Kotaku
My son, typically a relatively mild-mannered child, snapped his DS Lite in half over the weekend in what I can only imagine was an apoplectic fit of rage while playing Space Invaders on the handheld.
I didn't know about this until the next day when he started looking for his "missing" DS Lite. When I joined in the hunt he quickly fled the house.
I found the mangled white (and engraved) DS Lite laying like a bird with its neck snapped, under his pillow in a tangled confusion of carrying case, wires and screens.
I was not happy.
After settling down I sat him down and delivered a speech of near apocalyptic doom on the vices of losing control of your anger and the value of a DS Lite and all of the entertainment starved children in Australia who would kill for the handheld.
When he asked to have his DS Phat back, I said "No. This," dangling the snapped DS Lite in front of his eyes, "is your DS now."
He was not pleased.
I did manage to jimmy the thing back together. He apparently pushed back the screen so hard that the left hinge, already cracked from, apparently my breath or perhaps looking at it too hard, gave way and the right hinge bent up until it released the top screen. The end result is that, though the thing is back together again, the right trigger is sort of jammed.
Surprisingly, or maybe this shouldn't be, the thing still works despite my son's best attempts at destroying it. The DS Lite might have hinge crack issued, but it's still one sturdy entertainment beast.
I broke the news to a Nintendo contact today and then begged to have him send over a surly teen in a Mario outfit to scare my son straight.
"Have him bring a wrench," I requested.
They declined, instead suggested scaring him with a guy in a PSP outfit, but none of the costume shops we contacted supported the proprietary UMD format.
Whoops, forgot to include my name. Oh, and Tristan is 5. Yes, Space Invaders, he takes after his dad.
Check out pics of the DS Lite here.
