Nintendo DS to star in Stormbreaker movie

Nintendo can celebrate another success in its continuing mission to expand the appeal of portable gaming, as it appears that teenage secret agents have now joined the ranks of elderly brain trainers and female Nintendogs lovers in falling for the charms of the Nintendo DS.

Either that or there's been a huge product placement deal to get the handheld into upcoming teen spy thriller Stormbreaker.

The film, based around Anthony Horowitz's popular Alex Rider series of books (which have sold more than ten million copies worldwide!) sees the 14-year-old add a Hot Rod Red Nintendo DS to his haul of spy tech. In the film the gaming gadget is transformed by the addition of special game cards into an eavesdropping device, wiretap detector and smoke bomb.

Described by movie producer Peter Samuelson as "the perfect way to get secret tools into the hands of a 14-year old spy", the promotion should certainly help sales of the old-fashioned chunky DS. (Typical British military – technology out-of-date even when it first comes out.)

The appearance is equally certain to prompt countless forum posts about top-secret DS peripherals that only 'my brother who's in the SAS' knows about, despite Nintendo senior VP of marketing George Harrison's admission that "we unfortunately have no plans to make any DS spy-related functions available to the general public".

Needless to say, we'll do our damnedest to leak any future information we receive on weapons grade pocket gaming gear as soon as we get it.

In the meantime, however, you can see both Nintendo DS and Alex in action (along with Alicia Silverstone, Ewan McGregor, Bill Nighy and Robbie Coltrane) when the film opens on July 21st, or take a more hands-on role in the DS or GBA game of the film, due to be released from THQ around the same time.

Alternatively, why not head over to our review of the freshly-released 'standard issue' DS Lite and see if you can crack the secret code*.