Nintendo DS | Code Like It's 198x

When Nintendo announced the DS in January 2004, the industry did not know what to make of it. “Two screens? The puzzlement was palpable,” Edge reported, and “the leftfield conceit behind the Nintendo DS has baffled the industry.” Nintendo’s president, Satoru Iwata, promised a machine built “upon a completely different concept from existing game devices”. Ten months later, Japanese buyers were sleeping outside Tokyo shops to get one. By Nintendo’s own count the DS family went on to sell 154.02 million units, more than any Nintendo machine before it.

It had two 3-inch colour screens, one above the other in a clamshell case, and the lower one was a touchscreen worked with a stylus. It also had a microphone, built-in wireless and a second cartridge slot that played Game Boy Advance games.

Fast facts

Manufacturer: Nintendo.
Launch: America 21 November 2004; Japan 2 December 2004; Europe 11 March 2005.
Processors: an ARM946E-S at about 66 MHz and an ARM7TDMI at about 33 MHz.
Memory: 4 MB of main RAM.
Screens: two 3-inch LCDs, each 256×192 pixels; the lower one is a touchscreen.
Sound: 16 channels, stereo speakers, and a built-in microphone.
Wireless: IEEE 802.11b, used for local multiplayer, PictoChat and DS Download Play.
Cartridges: DS game cards, plus a Game Boy Advance slot on the original DS and the DS Lite.
Size: 5.85 × 3.33 × 1.13 inches, “about the size of two GBA SPs side by side” (Hyper).
Sales: 154.02 million, including the DS Lite, DSi and DSi XL (Nintendo).

The announcement

Iwata’s press release of 20 January 2004 gave the two screens a job. “For example in a soccer game, users can view the whole game on one screen while simultaneously focusing on an individual soccer player’s tackle or goal on the other screen,” it said, and players would “no longer be forced to interrupt gameplay to shift perspective”. Games would come on a new “thin memory card” rather than a cartridge or a disc.

Developers were less sure. Dave Box of Mobius Entertainment, which had made Max Payne for the Game Boy Advance, told Edge that “from an independent developer’s point of view, the Nintendo DS is not such an interesting future prospect — not until it proves itself”.

Two processors and a Game Boy Advance inside

The DS has two ARM processors. The ARM946E-S, at about 66 MHz, runs the game and drives the video hardware: a 3D engine and two 2D engines that between them feed the two screens. The ARM7TDMI, at about 33 MHz, looks after sound, and the touchscreen controller and wireless hardware sit on its side of the machine. The ARM7TDMI is the same processor as the Game Boy Advance’s, and when a Game Boy Advance cartridge is inserted the DS runs it at the older machine’s 16 MHz, with the ARM9 switched off. It cannot play original Game Boy cartridges.

Hyper noticed what that meant on screen: because the DS has “256x192 pixel displays, as opposed to the GBA’s 240x160 screen”, Game Boy Advance games appeared letterboxed, with a small border, but sharper.

Launch

The DS went on sale in America on 21 November 2004 at $150. By the end of launch week more than 500,000 had been sold, and Nintendo was predicting a million in North America by the end of the year. In the same Thanksgiving week, Edge noted, Nintendo also sold more than 800,000 Game Boy Advances.

Japan followed on 2 December. Buyers queued overnight in the winter cold outside shops such as Yodobashi Gamekan in Shinjuku, and by 5 December 468,883 had been sold. Edge remarked on “an encouragingly high number of female gamers, along with many parents and grandparents” among the first buyers, and on streets “full of eager users trying out Pictochat”, the built-in program that let nearby owners swap sketches and doodles drawn on the touchscreen. Super Mario 64 DS and Sawaru Made in Wario were the most popular launch games in Japan.

Edge’s verdict on the hardware was that “the DS is a supremely well-designed piece of equipment”, though “it feels a bit cheap and plasticky”. It praised the sleep mode that started when the lid was closed, and battery life of “a good eight hours”. Europe had its turn on 11 March 2005, at about £100. By then Nintendo was claiming 2.8 million sold in America and Japan by the end of 2004.

In Australia, Hyper’s editors were almost uniformly positive about their review machine. Deputy editor Daniel Wilks wrote that “there is no other format available that offers a touch-screen, built in microphone (making voice command possible), two screens and built in wireless communication”, though he doubted that the first year’s games would “take full advantage of these features”. The magazine found the unit large but “a whole lot less cramped in the hand than the GBA SP”, and it tried the thumb strap Nintendo supplied as an alternative to the stylus, which it thought “feels a little ungainly next to the refined touch of the stylus”.

Games for people who did not play games

The DS’s biggest successes came from outside the usual game genres. In Nintendogs (2005) you chose a puppy at a kennel, then fed, walked and trained it, and Hyper noted that “all interaction with your dog is via the touch screen and microphone”. Brain Training (called Brain Age in America) was a set of short puzzles and sums built around the Tohoku University professor Ryuta Kawashima. You held the DS on its side like a book, read the question on one screen and wrote the answer on the other. Shigeru Miyamoto told Electronic Gaming Monthly in 2005 that his wife had “never really been into games—not even Tetris or anything. But Nintendogs has her hooked.” The family had three DSes for four people, he said, because his father had taken one away to play Brain Training on his own.

Later models

DS Lite (Japan, March 2006): a slimmer case, a larger stylus, longer battery life and brighter screens. It kept the Game Boy Advance slot and became the best-selling model, at 93.86 million.
DSi (Japan, November 2008): added two cameras and an SD card slot, and dropped the Game Boy Advance slot. 28.44 million sold.
DSi XL (Japan, November 2009, as the DSi LL): a larger DSi. 12.93 million sold.

Nintendo’s figures give the whole family 154.02 million sales: 32.99 million in Japan, 59.93 million in the Americas and 61.10 million elsewhere, with 948.77 million games. Its successor, the Nintendo 3DS, went on sale in Japan on 26 February 2011.

Sources

Edge issue 134, March 2004, pp. 12–13: the January 2004 announcement, Iwata’s press release, and Dave Box’s comment.
Edge issue 144, January 2005, pp. 9–10: the American and Japanese launches, first-week sales, the launch games and PictoChat, and the hardware verdict.
Edge issue 147, March 2005, p. 8: the European release date and price, and Nintendo’s 2.8 million figure.
Hyper (Australia) issue 136, February 2005, pp. 16–17: hands-on, dimensions, the thumb strap, Game Boy Advance games on the DS, and the editors’ impressions.
Electronic Gaming Monthly issue 194, August 2005: Brain Training, played with the DS held sideways, and Professor Ryuta Kawashima.
Electronic Gaming Monthly issue 195, September 2005: interview with Shigeru Miyamoto (Nintendogs and Brain Training at home).
Hyper (Australia) issue 144, October 2005: Nintendogs preview (the kennel, and interaction “via the touch screen and microphone”).
Martin Korth, GBATEK, “DS Technical Data”: processors, memory, screens, sound, wireless and the Game Boy Advance slot (web, secondary). https://problemkaputt.de/gbatek.htm
Nintendo Co., Ltd., “Consolidated Sales Transition by Region” (IR historical data, as of 31 March 2026): release dates of the DS and 3DS, hardware sales by region and model, and software sales (web). https://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/en/library/historical_data/index.html
Wikipedia, “Nintendo DS Lite” and “Nintendo DSi”: the Japanese release dates of the DS Lite, DSi and DSi XL, and the DS Lite’s changes, and the DSi’s cameras, SD slot and missing Game Boy Advance slot (web, secondary).