Professor Layton DLC already on the cartridge

[wraggster]

We're sure that many of you inquisitive DS owners out there have spent countless hours with your eyes peeled to your handheld's twin suns, waiting for Nintendo to post the latest downloadable brainteasers for Professor Layton and the Curious Village. This same group of puzzle junkies may be upset to learn that what they're actually downloading is a code to unlock puzzles which are already on the game cartridge -- essentially meaning that there's a set number of puzzles on the game (162, to be exact).

GoNintendo discovered a supposedly complete list of the game's riddles to back up this claim. You can check out every single puzzle featured in the game, and even choose to sneak a peek at every solution as well -- an action we can't help but feel would be frowned upon by the eponymous scholar and his pint-sized associate.

http://www.joystiq.com/2008/03/22/professor-layton-dlc-already-on-the-cartridge/

[Spidery_Yoda]

That's.. interesting. Why on earth would Nintendo put all the puzzles on the cart, and then pretend that you're downloading them?

Is it some sort of lame attempt at promoting their 'download' service?

I can't think of any other reason why they'd do this.

[TeenDev]

you can't download anything and write it to a DS cart, so yeah this makes sense.

[williew705]

Well thats pretty stupid.

[wiggy fuzz]

you know, a blank writable GBA cart for the ds would have done justice - i can imagine a fair few extras, such as extra pokemon or mario kart tracks...

the slot 2 is under utilised, in my opinion

[kcajblue]

you can't download anything and write it to a DS cart, so yeah this makes sense.thats true.
i was wondering about that when i started "downloading" them.
i thought, how the hell are they saving on the card?

[rememberthe8bit]

It's because the only writable memory in a DS card is the save memory. The biggest save memory size I've seen is 256KB, which I dont think is enough for download-able content. It's much easier to just have the data stored on the card, and referenced to on the save memory. Plus, did you actually think that your Animal Crossing items and town were entirely on your save memory? :P

EDIT: Whoops, Picross did have download-able content, but that's about what it's limited to. Simple stuff, and maybe a few racing courses.

[cutterjohn]

Isn't the current largest save size 512KB?

And yes they could do downloadable content, as in addition to Picross, does Animal Crossing have some actual downloadable content? Or did they just unlock some existing stuff?

[Spidery_Yoda]

Well, why would Nintendo put extra puzzles on it that can only be unlocked by connecting it to the net, thats what I don't understand.

[elgoog]

It could be a bit like what they did in Metroid Prime Hunters, you could unlock new maps and stuff by playign a certain number of wifi battles, so it could be like an unlockable, it depends, did Nintendo claim these were downloadable, or just unlockable....?

And I guess you cant save to a game cart, unless its like one of those demos such as in Brain Training, but that goes from the RAM as soon as you turn it off....