The "Secret" DS Wifi Button

Did you know about the DS's "secret" Wifi button? It's not really news, but it's not particularly well-known either. To find it, you have to press the top left pixel of the touch screen when on any of the three Connection Settings screens in the DS's Wifi configuration menu. This is only possible on DS systems or when configuring settings for an online DS game on a 3DS. If done correctly (you may need something with a sharper point than the rounded DS stylus to get to that pixel), a yellow square will briefly light up and the DS will begin searching for Simple Start Wi-Fi.

This feature is most likely totally useless to you, especially now that the Nintendo WFC is down, as it is a leftover function for the Japanese NEC routers which have a "Raku Raku Musen Start" button that can be pressed to automatically configure the DS's Wifi. Surprise, "Raku Raku Musen Start" basically means "Simple Start Wi-Fi". Even though it doesn't do much for you, you can at least impress your friends with it or something.

For more behind-the-scenes DS stuff, you might be interested to see what's in a DS Download Station.

A Tribute to Nintendo WFC

Update: The powers of hacking, modding, and homebrew have come through! Here's how to play online after Nintendo's servers are offline.

As of May 20, 2014, the online service used by most DS and Wii games, the Nintendo Wifi Connection, will be shut down. It's a sad day, since I had a lot of good times on many of the games that use Nintendo WFC. So here's a tribute to all of my favorite online Nintendo games since November of 2005 when the service started.

Mario Kart DS

(Image source)

The year leading up to Mario Kart DS filled the Nintendo NSider Forums with hype for online gaming and the boards were fraught with baseless rumors and potential hacks that promised to get the DS online earlier than the official service. None of them followed through (except for a trick that allowed you to download demos wirelessly from a PC), so when the first online game was released, there was much rejoicing. I didn't yet have wireless internet at my house, so I took a walk around the neighborhood in an attempt to steal someone else's internet. It didn't work, probably because the servers were down on release day, but we soon got wireless internet of our own and I spent many hours racing online, perfecting snaking, designing my avatar (a picture of a Fawful, detailed pixel by pixel), and competing with internet friends from around the world, namely Wario7, who was a beast at PRBing (prolonged rocket boosting). Out of every Mario Kart game, this was the one that I put the most time into and it was all thanks to online play (and all of my friends having it).

Metroid Prime Hunters

As a Metroid game, Metroid Prime Hunters was a disappointment for me in the single player department. But as an FPS, it was more fun than I could've imagined a game being on a handheld system at the time. Online multiplayer was a blast to play and, once again, my friends and I played the heck out of it, mastering each map and getting good with particular characters (Sylux and Trace for me). This game also had lots of stats available, not just in-game, but viewable on the official Nintendo WFC website, which could be used to see your stats and your friends' stats. Unfortunately, as time passed, the online multiplayer degenerated into an arms race of figuring out the many exploitable glitches and worse, outright cheating with Action Replay. Still, it was one of my favorite online gaming experiences and I'm not even that into FPS games.






Animal Crossing: Wild World and City Life

My sister and I were pretty obsessed with Animal Crossing on GameCube, so when Wild World allowed us to visit other towns online, I, at least, was thrilled. The fun didn't just end with hanging out and fishing with friends; playing online became the biggest money-making opportunity in the game. I would buy as many turnips as I could, then sell them in a town with high prices, or, when my town had high prices, I would allow others to sell in my town for a percentage of their profits. Then there was Nookbay, an auction site styled after eBay, but for buying and selling Animal Crossing items. Since regular items could easily be hacked in with Action Replay, hand-made patterns were a hot commodity and I made bank designing and selling these. And while cheating did devalue regular items and later even made it possible to destroy other people's towns, it also made available "not used" items like invisible chairs and, in City Folk, hacked DLC like lightsabers. Some people with AR even held events in their modified towns where people could race through a maze of rocks and pitfalls to win prizes. It was a good time for all.

Pokemon

At last, the Pokemon series was playable online and that meant lots of trading, battling, and scowling at people requesting level 5 legendaries. In a way, online trading took away the fun of collecting pokemon, especially due to the ease of cheating any pokemon into existence. But, on the other hand, battling online was a fantastic way to see new strategies and come to an understanding that there are people far better and far worse than you. And also that chivalry is dead and you will never get a true win without your opponent disconnecting in a fit of rage (this was also the case in MKDS and MPH). Battling in Pokemon Battle Revolution was even better because you could dress up your character to be ridiculous and name them something stupid before beating your opponent to the ground.

Mario Strikers Charged
I wasn't sure what to expect from this one, having not played the GameCube version, but I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of strategy and skill involved in playing this game. The online points and ranking system gave extra incentive to take the game online and try to be the best. My strongest memories of this game were the frustration of being unable to counter annoying "cheap" tactics and of my friend playing the heck out of it until his rank was amazing.

Excitebots: Trick Racing

This may be one of the most underrated and overlooked games on Wii, but it's also one that I had some of the most fun with across any platform that generation. I've written about it before, but in spite of its forgettable visual style, Excitebots' gameplay is incredibly satisfying and unique. Playing online offered a point system like Mario Strikers' and also had unlockable avatars and vehicle skins to show off to your competitors. It was truly a joy to play.

Tetris Party

(Proof of winnership, click to enlarge)

When Tetris Party first came out on Wii Ware, it ran tournaments online and those with the top scores were able to win Wii Points which could be used in the Wii Shop Channel. So yeah, basically you could win real money. In these tournaments, I managed to win back more than the cost of the game and used the extra to play the excellent Art Style games. Even after the tournaments ended, Tetris Party offered a fantastic way to play the timeless puzzle game that managed to draw me away from the addicting Facebook app.

Mario Kart Wii

(Image source)

So what if the motorcycles were overpowered and the graphics were kinda meh; Mario Kart Wii improved the online play of Mario Kart by leaps and bounds. Out of everything though, I most enjoyed comparing my Time Trials records with the worldwide bell curve and participating in the limited-time tournaments on modified versions of existing tracks or entirely new courses. As always, I also liked watching my rating go up as I won more races. Perhaps the coolest thing was all the custom tracks that could be hacked in and played online. Unfortunately, I never got around to playing them... until today!! So, uh, yeah, I should probably get playing those since my time is running out. Here's hoping the modding community finds a way to bring the Wii (and DS) back online through other means.

Super Smash Bros. Brawl
Ha. Playing online in Brawl. I tried that like once.


These were my memories, but I want to hear yours too! Leave them in the comments; I won't judge you if you cry as you reminisce. Alas, the life of a game is too brief.

Weirdest Nintendo Promotion Ever?

How do you promote the latest new handheld gaming system featuring a touch screen? I'm no business expert, but mailing out disembodied hands with the slogan "Touching is Good" wouldn't have been my first choice.

Let's back up a bit. Nintendo's latest and greatest new handheld at the time was the Nintendo DS, which came out in late 2004 in North America and Japan and early 2005 in Europe and Australia. It was a time of great hype and fanboyism, as the official message board of Nintendo of America, the NSider Forums, was in full swing. If you weren't there to witness it, imagine, if you will, the strong uninformed opinions and overly strict moderation that you might see on a typical GameFaqs message board, but make it all about Nintendo and add in weekly trivia contests in live chat rooms and a never-ending quest to attain higher ranks according to your post and view count. As a young Nintendo fanboy, it was all I could ever hope for.

Good times...

But even though it seemed Nintendo could do no wrong for me, I still had to question the slogan for the Nintendo DS. "Touching is Good"? I imagined that someone had scrawled it out on a paper as a joke and that someone else had found it after a conference and actually used it. I can only assume that this slogan made shopping at GameStop an even more traumatic experience than it already was for any victims of physical abuse.

In any case, Nintendo went with that slogan and had to stick to their decision. But then, in April of 2005, several months after the Nintendo DS's release, they made things even weirder with a promotional contest. In what could only have been a series of logical leaps akin to Nicolas Cage's character in National Treasure deciphering the clues to the cover-up that is Mt. Rushmore, the DS's touch screen led to the "Touching is Good" slogan which led to... sending out mannequin hands with instructions to take pictures of them touching things.

From touchingisgood.com.

It didn't matter how weird it was; the NSider Forums fed the hype and thousands requested to be sent a free mannequin hand, myself included. In fact, so many hands were sent out that after they ran out, they provided a downloadable image of the hand for you to Photoshop into pictures as an alternative. I pretty much just wanted the hand because it was free and used it to "lend a hand" and to creepily tap people on the shoulder.

After the submission period had ended, a panel of "qualified judges" sorted through the submissions like what must have been the closest thing to Chat Roulette the internet had yet seen (and by that I mean pictures of people's junk), and chose three winners. The grand prize winner received $1,000 cash, a DS, and four DS games, with second and third place receiving a DS and $500 or $250 respectively.

The winners and many of the other entries are still viewable on touchingisgood.com, but just in case of the site's eventual removal, here are the winning three entries:

Second Prize Winner - 1UP Submitted by Andrew E., California

First Prize Winner - Touch! Jungle Beat, submitted by Eric G., California

Grand Prize Winner - Touching is Good in video games, submitted by Steve B., Washington
If you still have your hand from this contest, feel free to take a picture and post it in the comments!

For more obscure Nintendo DS stuff, check out the inside of a DS Download Station or other stuff by Nintendo that was so crazy you'd think it was a joke. Preemptive link to Betteridge's law of headlines.

What's in a DS Download Station

Back in the day, major game retailers had DS Download Stations where you could bring your DS to wirelessly download demos of new and upcoming games that would last until you turned off your system. Remember those? Ever wonder how they worked? Well you're in luck, because it just so happens that I possess one such download station. Behold!

The US version of Volume 3 contains demos for Mario vs. Donkey Kong 2, Elite Beat Agents, Clubhouse Games (Darts and Turncoat), Danny Phantom: Urban Jungle, Brain Age, and Big Brain Academy, and trailers for Star Fox Command, Spectrobes, and Star Trek: Tactical Assault.

Science has revealed that the true form of the DS Download Station is nothing more than the above pictured cartridge in an ordinary DS. By simply turning on your DS with this cartridge inserted, you can send out the included demos and trailers to other DSs via Download Play. 

DS Download Station when viewed on a 3DS.

The Download Station can also be used in a DSi or 3DS. Interestingly, when played in a DSi, the download station skips both the Nintendo DS logo intro and the home menu and goes straight to the demo distribution application. Running it on a 3DS, however, does not skip the home menu and functions as any other DS game would.

The default top screen view, which shows that my 3DS is connected and 83% done downloading a demo.

Running the application on the cartridge displays information for the demo-distributing server software. Shown above is the main screen, which appears a few seconds after the application initializes its wireless channels. From here, you can see information about the DSs that are currently connected to the download station. I don't know what any of the information means, except that the 083 is the percentage of completion for sending a demo.

This is what the connected DS sees. A demo or video can be selected for download.

On the bottom screen of the DS running the Download Station software, the data showing how many times each demo has been downloaded is shown by default.

Each game has a four-letter ID.

Pressing left or right will let you cycle through information regarding WXC and DS Relay. Mine had nothing of interest to show regarding either of these things, even after connecting to another DS, so I'm not sure what they're used for. My only speculation is that there may be a way for multiple download stations to connect and work together, but I'm only guessing.

Don't know what WXC is, but I know it has exchanged 0 total.

More text on this screen, but I still don't know what it means and it's still only 0.

Now, going back to the top screen, you may have noticed the prompt saying that L, R, and A can be pressed to bring up the options menu. Indeed, this is the case. Here's the options menu:

Most of these options are fairly self explanatory. Set auto channel timeout lets you change the amount of time someone can be connected to the download station before being booted off. That way you don't get a bunch of people filling it up and not letting anyone else download something. That's not usually a problem though, since you're disconnected from the download station once your demo has finished downloading. The default reset time is ten minutes.

The only option here that requires further investigation is the "set manual channel" option.

This screen shows you what channels you can broadcast from, I think. By default, the channel seems to be chosen automatically, but you can force it to use a certain one if you want. The numbers next to "scan" constantly update, and you can only select "Auto > Idle > Restart Mode", Channel 01, 07, or 13. Choosing one of those four options sets that channel and returns you to the options menu.

After doing a bit of research elsewhere, I've found that the server software varies slightly between the versions of Download Station cartridges. Although quite similar, an earlier version of the Download Station displays connected DSs differently and also lists the number of successful downloads in addition to the number of attempted downloads. It also doesn't seem to have the pages for WXC and ds_relay. If Wikipedia is to be believed, there were nineteen volumes of DS Download Stations over the years, so I'd guess that the software may have had other changes as well.

And that's all there is to it! I hope you found this interesting. If you know what any of the stuff that I didn't understand does, let me know and I'll add it to the post!