Graphics and Sound

Matt Thompson/Austin 360: Neither game I tested really pushed the limits in either graphics or sound, although I can safely say the sound, in particular, is leagues better than any previous hand-held I’ve played.

Tim Schmelter/Austin 360: The plastic protective sheet over the touch screen makes the images appearing there look a bit grainy — typical of Pocket PC or Palm color graphics — but it wasn’t terribly jarring. The stereo sound was good, but itty bitty speakers can only do so much, so don’t expect any molar-rattling bass response. On the plus side, the DS sports an honest-to-goodness 1/8” stereo headphone plug, so no more dealing with the Game Boy SP’s wretched converter dongle.

Omar Gallaga/Austin American-Statesman: The screen is bright and a racing game actually looks like a racing game, not the blocky iteration we've come to expect from GameBoy Advance games. Two speakers is a plus -- sound is much richer than you'd expect from a portable system.

Controls

Matt: The stylus took some getting used to, at least until I trained myself to palm it in between uses to free up my fingers for the more traditional controls. This is a tiny detail, but the way I held it, my left ring finger kept rubbing up against the open GBA cartridge bay … which, after a long time, got a little irritating. I didn’t lose blood, or anything, but for marathon sessions, it’s something to bear in mind.

Karen Hinojosa/Austin 360: I didn't have any problems with the stylus; pretty much, if you can hold a pencil and a piece of paper -- at the same time! -- you'll be able to use it. Button config wasn't an issue, and in one game I tested, the stylus frequently took the place of the buttons.

Eric: I was prepared to hate the stylus but ended up falling in love with it. There simply was no other way to play the “Metroid Prime Hunters: First Hunt” demo. (I tried really hard, too.) In the end though, the stylus gave me my best first-person shooter experience ever. Genius, absolutely genius. I hate the genre a little less now, seeing how it is supposed to work.

Tim: The touch screen responds with a degree of precision appropriate to the input method: pinpoint control with the stylus, slightly coarser-grained with the wrist strap’s built in thumb pad, and very scattershot using a finger or thumb. The D-pad? Well, it’s about like every other D-pad you’ve ever seen. The four control buttons, on the other hand, are simply too closely spaced and difficult to use, at least for my meathooks. That design could benefit from both increased inter-button spacing and some color coding to make it easier for newbies to tell which button is which.

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