Speaking of the camera, let's talk a bit about the photo functions of the DSi. The camera comes with ten virtual "lenses" that can be used on your photos before or after they are taken. Distortion allows you to use the stylus to warp images. Graffiti lets you doodle or add word balloons of pictures. The Color lens will let you pick a color in your image and turn the rest of the image black and white while retaining the color you chose. Think Sin City. Color Pad will take a color of your choosing and swap it for another color and the Mirror lens splits the image in half and mirrors it on the other side. Mischief utilizes a feature recognition technology to add little cartoony mustaches and glasses. The feature recognition comes into play again with the Emoter lens which will change the look on a face from regular to happy or sad. The Morph lens lets you take two pictures (preferably of faces) and morph them together and the Resemblance lens will show you the similarities between two images. And finally, the Frame lens allows you to take a photo, erase part of it with the stylus creating a frame. You can then take another photo and fill in the empty area. This can be done repeatedly, giving the look of those things at the boardwalk where you put your face through a hole and get your picture taken with the body of a muscle guy or a girl in a bikini.

The music aspect of the DSi is as varied as the camera aspect. Not only can it play back your favorite AAC and M4I tunes (stored on the SD card), it's also equipped with a mini sound studio of sorts. Up to eighteen clips of ten seconds each can be recorded onto the DSi (more on the SD card of course) and then manipulated for pitch and speed separately. The speed and pitch changes can also be applied to your music as well as a few other filters like being able to remove the vocals. There is also a visualizer that uses kooky 8-bit graphics including a little motorcycle rider and even an old school looking Mario level. Music can be listened to while watching the visualizer or the lid can be closed and the DSi slipped in your pocket for music on the go.

The DSi is certainly a step up from the DS Lite and doubtless many folks will want to make the upgrade. All the new features are definitely worth the somewhat higher price tag and as long as you don't have a large GBA collection that you love to play then the DSi is going to meet all of your portable Nintendo gaming needs, and then some. The DSi officially launches in North America on April 5 and will retail for $169. My name is Fruit Brute and I approve of this new hardware.