Welcome to DS on DS. This is where I'm going to be taking a look at the Nintendo DS and all of it's games. And when I say all, I mean it. I will be going from WarioWare Touched! to Petz Catz Clan. From Planet Puzzle League to Grey's Anatomy.  Every Friday, I will write a review on the game I have chosen for the week.

This week I am going to be taking a look at the DSi Zoom Case.

At this year's E3, Nyko announced some new, and rather interesting, accessories.  The most talked about of these was the Zoom Case announced for the DSi.  The main reason for this was because of the impracticality of it.  I mean, who really needs a case that has a detachable 8X zoom lens on something with the same resolution of a webcam?  Well, it turns out that I needed one, if for no other reason than to say that I had one.  And now that I have one, we have the first DS on DS for an accessory.

As you can see, it does what it advertises.  It does indeed zoom.  The above image was actually the very first one I took with the lens attached, and it surprised me.  I was definitely not the result I was expecting to get.  You will notice that I only have four pictures here, and the main reason for that is that I was taking pictures while I was just standing around holding my DSi.  Well, with the zoom, if the system isn't stationary, the pictures turn out blurry.  Having the lens attached also weighed down the top half of the system a bit, but if you have it sitting on something, and the top half of the system is straight up, it didn't make it flop down at all.  The lens does have a focus on it, but I found that turning it at all caused the image to warp.

Something that I have not included in these pictures would be the color lens covers.  You get a red, blue, and green cover.  These didn't seem to really add anything to the pictures that I was taking, and given the different editing tools that are built in to the DSi, they really seemed extra unnecessary (comparatively speaking).

As for the case itself, it isn't anything more than a thin plastic cover, that literally just slips over the DSi.  The good thing about it being thin is that it doesn't get in the way of anything.  In fact, I actually like how it fits.  The bad thing about it being thin is that it feels like it wouldn't be too had to break.  I have taken the case off of my DSi numerous times, and it hasn't broken yet, so at least that's something.  Most normal people who end up with one of these cases probably wouldn't take it off as much as I have, so I'm sure that wouldn't be an issue anyhow.  As for where the lens connects, there is a tiny little twist cap that covers the outside lens on the DSi, and you can easily remove it and add the zoom lens.  The only issue with that comes when you want to take a regular picture with that lens on the DSi, you have to remove the cap.  And it is small, so it might get lost easily.

Overall, as unnecessary as this whole thing is, it is a fun little attachment to have.  It works better than I had expected, and this was after I had already made up my mind that I needed to have one.  For $25, it is actually a pretty decent deal.  And yes, that is my son in the Spider-Man costume.  Just a normal day around my house.

If you want to read any of my past DS on DS reviews, you can find links to them all on the Official DS on DS Blog.