DSi Drops GBA Support (and the Homebrew that Comes With It); Old DS Cool Again

[wraggster]

Bad news, folks. We totally missed it in the wake of poor battery life specs, but Nintendo's new DSi will completely ditch support for GBA titles. That not only means no more playing GBA backups (they only loaded from the now extinct GBA slot), but even if you were to load some sort of GBA emulation through the DS slot, chances are that the DS's processor wouldn't be fast enough to handle it (integrated GBA hardware processed these games before). Also, no GBA slot means that the lightly supported but excellent DS rumble pack and similar accessories are dead too. I can't speak for everyone here, but the DSi is becoming a bigger disappointment by the second.

http://gizmodo.com/5058052/dsi-drops...-ds-cool-again

[Rufus]

Without the GBA slot, that would also be eliminating the extra memory cart for the (at least) the DSBrowser...

[Justise]

Why whould anyone whant to buy this downgrade?

I'll tell you why! Because DS is mostly used by Girls (especialy in Japan), and girls never had a GBA library.

I'll stick to my old (and fat) DS.

[davidcrew]

Without the GBA slot, that would also be eliminating the extra memory cart for the (at least) the DSBrowser...

it has some onboard flash memory for that.

[flaminfox]

wow, much complainers over the Dsi..... well with out gba which is dead, using SD card emulation of gba is possible you know......

[ICE]

wow, much complainers over the Dsi..... well with out gba which is dead, using SD card emulation of gba is possible you know......

Yeah, lets not all rule out an SD exploit.

[Demonic_Cr0w]

Without the GBA slot, that would also be eliminating the extra memory cart for the (at least) the DSBrowser...

supposedly, it will have an internet browser already built in (Which I would only use... pretty much no where) But hopefully it will be more powerful with a stronger processor (hence the shorter battery life possibly?) I honestly never used the GBA slot for anything other than Guitar Hero, which I never play. But in all reality, this should have been released instead of the DS Lite. Nintendo is making a habit of taking half-steps instead of full steps lately (Game Cube to Wii, DS to DS Lite Etc.) If this were released instead of the DS Lite, it would have been much more of an accomplishment. I'm glad that it will be more of a hand held Wii with its online store and new apps, but it's a bit late. They need to think about power a bit more. They've got the courage, they've got the wisdom, but they lack in power. Damnit Nintendo, you created the Triforce! Gah!

Oh and on a side note, I hate that it will support AAC... They're trying too hard to be Apple

[mcdougall57]

Thats a shame but thats why I own a micro.

[123Waffle101]

well...if the browser needs extra memory.. where the gba slot was, could be used as the extra ram because there is nothing there, which could mean external ram..which may mean that the extra ram could be used to play gba with the ds once its hacked

[iofthestorm]

Bad news, folks. We totally missed it in the wake of poor battery life specs, but Nintendo's new DSi will completely ditch support for GBA titles. That not only means no more playing GBA backups (they only loaded from the now extinct GBA slot), but even if you were to load some sort of GBA emulation through the DS slot, chances are that the DS's processor wouldn't be fast enough to handle it (integrated GBA hardware processed these games before). Also, no GBA slot means that the lightly supported but excellent DS rumble pack and similar accessories are dead too. I can't speak for everyone here, but the DSi is becoming a bigger disappointment by the second.

http://gizmodo.com/5058052/dsi-drops...-ds-cool-again

Wow that article fails so hard. The DS needs the ARM7 core for audio and other stuff, a lot of games use it. They're only removing the slot. Of course, anyone who knows a little about homebrew should know this already. Wow, bloggers really disappoint me.