The DS line of Nintendo handhelds is a monster. Not only is it the best-selling handheld gaming system of all time, it's the second-best-selling video game system period of all time. Only the PlayStation 2 beats it in terms of numbers moved. The amount of power that developers manage to get out of cartridge technology is amazing, and great titles continue to be released exclusively on the system every year.
As popular as it is, though, there are still some hidden mysteries about it. Let's look at a few.
They Are Resilient as Hell Nintendo has always been able to make sturdy products, but the DS and 3DS really take the biscuit. I've personally sent a game I left in my pants pocket through the washing machine, and it played as good as new when I found it. That's nothing to say of when Neal Mueller and Chris Grubb took theirs to one of the harshest environments on Earth, the top of Mt. Everest, in 2005. Despite high altitudes, wet conditions, cold temperatures, drops, fierce winds, and the devices constantly having food and spices spilled on them by the Sherpas who played with them in the kitchen at Base Camp, the DSes came through working perfectly. By contrast, the pair had a Dell PC and several MP3 players die from the conditions, but the Nintendo DS kept on trucking.
3DS Has a Hidden Copy of Breakout and Soccer Built In The latest model of the 3DS has a neat quirk. In the browser menu, if you tap out the first six notes of the famous theme from Super Mario Bros, the screen will take you to a clone of Breakout where you can destroy the URL of the last website you visited brick by brick. It can be very cathartic when a website pisses you off, actually. This isn't the only hidden game in the DS line. On the sound app screen, if you use the background representing the old Game & Watch soccer, you can press a button and start playing the game.
It Was Originally Called City Boy Two things have always marked Nintendo's success. The first is their unbeatable first-party franchises like Mario, Pokemon and Startropics. (Quiet, I'm having a "me" moment.) The second is their willingness to think outside the box. When a successor to the Game Boy was announced, the trademark that was filed was for something called City Boy.
The name was meant to imply that hip young adults would be taking their DSes with them as they went to work and play in the urban centers every day. You'd play with Pictochat in cafes and stuff like that. Basically, it wanted to be a game-centric iPhone, but way back in 2004. You can see the effects of this thinking in Streetpass and other features. This has led to some neat quirks such as...
A 3DS Tour of the Louvre In 2012 Korean Air started sponsoring a program at the famous Louvre museum in Paris. For double the ticket price, you would be handed a special 3DS and headphones that would give you an interactive tour of the museum. Nintendo donated 5,000 consoles for the project, and users can access a map, suggested itinerary and audio commentaries in multiple languages.
There's a Tommy Tutone Joke in the DS Manual In the instruction manual for the DS, there's a cute joke hiding in the section detailing how to connect to Wi-Fi. In the picture showing you where to enter the WEP code, the fake code number used is 8675309, a reference to the 1982 song "867-5309/Jenny" by Tommy Tutone. Actually, it's probably a pretty good guess. 8675309 is the fourth-most common seven-number password in use today after 1234567, 1111111 and 7777777. Odds are, more than one person actually ended up using the same number in the manual.
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