Nintendo DS Dreaming - Competition
Entry By : Angelo Marubayashi [angelosemail@###.com]
NDS Undercarriage Button Device
as i see it, the greatest challenge that the NDS and programmers of
its games will have to face is its extreme lack of buttons, when
playing a game with touch screen one hand is occupied, and 5 buttons
become immediately very tough to access.
my dream accessory would be an undercarriage button device, it would
operate as a passthrough cart that would plug into the game port, and
have a slim rubberized surface that would hook over the back of the
nds without bulking it up too much. this rubber surface will have
buttons on it that resemble those in "unbreakable keyboards," slim,
but still depress for that satisfying button click, and ultra
resilient, safe from spills bumps, pokes and prods. the buttons would
slightly differ from the keyboard in question in that the buttons
would be round and vary in size a little. when the rubberized button
surface is hooked over the back of the nds it will lock the
passthrough into place.
there would be seven of these buttons on each side and a toggle to
activate or deactivate the whole apparatus, ten of the buttons would
be in medium/small crosses of 5 symmetrical on each side of the game
boy with two more buttons in close proximity.
when a cart is plugged into the passthrough the nds boots to the
accessories preboot interface by default if you have not played that
particular cart before. from here you can map the nds's 14 buttons (u,d,l,r,a,b,x.y.l,h, start, select) to the undercarriage buttons
in any fashion you like, the buttons are located such that you could
map them to play gripping the nds from the side, or from beneath and
operate the buttons with your four fingers, rather than your thumb and
index finger. if the buttons are mapped to grip the nds from beneath
it will solve a lot of peoples concerns of stability when using the
stylus, a firmer grip from closer to the center will prevent the
necessity of gaming directly in one's lap.
if you map the buttons the undercarriage will remember your setup, and
skip the configuration boot sequence unless you hold one of the
undercarriage keys while the nds is powering up each time that cart is
played in the future. you can skip this mapping sequence if you like,
and it will not even start if the device is toggled off when the nds
is started however it cannot be toggled on until the next time the nds
boots
flash cards will be able to override the undercarriages preboot in
favor of their own os' which could incorporate button mapping
functions
the relocation of up to seven buttons for each hand could potentially
give that gamer 12 buttons accessible to one hand, leaving the other
hand free with the stylus.
another incarnation of this device might be built directly into game
carts, allowing developers to create custom undercarriage button
layouts for the needs of their game
--
PS This is what part of the alphabet would look like if Q and R were
eliminated.
Angelo Marubayashi
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