Today I bought myself a brand spanking new Nintendo DSi XL to add to my seemingly ever growing stable of Nintendo handhelds for a paltry sum of A$40.  As someone who still owns the original 3DS with its small screens, and retain my DS Lite for all things 2D, holding the XL in my hands for the first time simply blew me away.  So 2009 you say.  And yes I am a little late to the party on this but that doesn’t lessen the impact of that seemingly cinema size screens combined with a form factor that is almost befitting a super car.

Of course the first thing I did when I got home is look for a game that would do the screen justice.  That would make my eyes burst out of their sockets just to be closer to the screen.  Or at least be closer than my jaw that had dropped just seconds before.  I wanted to firstly justify my purchase but also to be convinced that the way I would play DS games was going to change forever.

Strangely though in looking through my collection I fell back into old habits.  I was suddenly looking at my collection through the eyes of the 12 year old me that spent time in arcades, that thought Donkey Kong Land on the Gameboy was the work of magicians and that played Killer Instinct on the SNES just to hear that ‘amazing’ soundtrack.  And almost as if driven by primal instincts I pulled out Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, the rather amazing port of the 1995 arcade game.  A good game?  Absolutely.  But the a showcase of my brand spanking new handheld screen?  Not bloody likely.

Nevertheless it is a beautiful piece of industrial design that I encourage you all to hold for yourself at least once.