Download Away on Your Nintendo DS

When you’re on the go, nothing beats a quick game break to pass the time – and relieve some stress – in today’s hectic lifestyle.

But what if you wanted to test the latest games and can’t stay at a demo station long enough to enjoy it?

Now, if you have a Nintendo DS, you can take your game demos on the run. All you have to do is find a place to download your choice of several game demos, and then you can take it with you.

The download interface works somewhat like this: You visit the nearest GameStop, WalMart or wherever you can find a DS Download Station. Once you’ve found one, select (or tap with the stylus) the Download Play option from the DS unit’s startup menu, and choose the DS Download Station option in the same manner (you have to be close enough to get a connection for this option to appear).

Once selected, you will see the DS Download Station menu. Here you can download whatever content you desire, one at a time, to copy to your Nintendo DS. I didn’t bring my DS with me for this review, however I was able to access an in-store unit already set up for demo games which saved me the hassle of running home at an inopportune time. The interface was clean and simple, with almost no complexity whatsoever. Selecting the game to download was a snap, and the actual download was exceptionally quick, though your mileage may vary depending on connection strength at the time of download as would be expected.

For test purposes, I chose a game I was exceptionally comfortable with. In this case, my choice was a demo of the Push mode from Tetris DS, though at the time of this writing the other demos included Mario Kart DS, Brain Age, and a preview video of a Metroid title, assumedly Metroid Prime: Hunters whichis the most likely. To the best of my knowledge this is not a permanent list – Nintendo has every right to mix and match content as new games come out.

And that, my friends, is where the fun actually begins. Once downloaded, the demo starts immediately. During download, the controls you will use are conveniently displayed on the top screen while progress is tesplayed on the touch screen. All tyou need to do now is memorize those controls, and enjoy your game. And when you’re finished with the demo, you simply turn off the DS – and the game demo is automatically deleted.

It’s really as simple as that.