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Your Nintendo DS Accessories grabbag!

To date I have been doing primarily Nintendo DS game reviews, telling you about what games I think you should be checking out slash borrowing at your local Nintendo DS friendly rental place slash what you should be avoiding like dinner tickets to hear VP Cheney talk about how friends don’t let friends shoot friends in the face during a hunting trip.
But there is more to DS ownership other than the blessing that you don’t have to wade through 20 UMD movie releases for every one video game out there on the market right now. There are accessories you can own for your DS, and these are a few of those accessories you should consider if you are the new DS owner.

The ESL Nintendo DS travel case (jet black)
The Radio Shack Nintendo DS accessory pack
And finally Cellboost’s Nintendo DS/GameBoy Advance SP battery recharger

First the case.
The ESL case is a simple one, and a simple choice to make. This black semi-flexible travel case can fit easily into most larger pockets, and has abit of storage for your stuff. You should be able to hold between 3 DS games slash 2 GBA games to 7 DS games (if you put the GBA games into the side accessory pouch), as well as your recharge cables, cleaning cloths, spare styluses (though you should hold them in a little ziplock bag), and extra protective screen covers. However the accessories pouch is not the most secure, so stuff in there shifts as you move about. That means if I can find a case with a zippered or velcro-d accessories pouch to keep things from shifting about I would snap it up in an instant.
So why do I keep this, by the way? Because it’s person proof! I’ve had family members almost sit on my DS case and it held up quite well to not so attentive family members! Not saying you can drop hundreds of pounds on the case or anything but it does well under at least fair wear and tear situations, so it’s somewhat sturdy which is something you should always be mindful of when looking for the ideal traveling case.

Next is the Radio Shack accessory pack.
This holds spare screen covers for protecting your DS screen from scratches (complete with cloth to clean your screens and the little card thing to work out the air bubbles as you put the sheets on the screens), two spare styluses (which you can never get enough of), and a wrist strap for your DS (which took me forever to figure out how to put it on). Nice, though one complaint I have with this is the fact that the styluses are nice and all (with this nice metallic look to them), but they don’t seem to fit the DS’ built in stylus holder… they’re abit small for my taste. It might not be the best but it does hold abit and until I can find a better offer it’s better than nothing.
Oh, and you shouldn’t put your wrist strap on the DS if you own cats. Trust me, talk about instant magnet for their attention span… and paws… where your DS is concerned.

Finally the Cellboost battery recharger.
If you travel a lot you might know the drill. You are far far away from your home and yet the need to recharge your DS has not diminished despite the fact you are away from your home. Bad news, for some reason you are nowhere near a plug to jack your DS charger into, and people (as a general rule) are not the most accomidating about letting total strangers sit in their car a cop a charge off their battery so said person can recharge their DS, even if said person (yourself in this scenario) happens to be carrying both the plug charger and the car lighter charger in their travelling case (which I haven‘t seen yet).
Worst, it seems the next opportunity to plug your DS in will be quite abit of time distant, so then what!
Well that’s where the people over at Cellboost come in. Available for both the GBA SP and Nintendo DS (the same battery can charge both systems) as well as for a great deal of other things like cellphones and those new palmpilot things, the Cellboost disposable battery charger (featuring the image of a disturbingly gimpy hopped up excuse for youth extremely excited about charging his DS) may be your way to recharge your DS in a pinch… but only if you are in a pinch.

The product is simple enough. Once your DS’ light turns from green to red, and thus needs a charge, you slap on the battery charger and let it recharge. Now in THEORY you can let it recharge for at least two minutes before you can start playing but I wouldn’t trust that assertation considering there’s a nice tidy warning about Cellboost’ not being affiliated with Nintendo on the front of the package of this charger. Basically if you slap this on I’m betting you’re going for a full recharge, or at least an hour or so charge.
As for charging this isn’t the easiest thing.
It has the ability to charge the game for 6 hours of gameplay, yes, but you have to wait 3 ½ hours for the game to completely charge from near drained so this isn’t for a quick charging fix! Worst it seems that you probably will only be able to completely recharge your DS for 1 and a half charges (one full charge and a half charge before the battery completely taps out)… well, so much for providing six hours of charge.
That means this is only a stopgap measure for an emergency, and nothing more.

For instance take this scenario : hurricane season is coming again and that means we’re going to have to have people hitting the road, but not for vacation as much as getting clear of mother nature’s pissy moods. That means you’ll be on the road and you probably won’t be copping a charge off of your car battery for your DS since you may be stuck in long lines on highways slowly moving forward, which means it would make for the ideal situation to use the Cellboost. Ditto for staying in emergency shelters and all the power plugs are being used by other things, or just being on a train that is slowly trudging through snow or something that delays your arrival by hours (like in the beginning of Nana V. 2).
All of these provide the ideal conditions for justifying owning a Cellboost, otherwise you might as well skip this and trust in your usual charging plugs to carry you through… or carry a GBA SP for a pinch since that can carry a longer charge than the Nintendo DS.
The Cellboost is only for a pinch when you need a charge and have nowhere else to get one. Otherwise if you can find a place to plug in do so, and don’t go picking this up for no reason whatsoever.

So… in closing?
These are nice and all but they have their flaws.
The case is nice, and I get lots of use out of it, it’s just that I wish the accessory pouch had a velcro or zipper seal to keep it’s contents from shifting about.
The accessory pack is nice but the styluses were seemingly NOT made to fit the stylus nitche in the DS, which means you constantly run the risk of losing your stylus as it might slip out of the nitche and fall to the wayside without you knowing it.
And finally we have the Cellboost which is nice, but charges slow, only has one real good full charge to it’s name with a partial charge remaining before you tap it dry. So that means that this is basically not recommended if you don’t really need it.

As for better accessories I, for one, am all for it.
So if anyone has any idea where I can find a better DS case, a better accessory pack (with styluses that actually fit the DS’s stylus nitche better) and a chargable re-usable battery charger (which is more cost effective than the disposable variety) please let me k now, that would be so nice.

Next review cycle I promise I’ll have games to review… until the next time I gathered up more accessories to review. That or when I finally get a PSP to review from since my local Radio Shack (and Blockbusters) is a treasure trove of PSP accessories to check out which is kind of sad since Sony apparently expects every reviewer for every internet media outlet to have to out of pocket their own $250-$300 or so investment just to review their PSP system. And, well, why would I want to review the PSP if I have to do that, especially since I can save up the rest of the money and invest in a superior PS3 for reviews -- except for the fact that the PS3 will probably have the same flaw as the XBox360 and demand I have a high definition TV in order to play the system to it‘s fullest potential! Anyway more accessories reviews in the future so stay tuned.