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The Nintendo DS is one of few current portable electronicdevices that can only do one thing. They can only play games. Mobile phones andPDAs can do just about anything a PC can although to a lesser degree. DigitalCamera's can track your global position. Even the DS's main rival, the PSP hadone of its original selling points as the ability to play movies on UMD disc.

That's about to change. The R4DS (or R4 Revolution to some) isa very small device that lets you connect a Nintendo DS to an SD card. An SD cardis a type of flash memory storage card which is often used to store files ondigital cameras and mobile phones. Being able to get your DS to read from awritable disc opens up a world of possibilities. Many of those possibilitiesare good and some of them are bad.

Using the R4DS, you need never again worry about losing ordamaging cartridges. In fact, once you've set the R4DS up with your Nintendo DS,you never need to change your cartridge again. That's because you can backupyour entire games collection onto a single SD card, and just leave it in yourDS all the time. This is a great time saver, not to mention that you'll neverlose any of your games down the back of the sofa again.

With the R4DS, you can start using downloadable content.This includes applications such as mp3 players, video players, photo albumsuites and homebrew games. Other, applications aimed more at a smaller niche ofusers includes the likes of DSBible and Pocket Physics Online Repository. Theseare quite a change from Nintendogs! With all these applications at yourdisposal, the Nintendo DS is now a portable media centre.

The homebrew games are fairly impressive. They are of asimilar quality to Flash based games found on websites; however they can incorporatethe touch sensitive screen of the DS.  Examplesof games include Video Game Hero, which is very similar to Guitar Hero, Chessand something called Tickle Girl.

However, the R4DS does bring some trouble with it. Alongwith backups of games owned by users and homebrew games, people are able todownload games which they are not legally entitled to. Playing these games isof course piracy.

Nintendo is fighting hard to stop the sale of the R4DSbecause of this. The device itself and its intended purpose are legal; they canbe bought at Amazon. Using the device for piracy is obviously not legal.

The effect of widespread piracy is less revenue for gamesdevelopers to invest into new games. This means a lower quality and quantity ofgames being produced.

Another concern is in fact piracy of the R4DS itself. Thereare a number of imitations of the R4DS on sale throughout the Internet. Manyhave reported on Internet forums that these have caused their system shortcircuit. Consumers are advised to seek advice before purchasing an R4DS for themselves.

Significant improvements for Nintendo DS user have beencreated by the R4DS. However it also causes a significant threat to the videogaming industry. Nintendo are trying to stop the sale of the R4DS. A fairersolution would be to stop the websites allowing the illegal downloads. As themusic industry knows though, this is not a simple task.

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