They could be on to something here...

I'm fairly certain that this would - after about thirty minutes - become incredibly irksome and you'd be begging to have your old, tried-and-tested desktop back again, but IT JUST LOOKS SO FRICKIN COOL!

New, new DS Lite

I took the DS Lite back to Game. I showed the shop assistant my dead pixel. Fortunately, the gods of videogame shops were smiling on me. He was sympathetic to my cause. He said he wished he had the money to buy a DS Lite, and that if it were his, he'd want it to be perfect too. He went and got me another one.

He handed it over (without even looking at the receipt or ringing it through the till) and said "Better luck with this one". I was sorely tempted to get it out of the box there and then to check for BIG NASTY DEFECTIVE ANNOYING PIXELS, but the growing queue behind me made me think otherwise.

I got the new DS Lite home, and (whilst praying to the mighty Miyamoto to spare me yet more torment) unpacked it. I pluggged in the Tetris cart, and switched it on...

Perfect. Pristine. Lovely.

My faith in gadgets has been restored. For now, at least.

Pixellation Fixation

After months of waiting, today was DS Lite day! I went and collected it at lunchtime today, but only had a brief chance to play with it. I switched it on, did the initial configuration, oohed and aahed about how pretty it was, and then put it back into its box. It was not until about 10.30pm that I got a chance to fire up a game. I bought two games - Tetris DS and Metroid Prime: Hunters. I opted to play Tetris first, so I slotted the cartridge in and prepared to play.

I had been playing for about two minutes when something in the corner of the screen caught my eye. What's that? There was a small red dot in the upper right corner of the touch screen. How odd, I thought. Maybe it's a programming glitch. I quit out of the game, and went back to the selection screen. But sure enough, there was the red dot again. Fearing the worst, I interrogated the internet. I went to Google, and with some trepidation, typed the fateful words "Nintendo DS Lite dead pixel".

It would appear that I am not the only one to have a rogue pixel on my shiny new DS Lite. Inevitably, for any device that has an LCD screen (or two in the case of the DS), there are going to be some pixel defects. The old DS was noted to have them, and not even the mighty PSP is immune. In fact, the PSP seems to have had far more complaints about it's defective pixels than the DS. Apparently it's not uncommon for the PSP screen to have five or more dead or stuck pixels.

But I digress. My beautiful new DS Lite was defective. I kept trying to convince myself that it wasn't that noticeable, and that it was only on the edge of the screen, not in the middle. Surely it wasn't that bad? But now I KNOW THAT IT'S THERE it's bugging the hell out of me. According to the internet, Nintendo are being very good about the whole issue and repairing any faulty units under warranty, but really I don't want to send my brand new handheld off for repair! I want a new one.

God I'm petulant.

Decision made

So I've spent all this time contemplating what colour of Nintendo DS Lite to get. Fortunately I got to see both of them in real life today, and at that point the decision got a lot easier.

There's no doubt that the black one is nice, but it has to be the white one for me. It looks really slick and sophisticated, and there's that crisp, clean air of Apple about it. It'll match my iPod and iMac quite nicely.

So, Friday is release day. Not sure exactly what games I'll be getting with it yet. We'll have to see what's what then. I reckon Tetris has to be a given, and as much as I hate to admit it, Nintendogs looks really good. I'm looking forward to playing the less "mainstream" games on it - and let's face it, that's what owning a Nintendo machine is all about.

Full report and "grand unveiling" photos on Friday.