Wi-Fi On DS Very Soon

When Nintendo first released its much-anticipated handheld game device, the DS, last year, it excitedly promoted many things about it. The dual screens, for example. The stylus. The fact that it was released before Sony's PSP.

But one thing it didn't talk too much about was that the DS has built-in Wi-Fi capabilities, and in fact one of the basic DS games, "Pictochat," incorporates that feature so that many players can play together wirelessly when in close proximity.

But even as Nintendo was staying largely quiet about Wi-Fi on the DS, a lot of other people were thinking about it. Hackers, for example, were busy racing against each other to try to find ways to let people not only play wirelessly, but also play across the Internet.

Then a group of young geeks from Los Angeles decided to put the Wi-Fi capabilities of the DS and the PS through their paces. Among many more mundane things they tried: playing games wirelessly from car to car, or even from subway car to subway car, they also found they could play "Super Mario Brothers" while falling from the sky (people played Mario 64 DS while parachuting, DS was also the first console to reach the top of mt. Everest, although this is old news).

Nintendo has finally decided to promote the DS' Wi-Fi features. So the company has a commercial, "The Sad, Agonizing Tale of Bhuvan Ganguly," playing in movie theaters these days which, while not entirely straightforward, nonetheless is all about pushing Wi-Fi on the DS.

The commercial is available for viewing here (although it's over a week old, and ANY decent Nintendo fan should have already seen it :P).