Need For Speed Most Wanted A Criterion Game FAQ support page

Well, this will be the location for all things related to my NSF MW ACG (lol acronyms) FAQ hosted at GameFAQs. For locations, I set the game's resolution to my native res (1440x900) just to take a better screeny than 800x600 :P

I am also going to post some race times, to show that Ambush is possible and a lot of fun.

BILLBOARDS:

Cracking my spine, a nearly 4 hour CoH match and more

Last week I cracked my spine. Did you ever crack your spine before? I'm not talking about the Bane breaks Batman's back in Dark Knight Rises, it's just a simple cracking of the spine that was the most frightening sound I ever heard from within my body. Maybe for some people it's normal, but it really freaked me out. That's probably because of the circumstances of how it happened, and it happened when I was asleep. The nightmares have become more frequent lately and in earlier nights I would wake up in cold sweat or my breathing was too high, to the point when I cracked my spine, I woke up very suddenly and my stomach went skyward and I gasped for air quite loudly. That's when I heard the crack and I tell you, it's not a sound I want to hear again.

Thankfully, it wasn't serious. The first thing I remember doing was checking my limbs to see if I was paralyzed, and all seemed well. Now that it's been a few days, I noticed some strange things due to the cracking of my spine. For one thing, I've not had those aches and pains on my upper body, and because my right collar bone has almost no muscles linked to my neck (nearly my entire right shoulder is broken), I used to have severe neck pain but not anymore. One side effect I do see was my thinking had been erratic, there were times when the information flows too fast, and other times where I felt lost, as if I had to do something but felt no urge to do it. Some of you might have noticed my sudden increase in participation in the Vivid Red Operation thread at Animesuki over the weekend, which was linked to this. Searching online yields mixed results, to some it is a good thing, to others it is a warning sign, as much as it felt good, I don't really want to go through that again. I still can't think straight and I go to sleep paranoid of it happening again. Though I think it is unlikely, last week was too strange a week. The weather was a lot colder than I thought it would be, and I ran up a little cold, and my nose was stuffed for a few days, so that might have contributed to my inability to breathe properly.

As if my weekend wouldn't get any weirder, I was playing a casual game of Company of Heroes Skirmish, and if you ever wondered how scrambled my mind was during this time, this ought to give a clear picture:

That's a 3 hour 51 minute match right there against the AI. Sure, many folks will say the AI is easy to beat, but not when I played. For some reason, I was off my game, I could never hold my ground on the only road into my territory, and when the expert AI double teams you with 2 Airborne commanders, it's a miserable hell. They frequently did back-to-back bombing runs, they'd drop anti-tank guns as if it's all they got, and I had to use mortar fire strikes just to burn them out. That went on so long, I only wanted to play a simple session to see if my thinking power was affected by the spine cracking, but for more than 3 hours, I was totally embarrassed and I had enough.

I had to end it as quickly as possible, and with my AI buddy doing nothing but spawning StuH's and losing them, I had to Hummel smash the nearest enemy base as much as I could (above). The only other time I played a nearly 4 hours match was when I had my old Sony lappy, and it ended up that way partly due to the laggy graphics. Now I know I really ought to take it easy if my mind is muddy, and NO GAMING IF YOU HAD A SUDDEN HEALTH CHANGE XD

War against mosquitos

I don't like mosquitos. There are some bugs I like, and some that I don't like, but mosqy's are definitely in the "do not want" camp. And for some reason these guys just want to bite the heck out of me. There were jokes about these local mosqy's wanting some foreigner blood, but I've just about had enough of them. Armed with my trusty electric swatter and my hand, I set out on a holy war against these pests.

Even the committee in my neighborhood caught wind of the sudden rise in mosqy's, and they set out to gas the place. I don't know what it was they were gassing, but that stuff seemed to have worked. Unfortunately for me, the mosqy's sought refuge indoors where the gas was less. My swatter has no effect when I'm at my lappy, and in the magnified image above, that mosqy was killed when it invaded my personal space. What happened was business as usual for me, but that dude was buzzing around my hand. In my surprise I rolled my chair back a little and the dumb mosqy landed on my trackball mouse. In 1 or 2 seconds my mind was a speedy mess: I could make a break for my swatter for a sure kill, but it would notice my movement and fly away, or I could risk my already hurt right hand and hulk smash. The end result:

I had to smash it. I'm not sure how fast I am, I know for sure I'm a terrible fighting game player, but these mosqy's are smart and I wasn't going to take a chance, but what this particular mosquito did was freaky. It was the first time in my life I saw a mosquito walking. I mean it was walking with those dangly legs, desecrating my royal trackball with it's bendy legs, I was half furious, half awe struck at watching something walk for the first time in my life after having seen them be flyers for years. By the way I have been a trackball user for 13 years.

Let's go modding

I did mention in an earlier post about mods, so here goes one. HP designed some really bad laptops. Strangely, I only notice this in their AMD lappy's, I don't really see this particular design in Intel based machines, which did lead me at one point to speculate that perhaps there was a conspiracy where Intel paid off these manufacturers to cripple AMD machines with poor ventilation, because I seriously doubt a manufacturer would be this dumb to adopt this particular fan design that HP used for their DV7 AMD-based series.

What you see is a downward facing exhaust fan for one of life's most hottest mobile chips, the Turion 2 Ultra series. From this angle you can already see how stupid this design is for a chip that idles at 59c (800mhz) and gets as hot as 83c (2.5ghz). Explain to me how a chip this hot is supposed remain cool when the exhaust is not only thin, but pointing downward where, you know, the surface of where the laptop is sitting on. As you can see above, the grills are extremely fat as well, prompting me to cut off some of them, and then I proceeded to carve out from the chrome lined part to the rest of where the cut grills were connected to. I wish I did a before and after pic, but I was fed up with the heat this machine was spitting out, and with permission from the owner of this lappy I wasted no time in cutting it. It paid off too, heat is down at least -3c from the usual temps, and for the first time in my life with this machine I saw the green checkmark in Speedfan.

First time a green mark. It had always been a fire icon, indicating how hot the temps are.

I paid a price though: my hobby knife slipped on the first carving and drove deep into my finger. Till now this cut remains, and it hurts when I touch it.

I also have to clean the laptop regularly as dust gets trapped very easily in that exhaust vent. Before I cut the grills, I painstakingly pulled out big clumps of blackened dust that was caught behind the grills, very very poor design HP, and that time you were one of the biggest PC makers, I sure hope you didn't hurt AMD's sales by designing fan exhausts like this, AMD laptop reviews would always mention the heat. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if I have to replace the thermal!

Oktober has to be my strangest month yet...

Since my last post, my life has been a weird ride. Which is rather funny, every month so far has been a typical life for me, overwork myself, then get overrun by anime in my free time, except for this month...

Every other battery I've ripped open has been green except this HP one...

 For the last week and a half, it was half fun, half miserable. On the one hand, my laptop battery finally died, leaving me with no back up power option. The worst part? It was during this time when this country decided to do not one, not two, but 3 blackouts within 3 days, with the third one being a ruinous 3 hours. One of these blackouts occurred when a tropical storm passed by, leaving me on edge for the most of the time, as I lost work, had downloads cut off, to the point where I just said screw it, I had to postpone not only work, but play as well (had to halt Android development as well as really falling behind on the current anime season. I never considered getting a UPS before because hey, which travelling fellow even has one. I don't care if I have to toss it when I leave this country, but I really have to get one now.

This is what happens when I've got nothing else to do... my first time seeing a square donut, by the way. I seriously need to think of something better to do when I am at my utmost boredom.

 Nothing's all bad about it, as I actually managed to convinced myself there's more to my life than anime and work. That's when I spent more time than I usually did at manga sites, hey, if a download ever occurred, it'd be small files right? Good for the phone too, so blackout or what, I don't waste any of my precious bandwidth. And quite some stuff I missed during my Android days, which I post later in my recommendation posts I plan to start doing from now on. Also, I found myself playing games more often than I had hoped, so many I stockpiled over the past few years, it's one of the reasons why I haven't played much (if any) recent games, as I still am trying to control my habit of buying anything that has a cute anime girl in it XD (biggest regret: I couldn't afford Max Payne 3, the game I waited years for. Not like my lappy can play it anyways...)

One of the finest pics I've ever seen of Gym Leader Elesa

 Which brings me to Pokemon Black and White, which I've recently been playing after finding out there's a sequel. Man I gotta say if this series ever has anything going for it, it's the increasing amount of cute girls, and the best part, pixiv is heavily into them. From Elesa(Kamitsure) to Cynthia(Shirona), I especially like B/W's ponytail girl and B/W2's twintail. I tell you there's a lot of great art, and it really actually got me to start getting used to their Japanese names (I thought "Hey, that girl looks like Cynthia, but her name is Shirona?" :P)

999, one of the DS games I should not have put down last year. How dare that guy grab the twin tail cutie...

I've gotten back into other games as well as finally playing the PSP for real this time. Remember how I had to dump fighting games after my wrist injury? Well, I've tried it out again, much to my horror the PSP has quite the badly designed d-pad. I came up with a proper fix that isn't like the one online, which I'll probably post later on. I did find myself modding things as well, anything to get my mind of impending blackouts.

One thing I was fortunate to hold in my hands recently was an iPhone4. It's not mine, it was for a client, but one thing I wanted to talk about was this is the first time I actually really held such a premium-feel phone (in a non-shopping experience). Strange that I didn't want to have anything to do with it back when I did that iPad thing at the mall, but this was the first time that I actually liked what I was holding. I gotta say that phone has a really nice feel to it, it's too bad the rest of the phone didn't like me, to the software, which I absolutely hated due to the inability to actually dig deep into the specs out of the box, to the capacitive screen, which is not really a gripe with the iPhone, but rather all capacitive phones out there, as these screens do not like me at all. I don't know why, I had theorized that the times I was electrocuted prior to using a capacitive screen for the first time might be the culprit. Other than that, I have no idea... sucks too, I've given up on my iPhone 3G, and the HTC HD2. I've not pursued a capacitive screen since (it's really bad, what takes a person one tap, takes me 3-4. Imagine the typing horrors)

I don't fullscreen much, but OniAi is one series this season that I just have to :D

Fun times, tough times. I almost had a second headache the week following my first meltdown. Heck, can you believe someone hijacked my thread at XDA posting a site with warez while claiming the work of another was their own? Strange world we live in....

Nintendo DS Lite joystick mod

Maybe I'll go and claim that world's first DS Lite joystick mod, but... I think I just did. Anyways, What we have here is a mod I worked on for the same amount of time I did for my 4 speaker DS mod, and just like that as well this one is perfected. Best of all: the joystick is removable, for hot swappable lid closing portability! More on this mod here.

Q: Ok, million dollar question here. How do you do this mod?
A: If I answer, I get a million? Or are you charging me a million to answer that? I know the economy is tough these days, but gee... Well, I'll try to do this step by step.
What we'll need:
-A DS Lite. I don't have a DSi so I wouldn't suggest that right now.
-A joystick addon from the Pelican GBA SP Starter pack. I'm not sure of anything similar to this...
-A tri-screwdriver. Or is it called Tri-wing screwdriver? You know, the special kind that can unscrew Nintendo stuff. Believe it or not, I modified a flat tip to fit in 2 of the 3 slots of the Nintendo Screw, that when effort is used to turn the screw, it will turn as well as long as the flat tip of your screw driver fits well enough in the 2 of 3 slots of the screw.
-A small screwdriver. Philips or flat or cross shaped is fine, as long as it's a small kind.
-A guide to actually know how to open the DS lite. Searching online "DS lite disassembly guide" brought some nice results, try it out and see which one serves you best.
-Another DS to transfer any WiFi or other setting you may not want to lose. Removing the battery for an extended period of time will *synthesizes Sidious voice* wipe out your data. All of them.
-A soda can, or strong plastic. Or, if you have something comparable that is tough yet easy to cut/carve/slice and dice.
-One really strong, tough super glue. Or something to attach metal onto plastic, like a soldering kit maybe.
-Something similar to the width of the screw that is holding the Pelican Joystick together to it's base. I carved ABS plastic from a Gundam Model Kit parts tree and shoved it up the joystick's hole, eventually that failed so I took a small metal rod from an old bluetooth headset I had in a tech graveyard. Sounds cruel, but it's to ensure that the joystick will not fall out during gameplay and to also be able to remove the joystick when we want to close our DS (put it on standby).
-An exacto knife. Or a clone of one, as long as it's sharp and as long as it has cut you before a few times earlier in your life >_>

Some notes when fondling the innards of your DS Lite:
-Be careful of the L and R buttons. If you just aimlessly pull them out, the metal rod holding them might slip free and the spring might fly off into space.
-I start to split open the DS by starting at the D-pad side of the DS, seperate the bottom from the top starting there and it's all a matter of gazing at the circuit board underneath.


1. As you read earlier, I used the joystick addon for the GBA SP that came in the Pelican GBA SP starter kit. It looks a little something like this below: (note: It's not a GBA game case. At least when you buy it, it holds the 5 or 6 different joystick addons which unfortunately I can't show here as of now due to unforeseen circumstances [read: stowed away somewhere I don't remember where]. I ripped out the styrofoam inside and found out my GBA games can fit in there, 4 in all. Talk about Pelican pulling a fast one on us...)

Nice end to the Battle Network series, that Gregar/Falzer one...

2. When you remove the joystick+A+B button addon from the clear plastic case, turn it over (upside down) and you'll see a screw underneath the joystick. Unscrew that and you'll have two pieces, the stick and the D-pad'ish thing as seen in the first picture of this blog post. A spring will be there as well, but it's big, springless and worthless in my opinion. Remember that we will now be treating this joystick as two parts now, 1) the stick part, and 2) the cross shaped D-pad.

The joystick and the d-pad

3. The part where you'll need to have patient hands and also the part where you'll read my disclaimer: Warning. Opening your DS will void your warranty. Maybe. I didn't see that classic "removing this seal will void your warranty" sticker anywhere... But yeah, I'm not responsible for anything that may happen to you or your DS lite, ie sudden loss of battery life after applying joystick mod, an accidentally cut wire, sleepless nights from extended play, etc. Do this mod at your own discretion and at your own budget and at your own free will and in a sane and reasonable manner. Pelican is also not responsible for the mutilation you will be doing to it's joystick addon. Please mod responsibly. Thank you. Proceed.

3.5 (Please consult online documentation on disassembly of the DS lite. Be sure to heed the warnings.)

4. Once you've got your DS opened, remove the only screw that is visible and hold the circuit board together with the case. with your DS slightly opened (that is, open it like your going to play), push the touchscreen inwards (towards its internals) and the circuit board ought to go along with it. Remove the rubbery substance covering the D-pad and remove the D-pad itself and grope it to your hearts content, because it may be the last time you will get to do so.

5. If you've got that soda can, or something similar with a tough easy to cut metal/plastic, cut out a round circular CD-rom disc like thing out of the soda can/metal substance. Using the DS lite D-pad you just removed, use the quarter-like shapes underneath the DS lite D-pad to compare the size to your mini disc'ish thing. Don't worry if you don't understand, it'll all come to you when you see the underside of that D-pad. Once you've carved it into the likeness of the circle beneath the D-pad (from a top view of the D-pad it looks like there's a circle underneath), grab that Pelican cross shaped D-pad and grab some glue. An example of how the mini disc should look on the cross shaped pad below:

Tubular dude...

6. Reason for us cutting that mini disc thing out of the soda can, is because the Pelican Joystick does not have this underneath the cross shaped part. So what we'll do is glue this tough, circular object onto the base of the cross shaped d-pad, and make sure your glue is a good one, because this joystick is gonna abuse it. Be sure to use the DS lite D-pad as a reference on where to apply the mini disc onto the cross shaped pad of the joystick. Or weld this thing if glue isnt your style. Not sure how welding metal onto plastic will work...

7. Once all the glue is done in let the part dry. This next part will be a bit tricky, but if you have an easier way of doing this, it would either be to not do it or glue the stick onto your d-pad permanently. Not fun for closing your DS.

8. You'll recall we unscrewed a screw from the Pelican Joystick. This screw actually helps in holding the whole joystick together so you won't experience a dead stick some time in the close future. But wait! Do we have to put this screw back in once we shove this joystick into the DS? No! That's why we'll make a makeshift "plug" that we will be inserting into the stick part to compensate for the lack of a screw. The reason for us sticking this "plug" into the stick part and not the cross shaped D-pad is so that when we want to close our DS, we simply pull the stick part and with it the plug, leaving the cross shaped D-pad in the DS lite fitting nice enough to be closed on. So, using your exacto knife or clone of it, find a little plastic pole or similar and carve it so that on side will fit tightly into the stick part, and the other side will go into the hole of the cross shaped D-pad. Rememeber not to make that side too long, as it just won't fit. Also remember that the part that goes into the cross shaped d-pad must have a rounded tip, similar to the DS lite d-pad. Or, if model kit hobbies aren't your thing, just find a metal rod that can fit in the joystick part and have a rubber tubing as shown to hold that in place (and eventually compensate for the lack of a rounded tip)

That's the metal piece in place.

9. Once that plug is in the stick part, try connecting the stick part to the cross shaped D-pad. If the "plug" is sticking out through the hole in the cross shaped D-pad, you are good to go! As long as your super gluey thing applied to the cross shaped D-pad part was the fast drying type. Make sure that it is sticking out from beneath the cross shaped d-pad, and easier way to tell is compare your new joystick with the old DS lite d-pad.

10. Make sure that you only insert the cross shaped D-pad by itself onto the DS lite, not with the stick part as well, since it's easier to re-assemble the DS when the lid is closed.

11. So, re-assemble your DS. Remember to be careful and to consult the online documentation for disassembly (I'm sure they include re-assembly too...)

12. Once the screws are back on, battery in place and battery cover not lost as easily as the old first production model GBA battery cover, stick your stick part onto the cross shaped D-pad and oogle at your new joystick-on-a-DS mod! Except when we turn on the DS we need to re-configure it...

13. Once your DS has been reconfigured, shove a game into the Slot-1 and enjoy some joysticky action! (Shove the game in when the system is off, obviously >_>)

14. This tutorial was done in less that 15 steps!

15. Oh no! we've reached the 15th step. I forgot to add "Show this off to friends and co-workers and brag about how cool it is and how easy it is to play with".

16. Ok, no more steps. We're really done!

Enjoy and hope you didn't mind my very walls of texty explanation on making your own joystick mod for the DS Lite. This mod definitely stands among my other successful usable mods, which was a HP iPAQ hx2415 Gaming D-pad adjustment (it's a business PDA mind you, the default D-Pad sucked for gaming), and a Palm Tungsten E2 Battery transplanted to an even older HP iPAQ rz1715, which granted the iPAQ more juice (long since retired though).

If this post looks odd with a lot less pictures than you thought there'd be, that's because I didn't put much effort into this post due to tiredness. I thought I'd get this out of the way so +1 for nothing else to do when your dead tired.

More on the DS Lite Joystick mod

I may have started the new year blog posts in an odd way with my DS 4 speaker mod, but being healthy yet again makes me invigorated to make proper posts like this one.

What we have here is something that's been on my mind for awhile now, as we all know how thin the Nintendo DS lite is when it is opened, I'll say the base is about as thick as two Compact Flash cards stacked on top of each other. That makes holding the DS Lite a bit tiring playing for longer than 20 minutes.

So the solution to my DS gripless problem was this odd joystick that came in a Pelican GBA SP starter pack I got a few clicks back er few years back. What was odd that when attached to the GBA SP, it's a rather tight fit and a few skipped hearbeats removing it from it's crabby grasp on the GBA SP. And you can't close the GBA SP with this thing on, so the idea of it being hard to remove wasn't a really good one there.

With my GBA SP nothing but a museum piece now, I do all my gaming on the DS and GBA games go on there without a second thought. That's when I said good riddance to the Pelican joystick and shoved that onto my DS, which we have the outcome below:

That looks like a N64 joystick would fit there...

As you can see from the pictures it fits perfectly where the original DS lite D-pad used to be. It's slightly smaller than the original DS lite D-pad, but it's the joystick on top of that that matters most.

Let's do this in an interview style:

Q: So what is the purpose of having this joystick on there?
A: Well, think about a D-Pad. You press on it, right? D-pad's aren't like the analog stick on the PSP where you slide that thing around, d-pad's are digital where you press up, down, left and right. Of course some old d-pads weren't capable of the 8 way style of today, but the mod I did brings a little taste of a joystick in the form of how it works. D-pads are pressable, right? With my mod, you just tilt the stick, or in some cases push it. NO pressing. No sweaty thumb slipping off costing you that extra point online on Nintendo WiFi.

Q: Has your gaming improved?
A: Yes it has. I get effortless kills on Metroid Prime Hunters using Kanden's Volt gun from a distance from one end of Combat Hall to the other end shooting at Elite class CPU bots (multi-card play option) while juking left and right avoiding their shots. Try rapidly tapping the L Button like that while moving left and right rapidly with the d-pad, it was hella tiring, with two fingers burning out faster than with one only.

Q: So now the index finger on your left hand hurts more?
A: Yes. Being able to transfer the D-pad strength to the index finger using the joystick, that means more presses for the L button. And more pain in the joints.

Q: So why is it on your White DS Lite and not your Japanese Ice blue DS Lite?
A: Because my import is more precious than the North American one. You know how much it cost me to import that? I wasn't about to bust open a Japanese import, first production run just like that, not to mention it has a 4 year old, scratchless screen protector(from my DS Fat) that endured early abuse like Wario Ware Touched and the Feel the Rub Rabbit series of games. No, instead I opted to test this joystick on my White DS lite, because not only was it an impulse buy, it was yet another first production run that had the faulty touchscreen calibration. Early adopters might know what I'm talking about, if you have Goldeneye Rogue Agent, that game would have the top screen shaking erratically randomly. I know it's not my cartridge because if it is I'll sue EA, because, well, I hate EA for being a big company and releasing crappy games like Rogue Agent. Note I did check reviews online before buying, it's just that DS releases were slow that time of the year and waiting for Advance Wars Dual Strike wasn't fun, so off I went to the store, the wonderful store of all... By the way, I sort have fixed the touchscreen problem by adding a weird, anti glossy, slightly thick low grade screen protector. The Goldeneye shutterbug happens less, but still happens. Talk about messed up...

Q: Does the joystick come off during gameplay?
A: No, thanks to some modding I did to compensate for the lack of a screw that originally held the joystick together. A rubberized tubing for the joystick part made it more difficult to pull off.

Q: What if you want to standby in a flash?
A: Well, if you've gotta do a piss-break (honestly, who hasn't done that at least once in their online FPS gaming life?), simply put a magnet on top of the ABYX buttons. No seriously, it'll work, it has to be in the center but if you have a large magnet it'll work even when on top of the ABYX buttons. Or you can use a busted headphone speaker, similar to an example in the latter photo below (in this case, I used a speaker from an Palm E2). Face the speaker face down (face the side where sound comes out face down) and if it is the slightly magnetic type it will put the DS on standby. While it is open. Or just pull the joystick and close your DS. Your call.

Note the off screens and the standby light on.

Q: How do you close the DS? Is the joystick removable?
A: Amazingly enough, it is. As you can see in the following pictures, a special plug was made from Gundam Model Kit parts trees and shoved into where the Pelican screw used to be. In this way, if you want to close your DS and pocket it, simply pull the joystick upward and it'll pop right out. When closed, the DS lite has a slight opening as you can see in the latter images. It can still be closed shut, it just stays like that if you don't fit it into something like a jeans pocket or tight slip case.

Note the right side of the DS and compare to the left.

That is a direct frontal view, note how much the joystick part sticks out.

Q: Any pros/cons?
A: While I think you know very well what the Pros would be, the only Con I can think of is that it is a bit loud, but that could be 2 factors, 1) My White DS lite is known for that (my Ice Blue DS lite is quiet due to extended use), or 2) It could be because the joystick cross shaped D-pad is a bit smaller than the original DS lite D-pad. It's the rubber pads that are making the noise, so it could be just my DS lite. Note: ADRESSED THE NOISY JOYSTICK problem. It's as quiet as the old d-pad now. Another bad thing: I broke the power switch, which, unsurprisingly enough, is not uncommon for those with DS Lite's. But as always I fixed it, it's even better than the default none broken one.

Sure doesn't look like it used to...

Hey look, it's on!

Q: Are there other joystick parts besides that round thing with 4 arrows?
A: The Pelican GBA Starter Pack includes about 5 or 6, from what I remember it is: The one in my pictures, a ridiculously larger version of that, 1 that is similar to the analog stick on the PSP, and possibly a larger one of that, and an odd, taller version of the one in my pictures. Of course, anything that fits and is comfortable, like the one in the picture below, works. (It's this funky rubberized microphone cover I ripped out of an old telephone.)

Q: Will this work for the DS Phat (1st gen DS)?
A: No, partially because the DS Phat has the d-pad at such a thin size when viewed from the side, if you were to add anything the DS definitely will not close. That and I can't think of anything similar that is the size of the rather large DS Phat D-pad. That d-pad on there is huge, a lot fatter than you'd think...

Q: Why are you using Top Gun DS as an example, of all games?
A: Because that game has a special part in my video game buying history. Not only is the touch screen useless in the game (seriously, it's not a map), it is the only game that I bought after reading negative reviews. I checked weekly DS releases on Gamespot, saw Top Gun in the release list for that week, saw the review rating and read the review, laughing at how bad the reviewer said it to be (with a Good being the Top Gun theme playing in the menu screen). So I went out to the store, bought Top Gun DS, stuck it into my DS and what do you know, after doing the tutorial and all that, jumping into Free Play for the first time I was laughing at the "He's got a lock on me!" and that laughter instantly died down when I realized how bad the hit detection was, how the gun was pretty much as strong as rapid fire missiles, how easy it was to get shot down, and so on and so forth. Money well spent? Think about it! I own a rare piece of history! A game I knowingly knew was bad but went and bought it anyways just to have the sorry butt cartridge in my hands! XD

 Note the power switch left on the on position. No more accidental power-off's now! As if one could accidentally slide it off...

Q: How many DS's do you have?
A: 3, one grey/black DS Phat first production run, one imported Japanese Ice Blue DS lite first production run, and one North American White DS lite first production run. I must have fell in love with buying them when they were first produced, huh...

Q: So you like anime girls?
A: This is not the place to discuss that.

So, there we have it. Another successful post, another successful mod.

The world's first Nintendo DS 4 internal speaker mod?

Hey there, GameFaqs contributor einsteinecker here (I'm better known as mangatron in the anime world) So here we are, 10 months later from it's conception, (possibly) the world's first 4 Speaker Nintendo DS mod. Well, I've not the time to go through those 140,000+ search results, so for now I will lay claim to the title. It shouldn't have taken this long, but sickness, acquisition of HSDPA internet, writing FAQs for GameFaqs, and that other DS mod kept me quite busy till I eventually posted this on such a time of the year. So while I'd like to divulge on the details, I'll leave that for the full story here. On to the parts:

-A Nintendo DS Fat (grey and black first production run)
-2 Internal speakers from Palm Tungsten devices, or some DS Lite speaker parts from Dealextreme would be nice, except for the part where they are too large. Radioshack anyone?
-2 Copper wires measuring about 10 inches long in length, about half a millimeter thick
-Plastic (preferably rubber) tubing to fit the wires inside
-Triwing screwdriver (I used a flat tip optimized to fit the DS size)
-Flat tip screw driver (that's why I modified a flat tip for both triwing use and cross/horizontal screws)
-Some electric tape (personally I prefer Masking tape, with the right one it won't leave a mark in the long run)
-Super Glue. Super? Maybe there's something else called instant glue? What about Forever Glue? That might make a good name...
-Maybe a soldering gun, but I didn't use one. Simple, right?
-Rubber gloves or a static wrist-strap like for computers, that's if you work on the DS while it's on
-Hobby knives for cutting the new speaker holes.
-Speaker covers (those round black ones came from the Tungsten speakers)

Flash is used to try and show the cutouts where the new speakers are. The Palm T|X was used to lessen the flash reflection on the DS screens (darkest object I could find nearby, without it I have a ghastly picture)

Hmm, I don't know whether or not I should put instructions, I mean the pictures are plenty self explanatory, right? This isn't like deciding whether or not the voltage is correct, or replacing the wifi module, or replacing the screens. A couple of wire insertions and steady hands is all it takes... Or maybe I can put up some resources (really, I don't even know how to explain this in a DIY way, to me it's very simple, but yeah I know what's simple to me may not be simple to others, so...)

Those wires actually fit in there...

Ah heck, maybe I'll make it simple. Start by opening your DS. This site sounds like a good place to go. Start by removing the backing of the top screen, then the base of the lower screen, since we'll need the top exposed. The top of the DS, that is... ahem, I should note if you have any wifi game settings you'd might want to move it over to another DS since removing the battery for more than 15 seconds resets to factory defaults. Anyways, our first move would be to remove the mainboard down on the bottom half of the DS, and then hold the DS on it's side, mainboard facing you (like you're playing Hotel Dusk) and use your four fingers to lift the touchscreen up, in turn also lifting the mainboard from its roots.

For me, I started from the bottom working my way to the top. We'll start by cutting holes into the DS shell right where we want the speakers to go. And yes, I carved both holes while the mainboard was still in place. Simple right? Hint: start cutting on the outside. Once your foxholes have been dug, place your speakers as shown below. I secured them  with super glue.

 

 

Don't mind that Goldeneye game cart. There just wasn't any other FPS that year, that's all...

Now let's wire this place. As you can see in the pics, the rubberized tubing only went through the hinge part of the DS, my method of making this quick and simple (you know how hard it was to carve those holes?) I start by inserting the left speaker wiring through the hinge, followed by the right (take note the right wiring might need a bit longer wiring than the left speaker) Once the wiring is setup up on the bottom of the DS, place the mainboard in its spot and put the base of the DS back on. We're moving up top.

Hope the camera flash isn't too blinding...

The top screen of the DS is no laughing matter. As you can see, I severed the wire connecting the right (left) speaker to the circuit board. Of course such a thing can easily be worked around, so I'll caution you that you just might ruin your wiring. Now attach the wires to the main speakers, before I simply attached them to the main wiring itself but that didn't work in the long run. By attaching them to the main speakers themselves, opening and closing the DS won't interfere with the wiring too much. (yeah, I tried attaching them to the main wiring itself, wasn't a good result)

Note where the blue circled wires end.

So, with that done, I guess you can test it out! Except when you power on your DS for the first time, you will have to re-input all your data! Mwuahahaha!

Guess which is the 2 speaker loudness and the 4 speaker mod. Tested using a mono microphone setup though so the obvious is even less painfully obvious...

Enjoy your ear deafening 4 speaker DS mod! Next upgrade: inserting a subwoofer! Hoo-rah!

FAQs

-Q: What's the purpose of this mod?
-A: Well, as with all of my mods, it starts as a proof of concept kind of thing, then if it works, I turn it into a full fledged working mod. Those battery mods I've been doing are like that. That and connecting the DS to a computer is just... I don't know, not worth it? Because what I did before was connect my DS to my desktop computer with a 4 speaker setup, which was also connected to a surround sound system with two 3 foot tall 1980's era speakers. Now that's connecting it to the computer. But then your playing a handheld with its strings attached to a desktop computer... hence this mod.
-Q: So how loud is it?
-A: Very loud. DS players who own more than one type would know the DS Fat is louder than the DS Lite (unfortunately, I don't have a DSi to test). Surround sound enabled games like those from Nintendo (Metroid Prime Hunters, Mario Kart etc) sound even better with this 4 speaker mod.
-Q: How's the battery life?
-A: Hard to say. The battery that's in there right now is the one from purchase, and that means it's the first production run DS battery from 5 years ago! With the battery operating at less than half of it's rated capacity, I only get around 2-2/12 hours of gameplay now. So no telling how much juice is being used (although I noticed even less playing time when the volume is full blast.

Sneak preview of my other awesome mod: possibly the world's first built-in joystick mod for the DS Lite,  removable as well enabling the DS to close!

 

You have no idea how much better FPS gaming has been with this joystick mod.

Comments are open to anybody, Google members or not.

Last post was...October? lol...

Man, I guess nothing much happens in my life. Well, let's see....aside from having many health issues, soda-fied stomach, nearly broken shoulder, lack of food options, poor lighting, lack of table for laptop, I could go on about how sucking this life is, but let's look at a brighter side, ja? How about I showcase a couple of pictures my oh so happy digital camera tries to paparazzi off of me:

Handheld device hell (No, that's not the only GBA game I have. Hint: DS's are on)

The James Bond briefcase with 2 Hard Drives and a PS2 lol

Oh, including my Master Grade Wing Zero Custom (no it doesn't go in the briefcase)

Yes, I really carry that much handhelds and that briefcase is entirely for the PS2 and HD's. So where does my laptop go? Well, my brother carries it lol....well, he carried it when I came here to Germany, so, technically yeah he carries it lol. The handhelds are scattered across a DS bag, GBA steel case and a hand carry suitcase that really is running out of room.

Hmm, wonder what's good for my next post....maybe I can post what a nightmare it is to eat out. I'll probably take pics of all the boxes that were the end result of "eating outside because you damn straight can't cook in a hotel" lol.