How Tos

How to download a game from the DSi Shop

It’s a digital distribution revolution

How to download a game from the DSi Shop
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DSi

The main reason for buying a DSi is the ability to download new games from the online DSi Shop. Nintendo is promising it will be releasing new games on a weekly basis.

And the good news is the games are nice and cheap; being available in three price brackets: £1.80, £4.50 and £8.10. You can't buy them with real money, though. You have to convert your real world cash into Nintendo Points. You can check out how to do that with our How to buy Nintendo DSi Points guide.

Once you have Nintendo Points saved on your DSi, however, you can download games from the shop. And this is how you do it.


Go to the Nintendo DSi Shop icon on your DSi home screen.


Your DSi has to connect to the internet, so you need to be in range of and logged into a wi-fi network.

This is the first screen of the DSi Shop. It shows four recommended (i.e. new) titles, has Important Info (such as new game releases), and the option to Start Shopping, which is what we will pick.


The next screen has options to go into the DSiWare section, add Nintendo Points to our DSi, check out the Shopping Guide or go back to the main menu. Let's choose DSiWare.

The top screen here tells us we have 3500 Nintendo Points to spend. The bottom breaks down the available games into price categories, or we can search by title. We're going to buy a 200 Nintendo Points DSiWare game.


In this category there are only two games; Paper Plane and Pyoro. Let's choose Paper Plane.


The top screen has some information about the game, while the bottom display has the option to download or check Age Rating Information.


As we’re in the UK, the age rating information explains about the European PEGI system. We can scroll down to see what the rating of Paper Plane is. You can also use the DSi's parental control to block certain age rated games.


We're going to download Paper Plane.

The top screen tells us how about our Nintendo Points total, while the bottom display tells us about the number of blocks (how much memory) Paper Plane requires. Obviously we need to have enough points and blocks available, or we won't be able to download the game.


This is the cute download screen that shows characters like Mario, Luigi and Prince Peach throwing balls of water into a box to demonstration how quickly the game is downloading. On the top screen, we're also told how many Nintendo Points and save blocks we'll have left after the download is complete.

When the box is full of water, it's wrapped up with a pretty bow on top. Awww.

From this stage, we want to go back to the main DSi Menu to install the game.

We can now see the wrapped box, with its bow, in the main menu screen. Tap on it to open it.


Now tap again to install Paper Plane.

And that's it. The game is ready to play.

Don't miss our How To guides for DS, as well as our growing How To DSi guides section.

Jon Jordan
Jon Jordan
A Pocket Gamer co-founder, Jon can turn his hand to anything except hand turning. He is editor-at-large at PG.biz which means he can arrive anywhere in the world, acting like a slightly confused uncle looking for the way out. He likes letters, cameras, imaginary numbers and legumes.