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Going Mobile: Nintendo DS-10 Comes to North America

by Peter Kirn

ds10

Today was full of good news for people interested in carrying pads in the palm of their hand.

Fans of the Nintendo DS in North America, the Korg DS-10 Plus synthesizer for Big N’s game system is now coming to your side of the Pacific Ocean. (That also bodes well, I think, for other parts of the world.) The DS-10 I think really deserves some credit for making a straight-up music title a hit on gaming platforms, and its success certainly surpassed my own expectations. It’s not a game, it’s not an interactive experience, it’s not a music game – it’s actually a synth and music workstation that happens to run on a game platform. The DS-10 Plus beefs up the original’s features, though it now has a commercially-available rival in the form of Rockstar’s Beaterator for PSP.

In Plus for both the DS and DSi:

  • MUTE/SOLO built into the SONG mode
  • EDIT/PLAY enabled for all modes within the SONG mode

Apparently DSi-exclusive (as I had speculated in the original story on the new edition):

  • Twice the analog synths (4 of them, instead of 2)
  • Twice the drum machines (8 instead of 4)
  • Twice the tracks (12 instead of 6)
  • Expanded song mode: programmable track mute, realtime editing (that is, edit parameters inside the song mode
  • Two effects layers instead of just the usual effects routing (the equivalent of running two instances of DS-10)

(Previously: Korg DS-10 Plus Coming, with Beefed-Up Features for Nintendo DSi)

I’m also pleased that, if the Joystiq story confirming North American distribution is correct, only the extra effects layers require the newer-model Nintendo DSi. It sounds as though the rest of this functionality works just fine on other DS models.

Correction: As Liam notes in comments, and as I’ve clarified above, many of the new features are indeed DSi-exclusive. That means this is probably worth upgrading if you have a DSi, and a reasonable purchase if you don’t already have DS-10, but something you’ll ignore if you have a pre-DSi system and the earlier DS-10 title. Joystiq apparently mis-interpreted the press release, which is easy enough to do; it’s confusingly written.

XSEED press release

Via Joystiq’s David Hinkle:
XSEED bringing Korg DS-10 Plus to North America

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  • Zooi
  • http://liamnewmarch.co.uk Liam

    Looking at the XSEED website I think you may be misrepresenting the feature list. It looks like all the extra features are DSi only, and while the game will work in a DS, the experience will be the same as the original DS-10.

    Someone please correct me if I'm wrong because I'm a big fan of the original DS-10 and only have a plain DS Lite.

  • http://www.createdigitalmusic.com Peter Kirn

    Liam – yeah, I agree, as near as I can tell. I'll send a quick line to XSEED, though, as that press release and the earlier discussion are pretty confusing. I think the additional features are enabled by the beefier processor in the DSi.

    The other odd thing – why not do an online release?

  • Wyatt

    I believe the only new feature you get on a DS lite/phat is the ability to mute per track in song mode. I'm not sure if there's anything else as I didn't bother reading the manual (it's in Japanese; I'm not fluent) and I upgraded to a DSi within a couple of hours of purchasing the DS-10+ Limited Edition and giving it a cursory check on my old DS lite.

  • http://toilville.com peter

    # EDIT/PLAY enabled for all modes within the SONG mode

    This is one of the biggest annoyasnces about the first one.. You can now jam to your songs in realtime!

  • Jon

    Does it have improved resolution on the drum machine at all? Or is it the same drum machine with 16th notes?

  • ehdyn

    Now it's pushed back until 2010?

    This is getting confusing. The developer said late Sept/October. Now it's Oct, and they say early 2010. Can they be any more vague?

    How many parties need to be involved? Apparently it's developed by AQ, published by Procyon, What does Xseed have to do with it? Seems unnecessarily tangled.

    Why doesn't Korg get official and just sell the damn thing?

    Would I be able to use the Japanese version on a U.S. DSi now?

  • ben

    @ehdyn – I believe that dsi games are region-locked, so Japanese versions won't run on a a US dsi. (unlike ds games, which were not region-locked)

  • http://www.myspace.com/ds10dominator DS-10 Dominator

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  • bgrggfe

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    Louis Vuitton Outlet malls.

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