– 13 different background themes to listen to whilst you read (14 if you include ‘No BGM’!), e.g. Easy Listening, Beach, Airport and Summer Day.
– Change font size from small to large (small is probably more like a ‘medium’ – no strain on the eyes)
– Can choose to just show the current page number, or show page number and total pages (for those that want to know how long is left)
– Use either the D-Pad or L/R buttons to change pages (remember the DS is held sideways, like in Brain Training and Hotel Dusk to emulate a real book!)
– The DS orientation can be changed to suit left-handed people
– Local Wireless: Send a trial version to another DS (‘Send Trial’, ‘Send Book’, ‘Receive Book’)
– Wi-Fi: Download New Books (ten available right now – seems like there’s about 1MB of free space on the cartridge and the books are less than 100KB – took about six seconds to download a 70KB book and a further five to save it to the DS card), and Update Rankings (book popularity – ranked by users of the game or categorised by ten different user-attributed criteria, such as ‘Exciting’, ‘Shocking’, ‘Profound’ and ‘Bizarre’)
– Tutorial: tap either edge of the touch screen to change page or slide stylus across screen to flip pages back and forth. Tap the bottom of the screen to bring up a scroll bar that lets you jump to whatever page you want. Tap the top of the screen to bring up a menu that lets you bookmark the current page (automatically removed when you go back in and change the page) or exit the book.
– Books that have been read will be highlighted with an ‘R’ on its spine in the selection screen.
– Quiz feature: The in-game owl asks several questions (‘What did you dream last night’, ‘What is your favourite colour’, etc) to determine what books will most likely be interest to the user (for me the three were ‘Tales of Mystery and Imagination’, ‘The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes’ and ‘The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes’!)
– Choosing books is as simple as going to the in-game bookshelf and using either the stylus (slower) or scroll bar at the bottom (faster) to browse what’s on offer. When a book spine is tapped on, its specific menu pops up, where users can read the book, learn more about it or learn about its author.
– Search and sort functions also exist by tapping the top of the screen in the bookshelf mode. Search Alphabetically, By Length, Genre, Era, My History, Ratings and/or Description. Sort by Author or Title.
