Nintendo DS Warning

[corduroyboy]

Anyone with a DS who is planning on buying a mic headset to play Nintendogs or whatever, beware:

I bought a microphone headset from GAME, their own third party one, because as far as I can tell there is no official licensed Nintendo one yet.
It consists of a single mono earpiece and a little microphone housed in a plastic case in-line.

I bought it because the built in mic sound quality was poor at times, especially with my kind of monotonous voice, and the Nintendogs were having difficulty distinguishing some of my commands from others.

I plugged it in, when my DS was powered off, and it was alright, but the quality of the sound input to the microphone wasn't as dramatically improved as I'd hoped, so I decided to just not bother using it. Also the mono sound from the earbud was pretty poor as well and I would prefer to wear stereo earphones for better sound quality, or even just the speakers on the system.

I unplugged the device with the power off again, being paranoid about damaging spikes and things like that when dealing with sound equipment. Now though, the in-built microphone on the DS does not respond at all. There is no sound input possible at all, I know this because in Nintendogs there are points in the game when it will repeat what you have just said back to you, but now I get nothing. Not muffled or low volume sound, just nothing whatsoever.

I have emailed Nintendo in the UK, but I haven't heard back from them yet. Unfortunately my DS is a Japanese import, because I couldn't wait for it to come out over here, so I don't know where I stand where warranty and things are concerned, but I suppose I'll find out.

Just posting to warn anyone about this. It's maybe an isolated incident, as the guy who advised me to get one hasn't reported a problem. It might just be coincidental that my mic stopped working, but it seems to me that the mic failing after using a mic related peripheral would quite likely be linked.

I do not know if my nephew used the external mic peripheral on my DS at some point, and he may have plugged/unplugged it while the system was powered up, in which case it may have been a spike, but I'm not sure how damaging these spikes are, or if they are just a dad-instilled unnecessary fear.

I keep hoping the mic will just "start working" again, and I try disabling and enabling it, or adjusting the mic sensitivity levels to try and coax it back into action, but so far no joy, but I'll let you all know how things go in this sorry saga.

[corduroyboy]

Nintendo have actually been quite helpful, and they got back to me pretty quickly (basically in the time it took me to write that last post).

Originally Posted by Nintendo

Dear Customer, thank you for your e-mail.

Please send your DS to the Service Centre at the address below and they will be able to sort it out for you.

Please make sure that your full name and address details are included in the package together with your cheque made payable to 'Codestorm re Nintendo' for £25.25. This price is fully inclusive of return p&p and VAT. We will replace the unit for a new one and issue a new warranty on it from the date of the replacement.

Kind regards,

Your Nintendo Team

So, that is good I suppose: a brand new DS and warranty from the date of replacement. There was one dead pixel on my touch screen anyway that didn't impair gameplay at all but always annoyed me, as did a small scuff in the silver paint along the bottom edge (I know, it's totally anal).

Unfortunately it's £25.25 I don't really have at the moment which is rubbish, and I don't really understand why there is a charge at all. I suppose it's better than them saying "Sorry, your beef lies with Nintendo Japan, we can't help you." and then language barriers and expensive postage and all that... but still... all for the sake of what turned out to be a pretty crappy peripheral that I didn't really need and probably won't use again. I think I'll just wait for an official Nintendo mic & headset.

Full marks to Nintendo though on this occasion for their customer services department.

Now, I wonder if they'll let me have a pink DS instead this time....

[corduroyboy]

Originally Posted by BOB21

October 21, 2005
A Kid's Review
There are two different colors of Nintendo DS. They are red blue and silver and pink . We like the DS. Because there are many good games we also like it because there is a 2nd screen that is a touch screen one of my good games are called Warrior war touched.

Awww.. that's a review of the DS on Amazon by a child. I think they mean Wario Ware Touched.

Aww...

[krashd]

my DS stopped working after my grandad tried to close the screens with a hot dog sausage and mustard in it, funnily enough i never heard aything back from nintendo. in my personal experience i'm a harshy bastard with my own stuff and i've only ever damaged 1 thing by unplugging stuff hot and that was the joystick port on an old A600, but i still don't bother switching stuff off to swap peripherals.

is there no way you can attach a normal mic to the DS mic socket? you're bound to have one about or has nintendo went the route of all companies and created their own "standard" ports. just check the impedance first though it should be ok if you use something like a mobile phone mic or a similar sized mic as the smaller the mic piece and wiring the better chance of decent gain, as opposed to attaching a PA system :/

[Go! Miasma!]

Originally Posted by corduroyboy

Wario Ware Touched.

Wario Ware ruined my DS within a week. There's a mini game where an image is sort of warped around and you have to rotate it and swirl it back to normal. For the first few days I thought i was supposed to be going the other way, got a bit carried away when I kept losing, whirled it like buggery and now have an annoying and completely permanent circular scratch on my bottom screen.



Not entirely sure if my warranty covers damage due to incurable idiocy.

[azpazzagus]

Originally Posted by krashd

my DS stopped working after my grandad tried to close the screens with a hot dog sausage and mustard in it, funnily enough i never heard aything back from nintendo.

i nearly wet myself when i read that
i am sure you are kidding?

[krashd]

Originally Posted by m.e.b.u.n.n.y

i nearly wet myself when i read that
i am sure you are kidding?

nah, my old grandad was never the same after his fall. when we found him in the garden pond using a rainbow trout as a loofer we knew he needed professional care.

[Mikey]

still not bought a DS yet, need one really bad since Mario Kart, Nintendogs, Tony Hawks.