If you've got a DS Lite, you've got an e-reader

The slick little Nintendo DS Lite has snared plenty of adult fans with games like Brain Age and New York Times Crosswords.

But this device has much more to offer than just game play.

You may already be aware of the Nintendo DS Browser, which brings textual web-surfing to the DS anywhere a WiFi connection is detected. But you can also listen to music, watch videos and read e-books on your DS Lite.

Enjoy thousands of literary classics and Creative Commons titles from sites such as Project Gutenberg and Manybooks.net.

From Charles Dickens to Cory Doctorow to science fiction writers, the works of famous authors are online for you—and your children. Kids can read on the same machines they play games with. Via a Kindle or your favorite PDA, you might even read some books at the same time as your children do, then discuss them. One way to encourage literacy! Wikipedia teems with items about specific books and authors, as well as links to specialized sites—some with colorful pictures that can help draw in young students.

ReadMore and other free killer apps for the DS

Although the DS Lite’s music and video playback quality isn’t yet good enough to rival other multifunction devices, as an e-reader the DS Lite actually has a few advantages over dedicated e-readers. It can definitely give the iPhone a run for its money, thanks to free, "homebrew" DS applications.

With ReadMore, you can turn the DS Lite on its side and hold it in your hands like a book. It’s as if the DS is a next-generation OLPC machine, shown in the photo, to read with.

Turning the page via ReadMore is as easy as pressing the right- or left-hand arm of the plus-sign controller pad or tapping the right- or left-hand side of the touchscreen.

ReadMore allows the user to resize the displayed font to enlarge text if desired. It also lets you set up to three color-coded bookmarks in addition to the bookmark that’s automatically set to save your place when you shut the program down.

Currently, ReadMore only supports .txt files, but there’s no shortage of free utilities available online to convert various, non-DRM’d ebook formats to .txt.  I used PDB2TXT (now upgraded to a conversion utility suite called IE2PDB) to convert my large library of pdb e-books to txt without any difficulty.  ReadMore developer Bjorn Geisler promises more ebook formats will be supported in a future release.

Full-Color Comics and ‘Game Books’

No need to feel jealous the next time someone nearby turns on his Kindle or Sony Reader when you can casually crack open your DS Lite and read full-color comics on it with ComicBook DS.

The photo at right (credit: Eric Caoil) shows a side-by-side comparison of a comic in p form and displayed on the DS Lite.  Comics are displayed in a pan-and-scan type presentation, and the user can scroll up and down or zoom in and out of each panel as desired.

Eric Caoili offers a detailed review of the ComicBook DS experience. New releases of the program since the article’s publication have addressed his few concerns about its performance.

LoneWolfDS: Choose your adventure

Your biblio-technophile friends are still unimpressed?  Load LoneWolfDS (shown at left, photo credit: projectaon.org).

Remember those "you choose the adventure" books that were so popular in the 1980’s, in which the reader was periodically given a choice of what the protagonist would do next, then directed to the next appropriate passage in the book to continue the story based on the reader’s choice?  Lone Wolf books took that concept to a higher level by incorporating role-playing gameplay elements.

In LoneWolfDS, the reader not only chooses what the protagonist does next, he also equips the character, collects items and decides when and how the protagonist will do battle with foes encountered in the course of the adventure.  Hyperlinks make navigating to the next appropriate passage based on the reader’s selection even easier than it used to be in the p versions of the books.

Visit the LoneWolfDS site for more information, screen shots and free downloads of LoneWolfDS game books.

Pimp your DS Lite!

Ready to pimp your DS Lite? All you need is a special flash cart for the DS, a microflash SD memory card, and some freeware downloads.

Get yourself a DS flash cart, such as the R4DS or M3DS, plus a microflash SD memory card (with adapter for your computer’s standard SD card slot—note that flashcart manufacturers sometimes include a microflash adapter with the flash cart) to store the apps and other content you’ll be running from the flash cart. Use the CD that came with the flash cart and follow the manufacturer’s directions to load firmware to the microflash card.

Now head on over to The Moonbooks Project site and hit the Downloads menu, Homebrew and Utilities section, Unsorted Homebrew link. Download the latest versions of Moonshell, ReadMore and ComicBook DS. If you’ve got some tech skills and intend to convert your own video content to a format readable by Moonshell, download the ‘Moonshell + DPG Tools’ version of Moonshell. Otherwise, just go for the basic program.

Go back to the Downloads menu and follow the links for Comics and Books to download as many free, public-domain titles as you like. Finally, go to the LoneWolfDS homepage and click the downloads link to get LoneWolfDS game books. If you can, leave a donation, too.

Follow the readme provided with Moonshell to set up the proper file folders on your microflash card and copy Moonshell and its related utilities to the card.  Moonshell provides necessary system files for applications and content available on the Moonbooks site.  Follow the directions provided in the ReadMore and ComicBook DS readme files to get those apps copied to the correct location(s) on the memory card as well.

Set up an e-books folder at the root of the card, and copy txt e-books to it as desired.  Follow the directions provided with ComicBook DS to place your downloaded comics in the correct location on the memory card.  Note that no separate program is required for LoneWolf game books, each one runs as a standalone application and can be stored in, and launched from, the Games folder.  When the memory card is all loaded up, insert it in the flash cart and insert the flash cart into the game cartridge slot of the DS Li
te.

Ready to read?

Now turn on the DS Lite; the usual Nintendo health and safety warning screen will show briefly, followed by the touchscreen menu provided by your flash cart manufacturer.  The one shown at left is for the R4DS (photo credit: gbatemp.net).

The three icons, in order from left to right, are for accessing games from the flash cart, multimedia from the flash cart, and the boot slot of the DS. The boot slot feature is for use with a second boot flash cart that runs a different type of media than the main cart.

If you’re not using a second boot flash cart, this menu item loads the Moonshell interface and provides access to utilities.  ReadMore, ComicBook DS and LoneWolfDS will all be located under the Games menu.  Tap the Games icon and select the desired program with the stylus.

Recall that LoneWolfDS titles will run as standalone applications.  Follow the directions provided with ReadMore and ComicBook DS to open desired content from within each of those programs.  Experiment with navigating around the menu and sub-folders; if you get ‘lost’, just turn the DS Lite off and on again to re-load the main, 3-icon menu.

Your DS Lite is now an e-book reader, a comic book reader, and a "game book" reader!

April Hamilton is a writer based in Los Angeles.  Her latest book is The IndieAuthor Guide, a how-to reference book on self-publishing.