Declaration: It is 2008, and Nintendo have made and sold approximately 37 trillion* DS portable gaming devices.

Let's think about the ramifications of that.

The sheer size of the DS install base means that some strange things can happen down in the trenches. Smaller third-party software companies look at that number (which is extremely large), maybe they do some sums, possibly they also notice the peculiar hardware features of the DS. And then software designers go slightly mad. Hence: cooking games you shout at for new instructions! Mind control! Things that are not RPGs or platformers! And in my warm grip, the Korg DS-10, which [spoiler warning] does not really sound like a vintage Korg analog synthesiser but is something very interesting and unique regardless.

The Korg DS-10 is a widget for making music with. It has a four-part drum machine, two separate two-oscillator mono-synths, and a pattern sequencer – in plain English, that's enough for simple electro, house or trance, and all sorts of other things if you're clever with it. Presently there is no Australian release date but it's available via import stores - my pre-ordered copy was delivered to Sydney about three days after the official release.

The minimalist box packaging extends to the in-game graphics. Pretty much everything is light grey, dark grey, or very dark grey. Korg's designers appear to really like that last colour, and they've used it all over the place. It makes for really boring screenshots but it means if you were using it in a live situation, you'd be able to get by without stage lights causing you any problems. Apart from that the layouts are clean, clear and simple to understand (if you've got experience with modular analog synths, anyway).

Wanting to see how this works for someone who's not really clued up on vintage synth gear, I waved it at Test Subject Pete, who doesn't own a DS and has no idea what a Korg is. To Korg's credit, the first thing that comes up once you get through the pretty standard game-style welcome screen is a big piano keyboard, and touching the piano keys makes sound happen straight away. Which is enough to keep Test Subject interested until he found the smallish and not-obvious-enough Play button (defaults to a 4-on-the-floor bass drum pattern), and, with a bit of prodding, the Kaoss Pad button. Which is where the fun really starts.

But first, a bit of background: you've probably been listening to lots of Korg's hardware without realising it. Their MS-2000 and Micro-Korg synths are very popular with musicians (mainly because they sound quite good and aren't very heavy, and musicians are often quite weedy and malnourished), and they also have a very popular bit of gear called a Kaoss pad. This is another portable bit of gear with a touch-sensitive panel that does all sorts of clever sound filtering and sampling, and it's plenty of fun to muck around with. The DS-10 has a number of different ways to punch music in, but the Kaoss Pad emulation is by far the most fluid. Touching anywhere on the screen plays notes that are synchronised to the beat, and you can also restrict the notes to those in a particular scale – there are plenty to choose from, so if you ever wanted to do Hawaiian progressive trance there's a menu item there for you. This also makes everybody sound like a proper musician straight away, because there's no way to actually hit a wrong note.

After a few minutes, I noticed probably the single most important thing about the DS-10: the Test Subject was completely hypnotized by that damn Kaoss Pad. But as a non-participant I was going completely mad. **This is not a good cartridge to have in your DS if there are people around who can hear you**. They will soon try to harm you, or your valuable DS. You won't notice them preparing to do this, because you'll be tapping away on the Kaoss pad creating the future of Hawaiian crunk.
Eventually I got it back, anyway.


There's an awful lot in there once you get past the basic controls for making noise. The synth engines are pretty powerful and you can make some cool noise by tweaking most of the knobs. There are no samples though, so no piano sounds or symphony orchestras or funk breakbeats – everything here is an emulation of state of the art circa-1976. What's there sounds great, though.

The DS-10 lets you build up short loops of sound. There are different editors for these loops for each of the two synths, and a simple but very powerful drum editor. There's also a song editor that lets you string those loops together to make a full song. The song editor is a bit dumb though – going into song mode makes playback stop (with a warning), and doing pretty much anything takes the DS-10 back out of song mode again, which makes the program just loop what you're working on. There's no warning on this and it's a bit confusing. It also means you can only Kaoss jam over a tiny loop that only lasts a couple of seconds, which isn't great.

There are lots of save slots for storing masterpieces and you can link up lots and lots of DSs to make ever more noise. Apparently, anyway. I only know this because I've seen a very impressive Youtube video of it happening. I'm sure it works very well. The manual is completely Japanese and without a second DS-10 cartridge I couldn't test out the feature myself. This isn't really a problem for the rest of the program - the UI is completely English.

In terms of sound quality, this thing probably pushes the DS to its limit. No one would ever mistake it for a real vintage synth, but the filters and synth engine (which can be tweaked like crazy if you know what you're doing) feel nice and fluid, there's a nice aggressive quality to the sound and the two demo songs are particularly good. But it's not perfect – the longest loops you can make are a little short to do anything really tricky, and there's also no way to make any use of the DS's microphone, which seems like a bit of an oversight – this would be great with the Kaoss pad emulation. And the song editor really does feel like it was stuck on at the last minute.

If you've ever played with FruityLoops (or anything of that ilk) on a PC, you'll be fine with this – it's simple, powerful, and addictive. Even if you're new to music making, there isn't much to be frightened of here - there are strategy games that are much trickier than the DS-10. And it's mesmerising: I've missed my stop on every bus trip I've taken since I've started playing with it. That hasn't happened since my debilitating Metroid Pinball addiction of '07. But we try not to talk about that anymore.

+ sounds great
+ easy interface with a lot of depth for experts
+ causes time to melt

- might not be for everyone
- song editor might cause frustration
- people around you will lose their minds (not in a good way)

*This number is completely made-up