Nintendo DS: Encyclopedia II - Nintendo DS - Accessories

Nintendo DS - Accessories

Although the secondary port on the Nintendo DS does accept and support Game Boy Advance cartridges, Nintendo has emphasized that its main intention for its inclusion was to allow a wide variety of accessories to be released for the system, with the Game Boy Advance compatibility titles being a logical extension. Theorized accessories include GPS receivers or television tuners, as well as a variety of accessories already included in certain Game Boy Advance cartridges such as tilt-sensors, solar-sensors, and vibration generators. The first of which is the Rumble Pak. It was released on October 24, 2005 and bundled with Metroid Prime Pinball; it is sold separately on the Nintendo.com store for $10.

Nintendo has also released the Play-Yan, an adaptor which will allow the Game Boy Advance SP and Nintendo DS to play MPEG-4 videos and MP3 music from SD memory cards. The adaptor bears a superficial resemblance to the AM3 player (which allowed playback of pre-recorded movie files from read-only memory cards on a GBA); the memory card slots into the right hand side of the adaptor, which then plugs into the cartridge slot of the parent console. The adaptor has its own integrated headphone port, but uses the parent console's power supply, controls, and display. It is estimated that it will offer over 15 hours of MP3 playback and 4 hours of MPEG-4 playback from a fully-charged GBA SP.

The adaptor launched in Japan in February 2005 for approximately 5,000 yen ($47.47). Nintendo originally planned to release the adaptor in the U.S. by the end of 2005, but it appears their plans have changed, as the Play-Yan was not available in the U.S. as of December 2005.

Nintendo has also announced at E3 2005 that it would launch "Headset Accessories" for its VoIP program, DSpeak.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Accessories", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki