Fans of the Nintendo DS may have been immune to the siren song of Nintendo’s tweaked DSi model. Unfortunately, I have a feeling a bunch of you are about to upgrade your handheld game system. Why? Because the folks at AQ Interactive are doing an upgraded version of the DS-10 software synth for the game platform, now on the DSi. Palm Sounds gets the scoop.

New in this version:

• 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

They’re also announcing distribution through retailers. The new features appear to be platform-specific — that is, all this doubling business appears to be thanks to the greater horsepower of the DSi. My guess – though this is unconfirmed – is that if you can get this for the pre-DSi DS, you won’t be able to switch to the “Dual Mode.” The other slight disappointment is that it doesn’t sound as though online features or collaborative features have been enhanced. On the other hand, AQ is promising that they’ll be in brick-and-mortar retailers, not the online-only distribution they had on the original. I’m hopeful that may also mean distribution outside the US — either for an online DSi purchase, perhaps, or for the cartridge. (The DSi still supports physical carts – hence the mention of retailers.)

The best part of all of this, though, is watching Nobuyoshi Sano – the composer/arranger behind Namco games like Ridge Racer and Tekken – do a Steve Jobs keynote impression.

Via Brandon at the best-game-blog Offworld, who notes that in US dollars this represents a $10 discount.

Well, fine, Jamie Lidell. Now you go and ruin it for the rest of us. See, none of us playing with a Nintendo DSi will possibly look as good as you do.

I jest, of course. Jamie Lidell, the wildly-talented vocalist, picks up the new, online-savvy take of the Nintendo DS and breathes cool into it. This is what Sony ads tried to do, but Jamie does masterfully. And, okay, don’t expect the built-in sound app on the DSi to do as much as it appears to be doing here – there’s quite a lot of non-real-time, non-DSi remixing going on, even though what he does do with the simple app is genius.

Thanks to Liz Revision for finding this one.

This does bring us to a burning question: Nintendo and Sony, I’m looking at you. When will we be able to run eccentric and niche music creation apps as official software on your machine? Imagine NitroTracker on the DSi download store or PSPSEQ and PSPRhythm on the Sony Store.

A real highlight for me at the Game Developer Conference was getting to hear Satoru Iwata deliver the keynote. Aside from being CEO of Nintendo as they have launched their most successful console ever, Iwata-san has left a sizable development legacy as a veteran of HAL Laboratory (Balloon Fight, Kirby). In the game community, I think the reception to his keynote was mixed – mostly, it introduced long-overdue storage solutions for Wiiware titles, along with some relatively minor game titles. But as a person interested in design and development – and what innovative interfaces could do for music and not just games – I found the rare insight into Nintendo’s development process inspiring.

The surprise: despite their enormous resources, Nintendo is moving to ever-smaller development teams. And they’re taking dance classes to work on their musical rhythm.

The Cupertino-Mushroom Kingdom gap has been closed: you can now mix and match DS and iPhone/iPod touch for wireless control of music and visuals. DSMI, the homebrew library that has enabled wireless and serial MIDI connections from the Nintendo DS, has come to iPod touch and iPhone. That means anyone building instruments and controllers on the iThing can now add wireless MIDI controllers that talk to computers – or other mobile devices, including the DS. It also means that DSMI’s acronym standing for “Nintendo DS Music Interface” has only one word that describes all the things it does.

If you’re a developer, you can grab the open source (LGPL-licensed) code. If you’re a user, apps are already supporting the new wireless features. There’s MIDI Motion Machine, which provides tilt and 16 triggers, and iXY, a 99-cent app for KAOSS Pad-style X/Y touch control. The MIDI Motion Machine author, TheRain, takes an interesting approach: there’s both a free and pay version, and the free version has source code.

Tobias Weyand, DSMI’s original co-creator along with TheRain, writes:

My friend TheRain has ported DSMI to the iPhone! This enables iPhone deveopers to easily integrate wireless MIDI in their applications, making it possible to control any MIDI application on the PC with the iPhone. The Wifi-to-MIDI bridge is the same DSMI server application that is also used for the DS, thus it works with Windows, OSX and Linux.
Also, like on the DS, both OSC and MIDI are supported!

DSMI for iPhone is available from our Google Code site (http://code.google.com/p/dsmi/) together with an open source example application called MIDI Motion Machine that is a tilt-based xy-controller.

The cool thing is that this library takes away all the hassle of communicating MIDI messages to the PC and makes development of MIDI controllers very very simple. So, we hope that people will use the DSMI to create a lot of innovative iPhone MIDI controller apps.

Pretty cool, isn’t it? :-)

Retro hardware? Vintage game machines? Old computers? New mobile devices? Whatever it is, we’ll make music and motion on it.

The Blip Festival, the legendary international festival of vintage music and visual tech, invades New York today (Thursday) through Sunday. There’s an unbelievable lineup, with fantastic musicians and live visualists playing every single night Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, from music from m-.-n to Bubblyfish and visuals from Paris Treantafales to Meneo (and many other friends). In fact, every single musician has their own live visuals, so your eyes and ears are guaranteed to be (over)stimulated at all times.

Saturday afternoon is a lineup of workshops, including making your own visual electronics with VBLANK and putting music on NES albums with NO CARRIER.

Sunday is the debut of Reformat the Planet, the documentary film.

2008 Blip Festival

And before the Friday night Blip festival starts, get your 32-bit / mobile gaming + music device / happy hour mixer on:

Mobile Music: 32-Bit Blip Drinkup/Meetup with CDM + Boing Boing [Facebook]

Friday 32-bit BB/CDM Meetup @ Bell House Bar

Blip has a strictly 8-bit and/or retro focus. The stated mission is to:

showcase emerging creative niches involving the use of legacy video game & home computer hardware as modern artistic instrumentation. Devices such as the Nintendo Entertainment System, Commodore 64, Atari ST, Nintendo Game Boy and others are repurposed into the service of original, low-res, high-impact electronic music and visuals…

Now, I love retro tech, but being the subversive character I am, I have to say, cough, “low resolution”? “8-bit”?

And so, with Joel Johnson (Boing Boing / Offworld / Boing Boing Gadgets), we’re hosting a very informal meetup to celebrate all things mobile and 32-bit with the Boing Boing and CDM communities. If you’ve got one, bring your PSP, your Nintendo DS, and your GamePark (or even mobile phone / PDA), and prepare to share. I’m especially hopeful we’ll get some wireless action with multiples of the DS, Korg DS-10, and homebrew. We may be able to unlock your PSP for homebrew (contact us first – likewise, give us a holler if you’re good with a Pandora’s Battery and Magic Memory Stick). If you’ve found a way to hook your 8-bit Game Boy into your new DS DIY MIDI interface, all numbers of bits will be accommodated.  I’ll be bringing my PSP with the incredible PSPSEQ onboard – which sounds utterly beautiful and is really inspiring to use. I’ll have DS homebrew, too.

If you just want to meet me and Joel and folks and see what’s possible and nerd out and have a few drinks, that goes, too!

We’re meeting at the bar at the Bell House, which also happens to be where Blip is happening. So you can come, get some drinks and snacks, and get your mobile music/visual geek on. Bonus: it’s two-for-one happy hour, so bring a friend / significant other and we’ll make them feel at home!

Bell House Food & Drink Menu

RSVP on Facebook

When: Friday, December 5, 6-8p

Where: 149 7th Street, Brooklyn, NY 11215 [Map | Directions]

See you there!

Again, very important rest of the planet, I’ll try to stream live if WiFi cooperates in the bar! Watch http://twitter.com/cdmblogs for updates.