In the latest segment of “Iwata Asks,” Nintendo president Satoru Iwata revealed that the enhanced security capabilities of the Nintendo DSi hardware will not extend to legacy software. While WPA and WPA2 support will indeed be built into the handheld’s firmware as previous reports have indicated, only DSi-specific games will take advantage of it.

Though the new browser and those programs designed exclusively for the DSi will use a high level of security [e.g. WPA], existing DS software will use existing encryption.

Coupled with the fact that the DSi is not fully region-free, this bit of news is far from uplifting. Hopefully the DSi exclusive software will be worth the premium entrance fee.

Iwata: DSi’s WPA Security Not Backwards Compatible [GameCyte]

Years in the making, the Mother 3 (Earthbound 3) fan English translation patch is nearly ready for public consumption. Team member Mato recently announced on the project’s official blog that the long-awaited patch will be out this week.

The program patchers are now nearly finished. There’ll be one for Macs, Windows, and Linux. We designed them to be extremely easy to use, since people had lots of trouble with the old menu patch. The Linux version was compiled under Ubuntu, I don’t know if it’ll work with other flavors or not, but if it doesn’t, you can probably compile byuu’s tsukuyomi UPS patcher to do things manually.

I’m waiting on a few last lines from demi, but lots of tedious, final stuff is being done in the meantime, like the readme, the troubleshooting/faq page, prepping the server, some other things you’ll see later. This will be the last update before the patch is out.

Provided you own Mother 3 and have dumped its contents to ROM format, you’ll be able to apply the aforementioned patch and run the modified copy using a PC-based emulator such as Virtual Boy Advance or directly on the DS or GBA using your flash cart of choice. It’s time to play the original EarthBound to celebrate!

Testing Finishes, Patch This Week [Mother 3]

Here is an off camera capture of the new Dragon Quest IX trailer showcased at this year’s Tokyo Game Show. You’ll ask yourself: “is this really on DS?” If you thought Final Fantasy IV DS pushed the handheld as far as it could go in terms of graphics, prepare to be pleasantly surprised. Level 5 has exceed expectations in every way.

DQIX is scheduled for a March 2009 release in Japan. A date for other regions has yet to be announced.

At its pre-TGS fall presser last week, Nintendo announced that it would be renaming its Wii Point to Nintendo Points later this year in Japan to coincide with the launch of the online DSi Store. Given the new universal name, you’d assume that points on a single card can be transferred between the Wii and DS stores, right? Wrong… read on to find out how this will work.

When you purchase a Nintendo Points card, you’ll only be allowed to activate it on one system. That means, once you use 500 points from a 1000 point card on your Wii, you cannot use the remaining 500 on the DS store.

Nintendo Points Are Either Wii Points Or DS Points, Not Both [Siliconera]

Nintendo has been rather coy about delving into specifics regarding the innards of its newly announced DSi handheld, but thankfully there are those outside the house of Mario who are willing to share a bit more information, like Opera CEO Jon S. von Tetzchner. In a recent interview, Tetzchner revealed that the DSi will have more RAM than the current DS Lite model.

Yes, the DSi has more RAM than the DS Lite. In addition, with integrated Opera coming with the DSi, it will use RAM more efficiently.

Makes sense, considering that a RAM expansion pack that fitted into the GBA slot was required to run Opera on the standard DS and Lite. Have to wonder if anything else has been given an upgrade, and if Nintendo will allow developers to make use of the hardware enhancements in DSi-specific software.

Operating Systems are Less Important: Opera [TechTree]

Nintendo announced its third DS hardware revision earlier last week, the slimmer, lighter, camera-equipped Nintendo DSi. It’s been making waves in the gaming community ever since. What do the folks over at Sony think? Are they at all worried that the multimedia features of the DSi will give Nintendo a stronger competitive edge against the PSP? Here is John Koller’s take, who heads up marketing at SCEA:

I can see the DSi being successful. The DS lite was obviously very successful. Will DSi do well with [the DS's] demographic? It probably will. Will it be a product that expands their user base [beyond] under 12? I’m not sure.

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With the newly announced Nintendo DSi not scheduled to hit territories outside of Japan until late 2009, a question on many minds is if the handheld will be region-free. According to a CVG report, citing a Nintendo of Europe spokesperson, the answer is no. Standard Nintendo DS format software can be played regardless of region on the device, but DSi specific software, which will be released through the DS Store and on cartrigde format in the future, is locked to a specific locale.

DSi software (software that is only compatible with DSi) is region locked, eg: European DSi software can only be played on European DSi consoles.

Certainly this is disappointing news to all would-be importers.

Nintendo: “DSi software is region locked” [CVG]

Nintendo president Reggie Fils-Aime announced today that Club Nintendo, the Star Points-based rewards system that sends out oodles of collectible Nintendo products to avid buyers of Wii and DS titles, will make its long-overdue debut in North America this Holiday season.

No word on what kind of goodies us Westerners can expect, but hopefully we’ll see items just as sweet as the retro Wii SNES controller pad that was given to members of the program last year in Japan.

If you want to pick up a Nintendo DSi anytime soon, it looks like the only option will be to import. Speaking at Nintendo of America’s press conference in San Francisco today, company president Reggie Fils-Aime said that the souped-up handheld will not be arriving stateside until “well into” 2009. Why, you ask? Over here, the DS Lite is still in great demand and Nintendo sees little reason to introduce a new piece of hardware this soon.

I’m all for importing, but the verdict is still out on if the DSi is region-free. I’d assume it will be, since the DS and DS Lite both were, but you never know, especially with the addition of an online-based store.

Liveblog: Nintendo’s U.S. Press Conference [Wired]

A widespread and fundamental complaint of the original DS and DS Lite was that the hardware did not support the widely-used WPA encryption for wireless networks. According to a report from Japanese site Impress Watch, Nintendo will (finally) resolve this issue with the DSi, which is said to fully support WPA and WPA2 encrypted networks. Additionally, the less secure WEP method of securing WiFi networks will still be supported for those with older routers.

Took them long enough!

任天堂、新型ゲーム機「ニンテンドーDSi」を発表－SDカード対応で音楽再生可能。カメラも 搭載 [Impress Watch]