Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I know that a good deal of you are probably skeptical, but my girlfriend's mother does merchandising for Nintendo, and she was recently sent her very own DS. In turn, she has asked me to figure out all the particulars and report them back to her. I have to admit that I was originally very skeptical about the system. I love my SP, and the last thing I want is to replace it (though Nintendo makes the claim that this is not a GBA replacement...ha). However, having actually sat down with it for a while and browsed through all the menus, I must admit I'm really impressed. Ah, who am I kidding? I'm thrilled. How is it different than the SP? Its bigger, for sure (shaped like the old Game & Watch systems), and we all know about the new touch screen, but won't that system be awkward, trying to use a stylus with a portable game system? Once again, I thought so too, but it basically turns your game system into the coolest palm pilot in the history of the planet. I had a lot of fun, just surfing through menus and personalizing it (you can enter in your birthdate and your nickname). You can choose whether or not you want to keep the backlight on, should you want to save energy, and of course there's that cool pictochat function, which unfortunately I can't really use until there's another user to talk to. And I did all of this without ever putting down the stylus. In fact, the buttons on the right side became kind of unnecessary. And it held over for the included Metroid: Hunters. Once again, there's not a whole lot I can do with the game (Hunters is mainly multiplayer, and well, there's no one else to play), but I gave the training a shot. I quickly got the hang of it. Firing with L, moving forward and strafing with my left hand, and looking around with the stylus. Brought me back to my high school days, playing Quake with four keys and a mouse. Is it perfect? No. But is it close? Oh yes. In review, I'd have to give 4.5 stars, and only that low because I won't have a real opportunity to explore the network aspect of it until the system is officially released. Even though I already have it, I'm still looking forward to the release date, because when you all wander into multiplayer Metroid looking for a fight, I'll have been training for the past two weeks.