Curses! Semi-foiled.

---

The Nintendo DS Lite appears to be the only one of my many rechargeable gadgets whose charger is NOT dual-voltage. This means a simple plug adapter won't cut it... a step-down transformer is necessary to prevent DS fryage. Step-down transformers are almost literally bricks to carry around. They suck. And for one appliance?

Some posters in online fora say that buying the European adapter from Nintendo works absolutely fine for charging a US DS Lite, but Nintendo's support website actually says you'd be better off buying a whole 'nother DS Lite game console in Europe. I can see where Nintendo might have nefarious corporate reasons for suggesting such a thing, but I'm also not confident in online gamers' having any deep understanding of how electricity works.

This is a tough decision, especially since the DS Lite isn't actually mine. But I just don't see how "live without Guitar Hero for a month" is a viable option, either, especially not after the look on LG's face when I told her we got a copy.

Now that I think of it, stupid Nintendo fucked up my baseball team, too. Grrr.

Update: Yay Fry's! I found a $7 off-brand DS wall charger which happened to be dual-voltage like all civilized gadgets are these days. I also found, just in case, a $7 USB DS charging cable. I could only test that the wall charger works here at home, so brought the USB cable as insurance. Later testing in Nördlingen showed that the wall charger did indeed work fine in Europe and failed to fry the DS. Hooray! The only drawback, utterly trivial, was that the Nintendo brand non-dual-voltage charger folds up neatly while the $7 off-brand dual-voltage charger does not. Well worth it. Hooray!

---

Comments

[bro]

FYI, we kind of carry a bunch of those at where I work, you know. The one that would probably work best for you is roughly 2" x 2" x 4", and is pretty lightweight. Just FYI and all.