Why Did I Pay Extra for a 17-Year-Old Handheld? A Chinese Player's Gaming Story

This is a personal nostalgic essay, not a hardware review.

Half a month ago, I spent about $39 on a blue, original, unmodified DSi. It looks very nice. The only flaw is that the screen has some yellowing, which is caused by the natural aging of the LCD. The only way to fix it is to replace the screen. I'll share my experiences playing on the DSi. By the way: Chinese players are used to putting the letter N in front of DS. If overseas friends search for "DS" on the Chinese internet, they can easily end up with a lot of unrelated results. But I believe that everyone's love for games is universal.

Opening: From Emulators to a World Different From the PSP

Eight years ago, I bought a PSP with money I earned from a part-time job. It wasn't a collector's item, but it meant a lot to me. When I was a kid, I only knew about the PSP as the mainstream handheld, and I was always curious about who its rival was back then, and whether it was even more fun than the PSP.

I looked things up online and found that phones could run DS emulators. I tried Super Mario Bros., and the experience was pretty good. I didn't live through the GBA era as a kid. Before the PSP, I had only played on pirated handhelds that could run Famicom games. Phone emulators could play the games, but they couldn't reproduce the unique feeling of the dual screens. Not long after, I got a DS Lite for about $17, and it brought me a lot of surprises.

Anyone who has played the Famicom version of Super Mario Bros. knows that Mario grows bigger after eating a mushroom. Chinese players gave this scene a very vivid nickname: "eating a mushroom to grow bigger." If the DS had become popular in China earlier, this nickname would have fit even better. On the DS, Mario not only grows bigger after eating a mushroom, but also becomes invincible. That was one of the reasons the DS attracted me back then.

I Sold My DS Lite Cheaply to Buy an Overpriced DSi, and I Don't Regret It

A year and a half ago, the A button's rubber pad on my DS Lite had poor rebound, and the screen yellowing had become more obvious. It could still play normally, but I was fairly busy at the time. It just so happened that a high school student online wanted to buy one. At that time, the second-hand market for DS Lites in China had already started to rise. I told her that this DS Lite could play GBA cartridges, came with two flashcarts and a memory card, and I even taught her step by step how to use it. She said the handheld let her relax amid heavy schoolwork, and she had a lot of fun with it.

I only charged her about $29 for the whole package. Now it could sell for at least $7–$14 more, but I don't regret making less money. Compared with obsessing over the price difference, letting idle devices continue to be useful matters more to me.

So do I regret buying the DSi at a premium? My thought is: if I had bought it back in the day, the value for money would definitely have been better. But second-hand old machines vary a lot in condition, and this one is in pretty good shape, letting me experience a kind of fun different from the DS Lite. I'm not encouraging everyone to jump on the retro handheld bandwagon. For playing retro games, the best time is the present.

The Misunderstood DS: Chinese Players Jokingly Called It a "Dual-Screen PSP" and Thought It Was Just a Kids' Console

In China, the DS was far less popular than the PSP. A big reason is that besides games, the PSP could also be used as an MP4 video player, and a large number of knockoff handhelds also rode the PSP's popularity. I'll go into that story in a later article.

Once, I was playing my DS Lite on a train. The young person across from me curiously asked what kind of game console it was. Maybe because the art style looked cute, they thought it was a dual-screen version of the PSP, and that it was just a machine for kids.

Later I learned that they had never really played this kind of handheld, and just called all handhelds PSPs. I explained to them that this was Nintendo's handheld from the same generation as the PSP, and that its global sales were even twice as high as the PSP's. They didn't really understand, so I brought up Mario — Nintendo's signature IP, aimed at all ages, not just kids.

In the early years, China even had TV prize quiz ads with prizes labeled PSP and DS. But after dialing the number, you'd be charged high phone fees, and almost no one could actually get the prize. The ads only promoted the DS as a "Mario game machine," which also made many people mistakenly think the DS could only play Mario, and miss out on this handheld.

Chinese Players' Obsession With the DQ9 Fan Translation, and Why That Version Froze So Often

Chinese players back then had a deep obsession with fan translations. Early Nintendo handhelds almost had no official Chinese versions, and many DS fan translations were very high quality. But Dragon Quest IX ran into trouble: The Chinese font file in the DQ9 fan translation was very large. When run on an ordinary R4 flashcart, it would exhaust the DS's limited memory and cause random freezes. The only stable way to play the Chinese version of DQ9 back then was to buy the expensive DSTWO flashcart. Many players were willing to pay for it.

Back then, the atmosphere in Chinese gaming forums was great. Players paid out of their own pockets to buy all kinds of flashcarts, test game compatibility, power consumption, cheat functions, and so on, and posted side-by-side reviews, comparing both original and domestic clone cards. I also learned a lot from those posts.

Nowadays, the DQ9 fan translation is somewhat more stable, but there is still a chance of freezing. We developed a habit: manually save every few minutes to prevent losing progress. I also bought an official DQ9 cartridge as a keepsake.

DS Flashcarts for Chinese Players: Reliving Childhood for Just $3

There are two main kinds of DS flashcarts in China: imitation R4 flashcarts (domestic PCBs), and DSpico flashcarts. Both are very easy to use, and in China they cost only about $3.

The biggest difference between them: the R4 project long ago stopped official maintenance, but its DS game compatibility is very strong, and it can run DS games on a 3DS; its weakness is that native GBA game compatibility is very poor. DSpico is an open-source project deeply optimized for DS/DSi, and it cannot run 3DS-exclusive games; its DS game compatibility is a little weaker, but its GBA emulator compatibility is better. My DSi paired with DSpico gives a very good DS gaming experience.

Why is the price so cheap in China? I think it's because production costs have dropped, and it isn't a scarce product, so it's inexpensive and durable. Later I plan to continue writing about the story of the original DS "lunchbox" model, and test the domestic GBA flashcart SuperChis. It has modern features and a very good experience.

Final Interaction Question: Do You Have Any Interesting DS Stories or Questions? Welcome to Share Them.