what is meant by Nintendo DS?

Answer 1

dual screen. the ds has two screens and is portable

Answer 2

DS is a dual-screen portable handheld game console developed and manufactured by Nintendo.

Answer 3

nintendo DS is the latest version of nintendo.its a touch screen. you can use the pen to play for it or the old way of playing it.its an exciting game that every teenager here in japan have. its more popular than PSP or play station portable here in japan.

Answer 4

The Nintendo DS (sometimes abbreviated NDS or DS) is a handheld game console developed and manufactured by Nintendo, released in 2004. It is visibly distinguishable by its horizontal clamshell design, similar to the Game Boy Advance SP, and the presence of two displays, the lower of which acts as a touch screen. The system also has a built-in microphone, and supports wireless 802.11b (WiFi) standards,[4] allowing players to interact with each other within short range (30–100 feet, depending on conditions), or over the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection service.

The name "DS" stands for both Dual Screen and Developers' System, the latter of which refers to the features of the handheld designed to encourage innovative gameplay ideas among developers.[5] The system was known as Project Nitro during development.

On March 2, 2006, Nintendo released the Nintendo DS Lite, a redesigned model of the DS, in Japan. It was later released in North America and Europe the following June



Design and specifications
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Inputs and outputs
The lower display of the DS is overlaid with a pressure-sensitive touch screen, designed to accept input from the included stylus, the user's fingers, or the "thumb stylus": a curved plastic rectangle attached to the optional wrist strap. The touch screen allows players to interact with in-game elements more directly than by pressing buttons; for example, in Trauma Center: Under the Knife, the stylus may be used as a scalpel to cut an incision in a diseased patient. In other games, it may act as a computer mouse, for selecting items in a "point-and-click" interface (Advance Wars: Dual Strike), or for aiming and looking in a first-person shooter (GoldenEye: Rogue Agent, Metroid Prime: Hunters). Other applications include drawing (Pac-Pix, PictoChat, Lost Magic), handwriting recognition (Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day!), and analog stick simulation (Super Mario 64 DS, Rayman DS).

More traditional controls are located on either side of the touch screen. To the left is a D-pad, with a narrow Power button above it, and to the right are the A, B, X, and Y buttons, with narrow Select and Start buttons above them. Shoulder buttons L and R are located on the upper corners of the lower half of the system. The overall button layout is similar to the controller of the Super Nintendo Entertainment System.

The DS features stereo speakers providing virtual surround sound(depending on the software) located on either side of the upper display screen. This is a first for a Nintendo handheld, as the Game Boy line of systems has only supported stereo sound through the use of headphones or external speakers.

A built-in microphone is located below the left side of the bottom screen. It has been used for a variety of purposes, including speech recognition (Nintendogs, Brain Age), online voice chat (Metroid Prime: Hunters), and minigames that require the player to blow or shout into the microphone (Feel the Magic: XY/XX, Mario Kart DS, WarioWare: Touched!, "Resident Evil: Deadly Silence", and New Super Mario Bros.) Also, It has been mentioned by Crystal Dynamics that the upcoming Tomb Raider Legend for the DS will require players to blow into the microphone in order to blow the dust off and examine certain artifacts.

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Technology
The handheld unit has a mass of approximately 275 grams (9.7 ounces). The physical size is 148.7 × 84.7 × 28.9 mm (5.85 × 3.33 × 1.13 inches). It features two separate 3-inch TFT LCD screens, each with a resolution of 256 × 192 pixels, dimensions of 62 x 46 mm and 77 mm diagonal, and a dot pitch of 0.24 mm. The gap between the screens is approximately 21mm, equivalent to about 92 "hidden" lines. The lowermost display of the DS is overlaid with a resistive touch screen, which registers pressure from one point on the screen at a time, averaging multiple points of contact if necessary. The console uses two separate ARM processors, an ARM946E-S main CPU and ARM7TDMI co-processor at clock speeds of 67 MHz and 33 MHz respectively, with 4 MB of main memory which requires 1.65 volts.

The system's 3D hardware performs transform and lighting, texture-coordinate transformation, texture mapping, alpha blending, anti-aliasing, cel shading and z-buffering. However, it lacks any kind of texture filtering, leading to some titles having a blocky appearance. The system is theoretically capable of rendering 120,000 triangles per second at 30 frames per second. Unlike most 3D hardware, it has a limit on the number of triangles it can render as part of a single scene; this limit is somewhere in the region of 4000 triangles. The 3D hardware is designed to render to a single screen at a time, so rendering 3D to both screens is difficult and decreases performance significantly. However, games such as Viewtiful Joe: Double Trouble run 3D on both screens at once in gameplay, and still keep good performance and quality.

The system has two 2D engines, one per screen. These are similar to (but more powerful than) the GBA's 2D engine.

Games use a proprietary solid state ROM "Game Card" format resembling the memory cards used in other portable electronic devices such as digital cameras. It is currently supporting cards up to 1 gigabit (=1024 Mb or 128 MB) in size. The cards usually also have a small amount of flash memory or an EEPROM to save user data, for example progress in a game or high scores. The game cards weigh around 3.5 grams (1/8 ounces).

The unit features wireless networking capabilities for multiplayer games or chat using Wi-Fi. The current software that uses IP is limited, however. Many games take full advantage of the Internet capability to find local as well as worldwide players to play with.

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Firmware
Nintendo's own custom firmware boots the system: from here, the user chooses to run a DS or Game Boy Advance game, use PictoChat, or search for downloadable games. The latter is an adaptation of the Game Boy Advance's popular "single cartridge multiplayer" feature, adapted to support the system's Wi-Fi link capabilities: players without the game search for content, while players with the game broadcast it.

In November 2004, Nintendo announced its entry into the feature animation business, suggesting that theatres showing these features could install kiosks to broadcast game content to Nintendo DS units via this same feature. In March 2005, Nintendo tested broadcast kiosks in Japan, allowing players to download a demo of Meteos, extra content in Nintendogs, or extra songs for Jam with the Band. A similar download kiosk was at Nintendo's booth at E³ 2005, and had downloadable demos and trailers. It has been confirmed at D.I.C.E 2006 that similar kiosks will be available in GameStop, EB Games, and Game Crazy stores in North America in the second quarter of 2006, with the possibility of Wal-Mart and Target being added later. As of May 2006, DS Download Stations have begun to start appearing in these stores, with a limited number of downloadable demos.

The PictoChat program, which is permanently stored on the unit, allows users to communicate with other DS users within range over the wireless network by text, handwriting, or drawings, using the DS's touch screen and stylus for input; an on-screen keyboard partially covers the touch-sensitive area while using this mode, allowing for typed and written messages. There are rumors of an Internet-enabled PictoChat in development, though this is unconfirmed.

The DS's main menu also features an alarm clock and the ability to set preferences for boot priority (booting to games when inserted, or always booting to the main menu), GBA game screen usage (top or bottom), and user information (name, date of birth, favorite color, time, etc.)

Compatibility

DS games are on small, flat "game cards", as opposed to the larger cartridges used by the Game Boy line and other previous Nintendo systems.The DS is compatible with Game Boy Advance (GBA) cartridges; the smaller DS cartridges fit into Slot 1 on the top of the system, while GBA games fit into Slot 2 on the bottom of the system. The DS is not compatible with games for the Game Boy Color and the original Game Boy, due to a slightly different form factor and the absence of the Zilog Z80-like processor used in these systems. This may be an attempt to separate the DS and Nintendo's established Game Boy line of handheld consoles; the GBA, for example, has the Z80 so it can run legacy Game Boy games. It may also be to keep the DS's price down, since including another chip set would likely have significantly added to the cost of producing the unit. In light of this incompatibility, several projects have started to emulate this platform. One such product is the freely available Goomba emulator.[6]

The handheld does not have a port for the GBA Link Cable, so multiplayer or GameCube-Game Boy Advance link-up modes are not available in GBA titles.

The DS only uses one screen when playing GBA games. The user can configure the system to use either the top or bottom screen by default. The games are displayed within a black border on the screen, due to the slightly different screen resolution between the two systems (256 × 192px (approx. .05 megapixels) DS, 240 × 160px (approx. .04 megapixels) GBA).

DS games inserted into Slot 1 are able to detect the presence of a specific GBA game in Slot 2. In games such as Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow, Kirby: Canvas Curse, WarioWare: Touched!, Feel the Magic: XY/XX, and Advance Wars: Dual Strike, extra content can be unlocked by starting the DS game with the appropriate GBA game of the same series inserted. MegaMan Battle Network 5 : Double Team can unlock extra content with either games from its own series, or Konami's Boktai series. Also, some games take advantage of Slot 2 as a way to add extra game features, the first of these being an expansion pack for the music game, Daigasso! Band Brothers (announced as Jam with the Band in North America), which adds 31 new tracks to its song list.

The first fully-fledged Pokemon RPGs for the DS, Diamond and Pearl, will allow players to link their game with a copy of the Game Boy Advance games, Ruby, Sapphire, Emerald, Fire Red or Leaf Green, it is expected to use the GBA's slot on the DS, effectively meaning players can trade Pokemon using only one system.

One of the first uses of this feature in Western countries is a Rumble Pak included with Metroid Prime Pinball, which is also compatible with Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time and Metroid Prime Hunters. It could also be used as RAM expansion in a cart form factor in some games; similar to the Expansion Pak for the Nintendo 64.

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Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection
Main article: Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection
Nintendo recently launched Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection, which allows wireless internet gameplay. Connection to the Nintendo Wi-Fi network is currently available at public venues, such as coffee shops and libraries, as well as through a home Wi-Fi network. DS Wi-Fi hot spots are now available at some McDonald's restaurants in the U.S. through a deal that Nintendo made with Wayport.[7]. Additionally, Nintendo announced a similar partnership with FatPort to create free hot spots in Canada.[8]

Jim Merrick, former Director of Marketing for Nintendo of Europe, has confirmed there will be around 25,000 hot spots in Europe[9], including 7,500 in the UK alone.[10] Hotspots operated by BT Openzone or listed on TheCloud.net are, generally speaking, available to DS systems in the UK.

Nintendo DS Wi-Fi works with existing open and WEP secured hot spots, but networks that use a captive portal to authenticate users are incompatible because games do not currently include the web browser software necessary to communicate with most captive portals, and networks using WPA are incompatible because the DS lacks support for the protocols.

An official accessory to allow the DS to connect to the internet wirelessly (suitable for users without a wireless router), the Nintendo Wi-Fi USB Connector, was revealed during the DS Conference 2005 in Japan.[11] It is available from the Nintendo.com store[12], the Nintendo World Store in New York City, and retailers such as Best Buy.

The Wi-Fi network expands multiplayer (exclusively for games designed for online gaming) capabilities beyond the range of 30–100 feet, allowing users at the hot spots to interface with each other from around the world. Mario Kart DS, Tony Hawk's American Sk8land, Animal Crossing: Wild World, Metroid Prime: Hunters,Tetris DS, and Lost Magic are the only games thus far to be released in the U.S. with online capability. Future titles currently scheduled for such online compatibility include Contact and other titles.

In its first week of release, Nintendo announced that out of all the copies of Mario Kart DS sold in the United States, 45% of those buyers went online using the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection. Comparatively, only 18% of all buyers who purchased Halo 2 for the Xbox went online within its first three weeks.

As of March 7, 2006, over 1,000,000 unique users world wide have logged onto the Nintendo WFC, creating over 27 million unique connections. There is a scrolling counter on the official Nintendo Wi-Fi website counting unique players and connections.