Well, the Nintendo DSi has been released and having read the first review I found here I still want one now! I am an unashamed Nintendo fan, and I love the way they concentrate on making things fun, and dare to be different to everything else out there, and this review has not dampened my enthusiasm to get my hands on a DSi, if anything with it’s two camera’s and microphone for enhanced online play, and capability to download games and demos, as well as a welcome SD memory Card slot (albeit at the expense of the GBA slot) it has increased it.
So earlier this week I set on into the wilderness of the internet trying to locate a lovely company that would nicely ship me a Japanese import DSi, and while there are plenty of companies willing to send me one (for the right price of course), I have come across a minor snag.
For those of you who don’t know previous incarnations of both the Nintendo DS and the Gameboy, unlike the home consoles, are not region locked. So a console purchased in the US can quite happily run games from Japan or Europe, and the other way round. Unfortunately due, apparently, to the location specific software Nintendo will be installing on the DSi to allow it to download games and other things, like the Wii, the DSi will be region locked.
This being the case if I were to invest in a Japanese region DSi I would need to also import all my games, and as much as I would really love to get one before just about anyone else, I really can’t justify the extra expenditure involved. On the one hand I can understand this decision on Nintendo’s part, and to be fair to them they are one of the better publishers for releasing consoles and games worldwide. On the other hand I have been spoiled by the freedom to import Gameboy and DS titles to avoid prolonged waits for titles such as Professor Layton and The Curious Village.
My only other option is hoping that some enterprising individual out there will engineer some sort of region unlocking device akin to the Free Loader although from this understand this needs to be updated as often as the software on the system itself.
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