1st DS hands-on

[written Nov 13 2004:]
Well, I went into my local Best Buy today hoping to see a DS demo unit, and I did. At first there were these girls standing in front of the thing just talking... I very anxiously stood there and waited for them to leave and then I pounced. The DS. It was on in PictoChat, but I wanted to run it through its paces so I pressed the power button once, and then again to turn it back on.

There is a cool little boot up sequence, and then [depending on how it's set] you go into a menu where you can choose to play a DS game, a GBA game, change settings or use PictoChat.

Settings:
I looked at all the settings. I changed the username from "DS" .. which I assume is the default, to "DS rulz :)"

PictoChat:
It's not much fun with only 1 person, but I did learn a few things I didn't already know. For one thing, when you load it up, It gives you the choice to enter one of 4 chat rooms, A, B, C, or D. It tells you how many users are already in each room in the form of "0/16". I guess that this means that a total of 64 PictoChatters can all be PictoChatting in the same area.
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I knew that you could type messages or draw, but I had wondered exactly how this works. When you first start typing, I believe it starts the letters at the top left of the window, as you would imagine. But, you can also *drag* a letter or character from the keyboard into the chat window! After you do this, and additional letters you type will be typed behind the dragged letter... very cool.
If you hit the X icon at the upper right corner of the touch screen, it takes you back to the chat room selection screen.

Metroid Prime: First Hunt
Ok, so I booted up the demo and played a little. The control setting was on the default, I believe this is..
D-pad:forward, reverse, strafe left, strafe right
A,B,X,Y:look up, look down, look left, look right
not sure of others.. one is jump and one is shoot..
This control method was kinda a pain for me.. you have to use
ABXY to aim and shoot at everything.. doesn't flow very well.
I got out of the game and back into the menu screen.
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I changed the control scheme to the one I believe that got so much bad press at E3..
D-pad:[same]forward, reverse, strafe left, strafe right
A,B,X,Y:[not sure which is which]morph ball[toggle], missile[toggle]
L:jump
Tap screen:shoot current weapon
Tap and drag:mouselook-type navigation
I loved this control method.
There is an aiming reticule on the screen, so for a while I tried to target the reticule on the enemies and then shoot, but I realized the enemies were not dying... that is because you do not have to aim. If an enemy is on-screen, you merely tap it and even though you are not squarely aimed at it, the enemy gets shot.
You can move around a lot faster in this mode.
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Also, I was kind of a doubter when it came to the idea of having a second screen with a map, but let me tell you.. it is cool. In a lot of FPSs, I get lost when I first start playing. In this though you can just glance back at the map momentarily and gauge your position.
Less than a week until launch...