... Provided that your problems are entirely limited to ownership of many recent handheld gaming devices, and inability to manage the large number of wall chargers required for such a collection. But if you find yourself burdened by too many wall warts, this item from Brando will change your life.

Basically, it's USB on one end (for your "USB solts"), and ... Game Boy Advance SP, DS, DS Lite, DSi, and PSP on the other. This single, compact, $7 item charges any of those handhelds through your computer's USB port (or your Wii's, for that matter).

Now for the standard disclaimer: there's a certain element of fear when dealing with a company like Brando for something like guiding electricity into your expensive devices. We've used some Dragon USB charging cable for the DS Lite for months with nothing to report but convenience, but your mileage may vary! As far as off-brand accessories go, a cable seems pretty okay, but we don't feel comfortable being the authority on that.

So we were thinking about Space Invaders Extreme, as we often do (it's so dreamy), and a few things occurred to us: first, that a lot of DS owners are really young, and second, that Space Invaders is, in video game years, not young at all. Which means that a lot of people could have picked up Extreme without ever having experienced the original.

If you'd never played Taito's epochal 1978 shmup, did Extreme make you curious enough to give it a try? Or maybe you had played it before and the new sequel just inspired you to pick it back up? Does it still hold any appeal to you?

In a Gamasutra feature interview, Brandon Sheffield asked PopCap cofounder Jason Kapalka about the possibility of his company taking their super-popular casual games to download services they have yet to serve -- which means WiiWare and DSiWare. While Kapalka indicates a strong desire to continue with DS development after Peggle: Dual Shot, he's not completely sold on the DSi's download store yet:

"So the DSi -- yeah, maybe, it's hard to say," Kapalka said, reiterating that "\We're definitely doing DS stuff." Still, prospects look a lot better for DSiWare than WiiWare: "It needs to be seen... like the Wii is cool, but WiiWare, I don't know yet; I'm not clear that WiiWare has actually turned out to be as big of a success as they were hoping at this point."

See also: Wired's impressions of Peggle: Dual Shot

We really, really liked Drawn to Life, so we view Drawn to Life: SpongeBob SquarePants Edition with both curiosity and trepidation. On the one hand, hey, more Drawn to Life! On the other hand, it's more Drawn to Life without the guiding hand of developer 5th Cell, and with a license we aren't young enough or high enough to appreciate.

If we were going to take the plunge and just buy the thing to satisfy our curiosity, today would be a pretty good day for that. Amazon has marked Drawn to Life: SpongeBob SquarePants Edition down to $17.98 for today only. And we wouldn't have to be seen in a GameStop buying a SpongeBob game. Or in a GameStop at all.

Apple users have long gloated that Nintendo's sleek new form factor with the DS looked great alongside their Apple products, but it looks like the DS can be made to fall in with other products, too. BenHeck.com forumite goteking produced this awesome Vaio-branded DS Lite by setting the logo into a replacement shell. The result looks pretty nice next to his laptop.



[Via BenHeck.com forums]

Since we like to do things in pairs, we wanted to ask the opposite of yesterday's question: what games have been just too easy? We want to know about all the puzzles you yawned through and the platformers you put aside. Or ... do you put aside easy games? If there's a difficulty setting, what do you usually choose?

Today's DS Daily discussion is reserved for only the hardest of games. In all the time you've owned a DS, what's the one game for the system that has repeatedly kicked your ass with its unpunishing difficulty?

Would your choice be a title already renowned for being tricky, such as Contra 4, or did you struggle with a game with a less fearsome reputation? Did you eventually vanquish your foe, or does it still sit in your collection, uncompleted and sneering at you? And if you did emerge victorious, how long did it take you to beat it?

Robert Pelloni, creator of the sedate-looking RPG Bob's Game, has resorted to desperate measures in order to secure his game an official release. If you've been following the story elsewhere, you know that he's in the midst of a self-imposed confinement, locked in an office until Nintendo agrees to sell him the DS software development kit.

Now, on day 21 of his protest, Pelloni has discovered a previously unknown, even deeper end off of which to go. After calling out the Nintendo executives he's spoken to, who are apparently holding back his approval as a developer, Pelloni has threatened to bundle Bob's Game with a DSi flash cart if not given the opportunity to develop it as an official DS game. He claims it would be the first "killer app" for a homebrew device, and could "significantly cut into Nintendo's bottom line."

We aren't sure if Pelloni ever catches DS Fanboy posts from within his secret fortress, since he claims to have no Internet access other than email from his phone, but if he is, we would like to suggest that he stop doing this kind of stuff, get out of the office, and either continue contacting Nintendo or just go somewhere else. We suspect that the more public he is with this stuff, the less likely Nintendo is to want anything to do with him -- especially if he's talking about flash carts.

[Via Joystiq]

"One skilled in the art of stealth -- Nintendo DS". That's the hint Amazon is offering for a Gold Box deal that will go up today at 6PM PST. We don't know the exact identity of the offer, but we can speculate!

Our guess is Ninja Gaiden Dragon Sword, which just happens to be one of the best games of 2008. What a delight it would be to get it at one of the best prices of 2008! Other ninja-related games we can think of offhand include N+ (another honoree!), Ninjatown (wow, a lot of ninja games in our top 10), Tenchu: Dark Secret (not so great), various Naruto releases, the Izunas, Ninja Reflex, and Taito's Legend of Kage 2 -- which you can get for cheap right now.

[Update: it's Ninjatown for $20!]

Preorder perk ahoy! For the February 10 launch of Legacy of Ys Books I & II, Atlus will be offering jammy U.S. and Canada-based gamers a sweet preorder bonus: a limited edition soundtrack CD, featuring tracks from both Ys I and Ys II. As far as we know, this will be available at Amazon and GameStop.

The revised translation for this DS remake had already roped us in, but now we're counting down the days hours minutes. As the press release we received notes, the Ys series is renowned for having wonderful music. If you're new to the series, you can head to this part of Atlus' website to listen to a few samples for yourself.

[Via press release]

Some of us were too impatient to wait for the Nintendo DSi, forking over good money to import the sexy handheld. But, with 2009 fast approaching, we're going to see a lot of great DSi content hit the market. And, for those of us in North America, we're actually going to see the DSi itself hit the market. We're sure it'll sell truckloads, there's no disputing that. There's also no disputing that 2009 will be the year of the Nintendo DSi.

Agree? What are you looking forward to? Can't wait to pick one up?

Much like Christmas Eve and Christmas day last week, we'll be taking it easy as the flow of news slows down to a trickle these next two days. So, expect us to update with a more relaxed posting regimen. We advise you do the same and, if you're of age, taking it easy on the boozing tonight. Just think of that impending hangover.

Thanks for reading and here's to another year of blogging it up for you all!

We like Renegade Kid. As the name behind Dementium (flawed, but still fun and hella scary) and the extremely promising Moon, the studio is shaping up to be one of the success stories of this generation.

And now they're coming back with a brand new game for the DS! Or the Wii! We don't really know, because if Renegade Kid's Jools Watsham tells us anything about this new project, somebody will probably have to kill him, or something. All he'll reveal is that the project is "the game I'm most excited about ever in my career." Wow. For what it's worth, we snooped around on Renegade Kid's job postings page like the ace sleuths that we are, and found them looking for a DS level designer.

Those minor, minor clues aside, it's a mystery for now, but going on past form, there's a chance some very cool 3D technology will be involved.

Time to face some harsh facts, people: this time next year, none of us will have two pennies to rub together, and nobody will care anyway, because we'll all be fighting to the bloody death over scrap metal, rat carcasses, and clean drinking water. The good news? You can slow your inevitable descent into abject poverty by no longer paying for your DS games, and instead download totally free homebrew. Hurray!

Not that you shouldn't be selective in what you download -- after all, for every StillAliveDS or Pocket Physics, the homebrew community churns out plenty of garbage. With this in mind, we decided to compile a list of the best homebrew we personally encountered this year. Have any recommendations that we missed? Tell us in the comments! And don't forget we dedicated a whole week to homebrew earlier this year -- you can head here for more recommendations!

NeoGAFfer duckroll spotted a mysterious, and potentially interesting, new DS game listing on Amazon.co.jp: Umihara Kawase Shun Second Edition: Complete Version, due out March 26. In case the name doesn't ring any bells, Umihara Kawase was a Super Famicom platformer similar to Bionic Commando, but with a young girl in the place of the beefy military dude, and a heavier emphasis on self-contained, small levels, technical grappling, and ... fish. We adore the game.

Unfortunately, if this is true, we're unlikely to adore the result. Umihara Kawase was recently released in Japan on the PSP (a US release is planned as well), and it's a mess. Basically, the rope doesn't work right at all, failing to hook when it's supposed to, swing the way it's supposed to, or let go when it's supposed to. And if the PSP port (of the PlayStation version of the Super Famicom game) was so lazily and poorly made, what chance does the DS version have? Not to mention that the DS release is in extra danger of touch screen controls.

[Via NeoGAF]