Friday Freebie

There is no such thing as a free lunch – an idiom that though largely untrue when it comes to portable gaming, certainly applies to the DS… Or does it?

Last week we promised that our next Friday Freebie would be a bumper DS offering, in order to help redress the imbalance caused by the freebie-rich PSP. Before we get on with it, however, it is worth mentioning that due to the DS's goodie two shoes nature, legal freebies are tough to come by. As a result, a good deal of what we have found will require you to dabble in the dark arts, i.e. homebrew, which you can learn all about here.

With that in mind, the first thing that we have is from the gutter, a well presented site dedicated to one man's array of geeky pleasures, including comics, open source software and DS homebrew games.

There is a huge selection of links out to DS homebrew games, all of which are accompanied by a very short but useful review. Anyone unsure of where to begin in what is now a saturated scene will probably find the 'don't download', 'worth a download' and 'keeper' tags very useful, while the quantity of links out to varied resources should give DS homebrew virgins an opportunity to sniff out the coders they like best.

Sandwiched between today's two naughty DS freebies is a rare online DS demo. Actually, that is stretching the truth a little; Square Enix recently announced that it is going to bring its web-based puzzle title, Yosumin, to the DS. Although the web version is in Japanese, and it doesn't come with a fancy virtual DS and stylus surrounding it, we are fairly sure that the simple mechanics of the game will remain the same when it is ported across, making it well worth a look for DS puzzle fiends.

You are presented with a grid filled with different coloured shapes jumbled inside. You must match same coloured pieces that make up the four corners of a square in order to make them disappear. Every time you make a selection disappear, you rack up more points. Earn enough points before the timer runs out and you move on to the next level.

The game is remarkably simple but requires an eagle eye to get the better of it, and an iron will to resist its addictiveness.

Lastly, we couldn't have a DS Friday Freebie special without giving another mention to what is quite possibly the best DS freebie resource we have ever come across. The Moon Books Project is a site that offers content in the spirit of intellectual betterment – something the DS has laid claim to through the popularity of titles such as Dr Kawashima's Brain Training.

Offering a collection of classic literature and films, the Moon Books Project has more than enough to keep your noggin nourished, assuming you have a homebrew flashcart (we recommend the DS-Xtreme 2GB) to run the files from.

Recent book additions to the site include Virgil's epic Greek poem Aeneid and Henry David Thoreau's Walden.

In the film's department, the site has recently added the crime drama Five Minutes to Live, featuring Johnny Cash, and the comedy western, They Call Me Trinity, amongst others.

The best thing about the Moon Books Project is that even though using a flashcart on your DS is something that Nintendo would tut and shake its head disapprovingly at, the content hosted on the site is in fact legal as it is all in the public domain.

So that's it, if you are a DS owner who has been feeling unloved every Friday for the last few weeks round Pocket Gamer way, we hope this little collection is proof that we hadn't forgotten about you.

Always be sure to have a browse through our freebie archive to catch anything you might have missed and check back next week for another themed Friday Freebie. Click 'Track It!' to be sure not to miss it.