Hello, internet!
 
For some of you, the megalopolis called "Tokyo" is a place of fiction; it might as well be, if you've never been there, or never plan to go. For people like me, it is very much not a place of fantasy; it is real. Not only is it real, it is rainy. It has rained literally every damned day for three straight months over here. It is something biblical. Most days, it only rains for an hour, or ten minutes, though they are usually the ten minutes that count -- walks to and from train stations on the day you decide to leave your umbrella at home because the weather report says it's definitely not going to rain today. Then you get into the office, dripping wet, head straight for the bathroom, attempt to dry off your hair with paper towels, sit down at your desk, whip out ye olde iPhone, and press the weather widget button: hello, weather widget! Weather widget says "Six Straight Days of Torrential Rain". Next Monday is a little lightning bolt.
 
You'd think, with all the Great and Powerful Technology they have developed over here, someone would have finally nailed down the weather prediction thing.
 
That said, today is a day of almost disgusting heavenly clarity; the sky is the color of Sonic the Hedgehog; no clouds dare to stir. It's the perfect weather to just lie in bed with the windows open and the curtains drawn, eyes wide-open, making speed-metal guitar solos with your lips. Alas -- there is work to do. For today is the day of a Nintendo press conference.
 
NINTENDO ANNOUNCES A NEW DS
 
I feel deja vu, pangs of nostalgia. "I have typed this before".
 
Yes, Nintendo announced a new DS today, at a press conference from which foreign media were strictly barred with extreme prejudice.
 
The original Nintendo DS was announced at E3 in May 2004, and then released in November 2004.
 
The DS Lite was announced on January 26th, 2006, and then released little over a month later, on March 2nd, 2006.
 
Now Nintendo have announced the DSi. What does the "i" stand for? That's a trick question: it stands for itself. It stands alone. It stands for "the last letter of 'Wii'".
 
The DSi will be released on November 1st, less than a month after its announcement.
 
The DSi goes like this:
 
It is thinner than the DS Lite.
It is lighter than the DS Lite.
Its screens are 17% bigger than the DS Lite's.
It has an SD card slot.
It has two cameras -- one in the front, one the bar between the screens, and one on the back of the clamshell.
 
I know what you're thinking -- "Finally, a hand-held portable pocket-sized electronic device that can TAKE PHOTOGRAPHS!!" Yes, we're all excited about that.
 
However, there's more -- namely that you will also be able to use the DSi as an MP3 player, playing music stored on your SD card.
 
And it has an Internet browser.
 
So, there you have it -- games, photos, music, internet, finally in a portable device.
 
You have probably detected that I am being sarcastic. Good job!
 
However, it's pretty likely that many of Nintendo's audience find pressing the camera button on their cellular phones "too complicated," consider an iPod to be a "toy for rich people", or bought a PlayStation 2 last year because they needed a "cheap DVD player".
 
All of this is meant as affectionately as possible, of course.
 
The Nintendo DS Lite was an immediate Good Idea. One needed to only see side-by-side comparison photographs of the original DS and the DS Lite to know that the Lite was the clear winner. The brightness and color depth of the DS Lite was undeniable. Gamers the world over needed not type "I don't know if I should get one; I'm happy with my old DS" on their favorite forums: the answer was clear. If you owned a DS, you wanted a DS Lite, and there was nothing you could do about it. Anyone who said they were happy with their original DS was obviously lying.
 
The DS Lite answered to many of the faults of the original DS. Namely, the Nintendo DS presented a screen which was bright (not dark) and buttons which were deliciously pushable (not shallow and clicky).
 
The DSi takes away the Gameboy Advance slot, adds a camera that will certainly allow for "new types" of games (the camera software and functionality will presumably be identical to the camera released with Face Training last year -- coincidentally, that camera used the GBA slot), and adds an MP3 player. In terms of being a game console, it's not really offering anything "enhanced" in terms of the actual experience of playing a game.
 
Except for that new, bigger screen:
 

 
If someone tells me that it's OLED, I'll gladly welcome it.
 
It is, however, delivering a new game download service, called "Nintendo Zone". (Which sounds like it could be an Australian TV show from the 1980s.) Games will be as cheap as 200 "Wii Points." If they start putting some Super Nintendo and/or Sega Genesis games on there, that'll be admittedly pretty sweet.
 
The "Nintendo Zone," as perhaps indicated by its name, will be accessible via Wi-Fi routers hidden within the walls of your local Japanese McDonalds.
 
Still, it's growing increasingly apparent that Nintendo's a fan of Apple. With the DS Lite -- originally announced in black and white casings -- they exhibited a disputable Apple influence, by announcing their product very shortly before its release. (Elsewhere in the videogame industry, it remains a custom to announce things months or years before they are released.)
 
The DSi cements the rumors that Nintendo are Apple fans in that, this time, not only is the console white -- it has a lower-case letter "i" in its name.
 
That Nintendo's expanded wireless networking awareness strategy includes Wi-Fi points in McDonalds gifts us the perfect analogy: Nintendo's giving the Apple Experience to people who drink McDonalds' coffee instead of Starbucks'. (Apple earlier this year announced a partnership with Starbucks, to offer access to the iTunes Store for iPhone-carriers visiting one of Starbucks' billion locations.)
 
McDonalds' coffee, in Japan, is 100 yen for a small size.
 
Starbucks' coffee, in Japan, is 300 yen for a small size.
 
The DSi will retail for 19,800 yen.
The Apple iPhone costs new customers 43,000 yen on day one, with the first month's phone bill averaging 7,000 yen.
 
I cannot help recognizing some sort of deeply meaningful correlation.
 
As it stands, though, the DSi is merely a cute marginal upgrade. My favorite feature of it -- all sarcasm aside -- is that it does not contain a Gameboy Advance port. This is ballsy. This officially marks the first Nintendo handheld since the Virtual Boy to not be backward compatible to at least one previous generation of hardware.
 
Then again, we can always consider the DS itself "last generation". Uh-oh -- that's getting into Danger Territory.
 
Actually, let's keep plunging into Danger Territory:
 
NINTENDO ANNOUNCES PORTS OF FIVE-YEAR-OLD GAMECUBE GAMES FOR THE WII
 
Oh happy day! Nintendo is re-releasing Pikmin for the Wii, now on a full-sized DVD disc, where its perceived value will be much higher than it was on that tiny little disc it was originally released on.
 
Oh, I'm being mean! Sorry!
 
It's safe to say that maybe 90% of the people who own Nintendo Wiis in Japan today have never heard of the Gamecube. Luckily for them, Nintendo doesn't even have to offer an excuse for the graphical quality, because Gamecube games and Wii games look the same, anyway.
 
Oh! Being mean again! I just can't help it!
 
NINTENDO ANNOUNCES NEW WII GAMES
 
And they're all remakes of existing games. There's Punch Out, which will presumably be like Wii Sports Boxing only with actual character design in place of the Miis; there's Dynasty Warriors, which is so heartbreakingly boring and obvious (and already existing in several alternate forms on the Wii), and then there's Sin and Punishment 2, which will most likely be:
 
1. Awesome
 
However, as a die-hard Treasure fanatic, I can't help being a little disappointed: Sin and Punishment was a game that tried too hard to be awesome, ended up way too awesome for human comprehension (literally), and was never released in the West until the Wii Virtual Console. It sold on the Virtual Console because the blogosphere screamed about it (and rightly so), pumping their fists and shouting "Finally!" If we had access to Nintendo's Secret Figures, we could probably say that Sin and Punishment on the Virtual Console sold better than any other Treasure game released in the West. What's sad is that Treasure is a bunch of guys who started their own company so they wouldn't have to make sequels anymore. Recently, they've done a few (hella amazing) remakes of old franchises, and now, here they are, putting a "2" in the title of a game. I will gladly give them my money, in exchange for a big moist chunk of their Burning Soul.
 
Despite all this skepticism, I will not feign to predict that Nintendo is "doomed", or anything of the sort. With Dragon Quest IX's release date recently announced -- March 2009 -- Nintendo is looking at a gargantuan windfall. Dragon Quest is Japan's surest-selling games franchise (if you don't count Pokemon), and the DS installment will doubtless sell more than any of its predecessors.
 
What percentage of those inevitable bubbling millions of Dragon Quest IX players will be experiencing the game on a DS equipped with a camera and enhanced WiFi abilities, only time will tell.
 
The Nintendo press conference apparently ended with Shigeru Miyamoto, for the third (?) time, walking onto a stage and performing Wii Music in front of a dead-silent audience. Keep trying, Shiggy! Sooner or later, you're going to make us love that game.