R4 adaptors turn DS into a multimedia device

The gaming industry is one of the biggest growth businesses in recent years, as companies like Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft have continued to drive innovation in hardware and numerous companies have kept on creating ever more cutting edge games for fans to play. Take-up of gaming consoles and particularly handheld devices has been rapid and the quality of games on offer continues to grow exponentially. One of the first real success stories of the handheld gaming market is the Nintendo DS series of devices, a lightweight and portable gaming machine which offers numerous popular games from Nintendo’s classic Mario series through to Brain Training, the memory improvement game which proved popular with games of all ages, from kids through to middle-aged housewives. As the technology and games have evolved, so too have the accessories to go with them. One such innovation is the R4 adaptor, which allows a Nintendo DS to be converted from just a gaming device into a full multimedia device, allowing the user to watch movies and listen to music by allowing the DS device to accept an SD memory card.

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By installing an SD card on the back of an r4 adaptor and the right software, the gamer can use their device for so much more than just playing Nintendo games. It makes the DS machine effectively become an external hard drive with a screen, not unlike a video iPod for example. This means that the user can store digital photos and video footage on the DS and makes it become a fully interactive multimedia device. By expanding the size of a Nintendo DS through using a combination of R4 adaptor and SD external memory card, the storage space on the device can be expanded by up to 8 gigabytes – plenty of room to store hundreds of MP3 music files, digital photographs and a few movies too. In an age when multimedia content is important to just about every user, the ability to carry photos, music files, movies and any other digital format around with you on a gaming device is a real boon.

Slot 1 device

The race is on in the modern era to come up with the one device which people can’t do without, and the R4 adaptors and technology have made the DS series from Nintendo a compelling proposition. Many younger users like to customize their DS and DS lite devices to give it a personalized edge featuring their favourite football team or pop star, something that the DS series allows thanks to its minimalist design and clean external case. Among the other accessories which help make the DS such a great device are customizable carrying cases which look good and protect the handheld, and particularly popular is another plug-in similar to the R4, the USB Wifi connector. This extension allows the user to access the Internet from their DS device through the popular web browser Opera, meaning that the user can even benefit from downloads of music and movies.