In a bid to destroy the myth that all video gamers are basement-dwelling mouth-breathers who have no interest in mundane things like reading, Nintendo - in partnership with Harper-Collins, have announced that they are releasing a card full of 100 Classic Books for the DS. The idea is to use the Nintendo DS as an e-book reader, somewhat akin to Amazon's Kindle device, or Sony's Reader.

As sales for the Kindle have been insanely high, and the cost for Nintendo's DS is significantly lower than either reader - not to mention you can generally find them in stock as opposed to the Kindle - this looks to be an interesting move. This first grouping of books counts Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle among the featured authors.

For those curious, here's a complete listing of all the books that are in the 100 Classic Books collection:


Aside from the price point being better for a DS versus the two ebook readers, there's also the bonus that when you tire of reading, you can just pop in a game and away you go; Shakespeare to Super Mario in a matter of seconds! Not to mention, the DS just feels more like a wee tiny book in your hands versus the Kindle or the Sony Reader. However, along with the awesome of being able to read and game on the same hand-held, there are some negatives I can think of in this extremely ambitious project.

First, the DS screen is backlit, which means you're likely to have a nasty case of eyestrain a great deal faster than you would with one of the ebook readers. Both the Kindle and the Sony Reader have been designed with non-backlit screens meant to mimic paper. Secondly, you're looking at a book on the two very tiny DS screens. This means that you'll either be reading fairly small text, or there will be very little on the screen to read. For those who like to speed read, I can see that becoming really annoying as you may feel like there's just not enough on the screen to make it truly enjoyable.

Still, at a suggested £20 retail for 100 books, it's a good deal as well as being an ambitious project. For right now, the 100 Classic Books compilation is set to release in Britain on December 26th with no currently announced timetable for release to other countries. If it takes off, who knows? Perhaps we'll see some books make it to the DS that were actually written in this century.