Nintendo DS: Gargantuan round-up!

Just as we were recovering from Ninty president Satoru Iwata's announcement about 'game sharing' (more on this below), we were buried under another avalanche of DS screenshots. Yesterday we posted a featuring the likes of Mario Kart and Super Mario 64 and today we find similar quality in Metroid Prime: Hunters and we even have two superb movies of AAA titles in action.

Supporting the main act of Hunters, this batch of pics include such delights as Yoshi's Touch and Go, Pokemon Dash, Wario Ware, Ridge Racer DS, Spider-Man 2 and Puppy Times. Images of not-so high profile titles are surfacing all the time, such as Zoo Keeper, Feel the Magic and we've even thrown in a couple of obscure titles like Jam with the Band and Meteos.

Back to Iwata's announcements at the Ninty press conference in Seattle and the bombshell that shook us to our little cotton socks: "The DS' wireless connection isn't just a substitute for the link cable that was used on the Game Boy. The DS has wireless download capability, which allows it to receive a program and execute it." Yep, that's right, you can directly download to your DS and play away.

The ramifications are many but the most obviously appealing one was succinctly explained by Ninty's president - "People can play games together using only one cartridge". Isn't that music to your ears?

Iwata also spoke of Nintendo's plans to make downloadable demos available. The details haven't been hammered out yet but essentially you'll be able to choose a game at demo supporting retail outlets. Sure, they'll have a time or usage limit but, at the very least, it takes try-before-you-buy to a new level for handheld gamers.

Ninty are even considering of wireless download collaborations with cinemas, thinking particularly of the next Pokemon movie. At this early stage the thinking is that you will be able to download data of new Pokemon that appear in the film. Incredible, yes?

One thing's for sure, Iwata's DS revelations have grabbed the imagination of the gaming public and press and DS has just become a whole lot cooler.

There will be further DS updates over the next few days.