Nintendo Adds Downloadable Games to Play-Yan Media Player

Nintendo's Play Yan (or Play Chan, depending on the translation) media player, which allows users to play MP3 music files and MPEG4 movies on the GBA and Nintendo DS, has launched this week in Japan, revealing a previously unheralded feature of the hardware, the ability to download and play exclusive games on the Play-Yan. The 'Garage Games' service (unrelated to the U.S. independent game publisher of a similar name) is already available via the Play Yan website, and allows users to download Insect, the first of thirteen promised exclusive titles, with one new game going online every Friday. (The thirteenth will only be available via the Club Nintendo website.) Once downloaded on a PC, these files can be copied to a Panasonic SD card, which can then be used with the Play Yan hardware. Insect, at least, is only played in a small area of the whole GBA/DS screen, and takes up just 630KB of space. The next 'Garage Games' title is reportedly a baseball-related game. Nintendo has yet to comment directly on whether either the Play Yan media player or the Garage Games service will be available outside of Japan, with any announcement unlikely to occur before E3 in May.