This cool little card will allow you to view films, listen to music and play games on your Nintendo DS/DS lite turning it into a true multi media device. Costing just a little more than a standard DS game you can have a variety of media at hand for you or your kids.

Sounds too good to be true, well its not, this specially designed card allows you to use mp3’s, movies (in a certain format .dpg), images, read ebooks and games (referred to as home brew games) on your Nintendo DS lite. OK so the process may not be for the faint hearted but I did managed to conquer the somewhat complex setup, conversions and hiccups and have been able to leave countless gadgets behind, replacing them with a DS all-rounder.

So let’s start with the easiest process. Getting music, ebooks and images on to the card is as simple as dragging a dropping the files on to a microSD card (sold separately) via the supplied adapter. Games aren’t that much more difficult, again using drag and drop method to install them on the mircoSD. The limitation here is that the games available are from what is referred to as the ‘homebrew’ market. These games are not subject to copyright issues but don’t have the finesse of ‘mario kart’ and the like. However I loved them and of course you can always just insert your normal games as required.

The final part of the package is the viewing of films, again here you can only use non-copyright material but the conversion is not simple. I had never heard of the .dpg format but with the help of internet I found a free batch converter tool, funnily enough called ‘batch dpg converter’ and it didn’t take too long to get my media converted. Following conversion its drag and drop time again. The amount of media is only limited by the size of your microSD card (presently 16gb).

The Cyclo DS Evolution card is ‘plug and play’, you just insert the card into the DS’s game slot and you’re off. The user interface is very intuitive and you shouldn’t have any problems navigating to music, videos or games.

Over all I found this a very useful little addition for the DS. Allowing me to travel light on a number of trips and reducing the risk of damage or loss when on the move. The games were better than I expected, the music was easy to navigate and the films were watchable. The phrase ‘jack of all trade’s master of none’ springs to mind but the I wouldn’t go without it. It’s also saved me buying separate portable dvd players and music players. Finally, as the card draws very little power the 10-12 hour DS lite battery life does not deteriorate even when watching videos which is much better than many other dedicated video devices and makes it ideal for long trips.

Overall it really is a miniature wonder and hasn’t crashed or failed once I would give it 5 stars if it wasn’t for the difficulty in converting video.

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