I’ve been saying this amongst friends for a while now, but I’m almost amazed that Nintendo hasn’t yet introduced a DS player for Wii, similar to the Game Boy Player for GameCube or Super Game Boy for the SNES.
Sure, they’d look a bit ugly on an HDTV, but there are plenty of games in the Nintendo DS library that I’d love to play on the couch with Nathalie beside me. RPG titles come to mind first because; well that’s what I mostly play on the DS. I’d much rather play something like Dragon Quest V on the couch for an evening with some company to share the experience with rather than alone in a corner or something. Family time is important to me, so I’m less likely to play a solitary handheld game than one I can play on the TV with other people around.
Some would argue that it would be difficult to control DS games on a TV. I would argue that those people aren’t thinking hard enough. It would be very easy to simply use a DS as a controller, while streaming the audio and video signals to a Wii via wi-fi, or knowing Nintendo, a proprietary dongle.
They could also implement a system similar to the one in Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time and map controls to the standard Wii Remote and Nunchuck combination, using IR pointer capability to act as the DS stylus. It may not be perfect, but it certainly works well enough to be playable.
Display is another concern. I would personally prefer the two DS screens to be displayed on top of each other, producing a similar aspect ratio to a vertical SHMUP title. The emulator could also have options for a side-by-side display or even make one of the screens the only one displayed on the TV in the case of titles that primarily use one of the DS screens.
This brings me to my next point. The Wii has been hacked wide open. There are fully functional DS emulators that run on relatively low-powered PCs. Why the homebrew crew hasn’t ported one of these emulators is even more surprising to me than the fact Nintendo hasn’t introduced an official DS player.
One way or the other, I really want to have the option of playing DS games on my TV without having to hook up a PC to it. I have a feeling I’m not alone when I say I’d pay good money to be able to do so.