Nintendo DS v. GBA
 

i need help, i know absolutely nothing about these items. can you help me pick the best choice for my children. they are 9, 7, and 6 years old. I will be buying a Pokemon game or two for them as well, so any suggestions about that would be helpful. thanks.

DS. It can play GBA games, and has that much more variety.

Yep, DS is the way to go since it plays GBA games and there are a ton of great DS games.

Yep. End discussion. Close thread. :)

- DS has wi-fi capabilities allowing your children to game together without being tethered together in the same room.

- DS has the Brain games which would be beneficial to children.

- with the roaring success of the DS I don't imagine N supporting the GBA much longer.

it sounds like it is worth the extra money then

i wish i could buy one and let them share it, but you know how that goes

does the wi-fi require other hardware?

Not for them to just play with each other, as the DSes just connect to each other.

If they want to play online (which they are really to young to bother with except maybe the oldest) you need a Wireless internet connection in the house.

thanks for the help, they would just play against each other

May I chime in with a question about this?

My daughter is 9 years old and a big Animal Crossing nut. I was thinking about getting Wi-Fi, but I'm not certain how it works in the game. Can you, for example, send messages to other players? If so, I'm concerned she might get a message in a bottle from some wacko or something. I only know a little about the game, so is there any reason for concern?

EDIT: (Maybe I should ask this in the Animal Crossing thread, but I'm also kind of curious if any DS game could become - shall we say - "harmful" if you're online. Thanks.)

Not really. I don't have Animal Crossing, but Nintendo has adopted unique codes for players and they require an invite to your code to play with you. As this applies to every other Wi-Fi game, I assume it applies to Animal Crossing as well.

In other words, Mark Foley would have to get your kid's unique number by some method other than on the DS in order to get to their town or send them a message in a bottle.

As for the original question, yes, the DS is easily worth the extra money. And some of the DS games are truly the sort of games that parents can get behind in that they make kids think...especially Brain Age, Big Brain Academy, and Clubhouse Games. Add to that the fact that the DS plays every GBA game, and you have probably the best game library...well...ever.

As a poster in the Animal Crossing thread...technically she could get messages from 'wackos' but she would have to add them to her list. As long as you don't let her add random people she will be fine. There are lots of DVDTalkers that I've had fun experiences visiting their villages and trading items to complete sets and such. I'm not clear on how the message in the bottles work, I don't know if they are random or only work from people on your friend list. If you don't send one you won't get one though, it's a separate mode to the game.

In general the animal crossing community is the best online community that exists. Everyone is soooooo friendly and fun. But there's a safety built in that people have been mentioning, i.e. she has to physically add someone to her list using a friend code that someone has to give her, you control who comes in and out of your town, so that prevents random weirdos.

I would comment though that if you are playing any of the GBA pokemon (as you mentioned) games and if they are going to want to trade pokemon with each other. They can only do this with GBA's as the DS does not support the link cable.