Newbie Guide Nintendo DS Lite Games

Newbie Guide to Nintendo DS Lite

Currently white, black or pink are the only Nintendo DS Lite colors available in America.

The DS Lite is a handheld portable gaming system with a touch stylus with dual screens that came out in March 2006 in the U.S. It's smaller and brighter than the previous Nintendo DS which came out about a year before that. Nintendo is cranking out over 2.5 million of these DS Lite units per month. In Japan I was able to pick up a pink, lite blue DS Lite and over here in the states picked up a white and black DS Lite as well. They cost $129 at walmart, bestbuy, circuit city, etc. In Japan they cost about $20 more.

What else is cool about it. Has built-in microphone and headphone jacks. DS Lite has built-in wireless so you can play a few multi-player games like Mario Kart and Tetris and compete against each other. Also if you have a wireless router at home you can play a few of the games over the internet with a few games.

Battery takes about 3 hours to charge and LED light changes from green to red when it hits about 30%. It has four steps of brightness on step 1 (lowest) expect between 15 to 19 hours of play and on step 4 (brightness) expect 5 to 8 hours of play. Initially you should fully charge it before using and anytime it hasn't been used in quite some time.

Best Nintendo DS Games

These are the best Nintendo DS games in my opinion. All with screenshots

No, not just those those above, but rather a bunch of them.
See Best Nintendo DS Games List

Best Japanese Nintendo DS Games

These are the best Japanese Nintendo DS games in my opinion. All with screenshots

See Best Japanese Nintendo DS Games List

Popular Nintendo DS Games Pokemon Nintendogs

These are the Popular Nintendo DS games but not the best of the best though.

See Popular Nintendo DS Games List

List of All Nintendo DS Games

Best Korean Nintendo DS Games

See Best Korean Nintendo DS Games List

Best Homebrew Nintendo DS Games and Apps

The DS Homebrew community is growing and developers are programming even better quality releases.

Hardware needed for Nintendo DS Lite

1) Purchase a M3 DS Simply for $45 and about $8 shipping. (just came out mid January 2007)
This is a slot 1 so it's no longer necessary to firmware flash your Nintendo DS Lite. Just stick the M3 DS Simply with a microSD memory card and your good to go. It comes with a mini microSD USB flash reader so you can copy files to it off your computer. Here is the official homepage for it. I comes in a black case same size as a Nintendo DS game cartridge. Comes with a blue plastic key chain holder which holds 2 game cartridges and a microSD USB card reader.

2) Purchase a 2GB microSD card. 2GB microSD cards are about $11 from newegg + $5 shipping Note: prices are from Feb 2008 and may change. List of 2GB microSD memory cards on newegg.com. Note: 4GB microSD cards will not work with M3 Simply.

How to use M3 DS Simply

You can download the latest firmware from the official homepage or from linfoxdomain.com/nintendo/ds (recommended)

here's my mirror of lastest firmware as of Feb 18, 2008
M3_DSS_Firmware_English_v1.11.zip 5MB

My compilation of 12 themes 12themes.zip 3.1MB
5 duo tone skins, and 3 plasma skins and four theme-based ones.

Just unzip the m3simply firmware zip file and copy contents to the root of your microSD card using the supplied microSD USB card reader. _DS_MENU.DAT which is about 1.3MB is the firmware.To upgrade do the same thing just replace the existing files on the memory card with the new ones.

Now copy clean NDS games on to the microSD card, no patching is required as was the case before with slot-2 devices. Make sure you always leave 16MB free on the memory card. Why? 4MB for system file _DS_MENU.SYS and say 24 file game saves (512KB x 24 = 12MB) Insert microSD card into M3 DS Simply and stick it in your slot-1 on your DS and away you go.

Skins it comes with a skin with 5 duo tone colors blue, green, orange, purple, red and 3 plasma colors blue, black, green and four theme-based Bacteria, Pokemon Pearl, Space, Spider-man 3. To change copy the four .bmp files and overwrite the ones in the directory _system_. I made a theme.ini file for each of them (duo tones and plasma skins) which basically is white text with a black highlight. When you first turn it on it'll show theme03 which is purple duo tone. For more themes see ndsthemes.com

M3 Simply firmware how to use:

Main Menu
Select - change themes (up to 12 themes total)
(if in automatic mode, changes themes monthly)

Game Menu
L - adjust brightness (4 levels)
R - Soft Reset (L+R+A+B+X+Y)
A - start game
Dpad L or R - navigate page up/down
Dpad Up or Down - navigate up/down
Start - Return to Main Menu
Select - Toggle Games, eBook, Save, Files mode

Backup SAVE (.SAV) File
Select Save Mode choose .SAV file to backup and press A.
It creates a .BAK file in addition to the current .SAV file.

Restore Backup Save (.BAK) File
Select Save Mode, choose .BAK file to restore and press A. This overwrites current .SAV file.

Delete Files (games, saves, etc.)
Press X to delete and A to confirm deletion. To delete a .SAV file go to SAVE mode or FILES mode.

Cheat Mode (press Y for certain games to bring up cheat menu)
Use touch screen to 'Enable Cheat' then use D pad up and down to navigate various cheats and toggle them with the A button. Once done choosing cheats you wish to enable choose 'Save and Exit' and start your game. These are Action Replay Cheats which are preloaded. Mostly are for infinite lives, infinite health, infinite money, etc.

L+R+START+UP temporarily enable cheats
L+R+START+DOWN temporarily disable cheats

Best Nintendo DS Browser

0506 - Nintendo Browser Japanese.
0591 - Nintendo Browser Europe can read Japanese web sites but no Japanese input.

These you can't use unless you buy one of them that comes with a Slot-2 8MB memory card and also requires a wireless internet router. I have the Japanese version and I use both of them. It's still a pretty slow browsing experience and it's more of a cool factor than a practical one. The US version will go on sale June 2007.

Best Nintendo DS Game Sites

News
dsfanboy.com
ds-scene.net
ds.qj.net
gonintendo.com
siliconera.com

Release lists
ds-scene.net
advanscene.com
gbatemp.net

Game Ratings / Reviews
metacritic.com

Forums
forum.gbadev.org
forums.maxconsole.net

Best Seller Lists
amazon.com
amazon.co.jp
sofmap.com

Here's my old page with Supercard microSD and miniSD
along with how to flash your nintendo DS Lite.

Updated February 18, 2008

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