gray area.
March 11th, 2009 at 3:05 pm
Oh, I see – you’re talking about what the DSi is SLATED to do, having game downloads or something of the sort – no, that’s not quite what this device is about. The product in the article is just another way to play your cartridge games. It’s nothing phenomenal, but it’s kind of neat.
March 11th, 2009 at 6:34 pm
Yeah…you guys are making NO SENSE right now. Fool Throttle, we were talking about an add-on for the DS that allows you to have three games plugged in at once. No mention of flash cartridges was brought up in the article. Some people then brought up flash carts as a better choice over the peripheral. Does that get into your brain?
March 11th, 2009 at 6:47 pm
No worries man, everyone makes mistakes.
March 12th, 2009 at 10:11 am
I remember they did something like this before. Not sure if it was on the GBA or still on the DS, but it really didn’t do what it was promised to as you still had to physically mess with the game cards/cartridges. I’ll probably stick to what I’ve been doing for a while now. That is grab a DS game case for a game I haven’t finished yet such as Final Fantasy Tactics A2, leave that game card in there, put a GBA game in the case slot for GBA games. Have another DS game in my system as well as a GBA game in my system and just take the case and my DS and I’m set. Any more than four games is just ridiculous.
March 14th, 2009 at 5:27 pm
Yeah…good luck with that… I prefer the size of a microsd card, personally.