Author: Nick

I’m beginning to think creating DS redesigns is my only real form of relaxation.

I’ve been thinking of different ways to hide the controls. The flip-out and slider ideas were pretty obvious, but I wanted to try a rotation-based design. Based on the small amount of other consumer goods that use rotation (I can only think of a Motorola mobile phone) I figure that it’s fairly difficult to come up with something that would work.

Aside from the rotation, the rest of the design is clearly iPod inspired. I like how the screens on the new iPods are pretty much invisible when not illuminated and thought that something similar could make be used to “hide” one of the DS screens when not in use.

A few more notes. The stylus, power, volume, headphone jack, and DS game card (/SD card) slot are at the top of the unit. Recharge port is at the bottom (so that a charging cradle could be used). Since DS has wifi, this could be used as a streaming media viewer.

Continue reading “Yet another DS redesign”

http://www.e-capcom.com/shop/?goods=9999707

It looks like it’s only available as part of the Japanese “BIO HAZARD Deadly Silence Limited Pack”.

Image (obviously) from www.e-capcom.com.

http://www.abc.net.au/new…12/s1528544.htm

I’m ashamed to be called Australian sometimes.

Blurb:

“New South Wales Police say several people of Middle Eastern appearance were attacked by a mob at Sydney’s Cronulla Beach today.”

Another blurb. This one’s a little weird; it almost reads as though attacking these people (who aren’t really Middle Eastern) is worse:

“In terms of crowd swells against some people of Arabic extraction … some of those people that have been targeted have been Australian-born people that attend this beach in a quiet and relaxing manner,” he said.

Another followup story here.

http://www.whiteknightgames.com

I found this in a round-about way while reading about AGDC. White Knight Games is a Perth-based games developer. From their website:

“At WKG, our goal is to create high quality Christian computer games that enrich and engage players by incorporating Christian virtues and actions into fun gameplay, great graphics and by reinforcing Bible scripture.”

Personally, I would’ve avoided a company name that could be interpreted as racially supremist or reminiscient of The Crusades… but that’s just me! 😛

I thought this would look cool on a sweat shirt:

I thought this would make a neat poster (following trends, but making fun of them on the way):

I like this as a desktop background:

I don’t know exactly who is to blame, but Heidi and I have been royally dicked around with our telephone and internet connections the last month or so.

First, our telephone just stops working. We call iiNet and they tell us to talk to Telstra. Telstra tells us that it’s the phone (even though it been working for a 9 months now). We try a different phone, it also doesn’t work. No surprises there. Telstra say we need to get them to come over, but we need to organise it through iiNet. We call iiNet and they organise for Telstra to come over, but someone has to be home. They can’t give us a specific time, so we give them a mobile number for Telstra to call half an hour before they arrive. We get no telephone call, but the next day Telstra claims they stopped by and nobody was home (even though I was waiting). We organise another time for them to come out. I take a day off work. I get a phone call saying that it’s working now and they don’t have to come out after all. All this after 10 days of dicking around.

So that was incredibly irritating. 10 day with no landline. Numerous mobile phone calls, 2 days waiting around, and the whole problem of getting another phone when they just had to check their end and fix the bloody problem!

Second, our telephone and ADSL are disconnected on the 22nd. Heidi had called on the 21st to inform iiNet that we are moving and asked that they disconnect our line on the 22nd of December. Even though she went to great lengths to emphasis this fact, they disconnected us on the 22nd of November. Now that happened in less than 24 hours, so surely they could reconnect us in a similarly short period of time. No such luck. They said it could take up to 48 hours. We still aren’t reconnected (3 days later). Fine, they made some sort of human error. That’s forgivable, but you would expect them to have standard operating procedures in pace to avoid this sort of thing, and when something does go wrong you would expect them to make every effort to correct it as soon as possible. Instead we were told:

• “You’re lucky that you’ve been connected for more than 6 months since you won’t incur the early disconnection fee”

What a load of crap! Just to get to this point (where we may be connected by Monday) has involved over 3 hours of telephone calls from a mobile phone. We now have a direct number to call, but that was only given to us today after 6 request to speak to a manager (which were obviously all questioned/refused before the last one was begrudgingly accepted).

While on the matter, almost every telephone call to iiNet had to be from a mobile phone (clearly our landline wasn’t working) and started with around 30 minutes on hold. We’ll be sending them a bill for all that. As for the gross inconvenience of not having a telephone line or internet right when we are organising to move and need to find new tenants for the place we are renting, and arrange our relocation, I don’t know how they can make up for that.

This is freaking ridiculous! What happened to iiNet service!?

Update: Fixed after 1 hour on the phone today (Monday, 29 November)

Update2: Data rate is now much lower than before (1.5Mbps/256kbps). Yay, disconnected for 5 days and then reconnected at a slower speed.

After looking at the last post, I realised that the whole “slide-out” thing was entirely unnecessary for a nice-looking system and really restricted the possible size of the screen. Here’s a version without the gimmick.

Update: Welcome StumbleUponers. It’s crazy that this design is still getting interest after almost four years. You might also want to check out the 3D animation someone put together a couple of years ago!

Yet another redesign. This one is obviously inspired by the (fairly) recently announced controller for the Nintendo Revolution.

Less obviously, it’s also inspired by a really cool digital clock I used to have that would open in much the same way. It made a very satisfying “clik-clak” sound when opening or closing because the screen would sort of flick up and click into place.

I’m fairly confident that this isn’t a plausible design for the next DS, but I think it looks pretty cool. It was also another opportunity to develop my digital art skills (design in Inkscape and touch-up in GIMP).

I’ve got some sketches from different angles but they aren’t as interesting. I’m not sure if I will take the time to make them look all fancy and shiny as well. Check them out after the jump. Continue reading “Revolution-inspired DS redesign”

After making the DS mockups for my personal amusement, I read an article entitled How would you redesign the Nintendo DS? on Joystiq and sent them a link to my blog so that they could evaluate the worthiness of my designs. A few days later, they were two of many featured in this Joystiq article: Joystiq readers redesign the Nintendo DS.

From there I became the latest entries to the 4colorrebellion Nintendo DS Mockups page. The slider design is also the current favorite at Infendo: More DS Mockups.

Please let me know if you see these designs anywhere else. I haven’t really posted anything to a gaming site before.

Yet another mockup of a possible new-style Nintendo DS.

I like this one because it’s compact and can be used easily as a Gameboy Advance or a Nintendo DS. Although the top screen is “vunerable”, the touch screen is protected when the unit is carried around.

In other news, I think that I’m getting much better with Inkscape 🙂