DS Book Collection on Boxing Day

By Oli Welsh Published 1 December, 2008

Dickens, Shakespeare, Austen, Trollope.

Nintendo is finally realising its long-held literary aspirations with the announcement of 100 Classic Book Collection for DS.

The software, released on Boxing Day for GBP 19.99 in collaboration with publisher Harper Collins, features 100 classic (i.e. out of copyright) plays and novels compiled on a single cart.

According to Nintendo Europe's site, you read holding the DS like a book, and flicking through the pages with the stylus. There are search and bookmark functions - and additional works available to download via Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection.

Amazon has the full list of books included. You get 21 Shakespeare plays, 13 Dickens novels, and all the canonical corset-busting classics you'd expect from Jane Austen, Charlott Bronte, Thomas Hardy, Herman Melville and the like.

The collection has a lighter side too, though, with a couple of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes mysteries, some high adventure from Alexandre Dumas, Jules Verne and Robert Louis Stevenson, wit from Wilde, Swift and Twain, an Edgar Allen Poe collection, and even a bit of racy old D. H. Lawrence for bored housewives everywhere.

"This product does not require age classification, but some texts include expressions, themes or elements that may be considered inappropriate for young children," says Nintendo. No kidding.

Picture of Oli.

About Oli Welsh

Oli is Eurogamer's acting deputy editor and reviews editor and likes to take things one word at a time. He is among the best dressed people in South London.

Read more articles from Oli by visiting the Oli Welsh archive page.

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Comments (16) Latest comment 9 months ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Pastici #1 3 years ago

    Doesn't sound half bad!

  • Canyarion #2 3 years ago

    Great idea.

    I love how they only have books that are 100 years or older. So no more copy-right. ;) If you want you can also download those books.

    Do you think it reads better if you turn off the frontlight of the DS screen? I thought the light might hurt your eyes like a monitor does, but maybe frontlight doesn't have tha problem.

  • DFawkes #3 3 years ago

    I was going to make a sarcastic comment about just buying a book, but buying all those books would be pricey. Would certainly last me a while, even if I only read the 5-6 I would actually want to read.

  • kangarootoo #4 3 years ago

    Can it read basic text files of the user's choosing? There is only mention of downloading extra content afaics.

  • DoctorZoidberg #5 3 years ago

    Extra content would be great, think how much space you could save from carrying books around (if you so choose).

    This could actually work out really well for nintendo. Could link it into educational practices etc etc.

  • Greebo #6 3 years ago


    I've been using DSLibris on an R4 cart as my ebook reader and it works really well!

    You can download loads of free books and easily drop them into it (eg Guttenberg Project). Good control over font (and text size) and brightness.

    Finally, you can also invert the colours so at night I have white text, black background and vice versa during the day!


  • ayrtonsenna #7 3 years ago

    A nice distraction for their programmers - perhaps they could write some games now??

  • chrisjm #8 3 years ago

    doesnt sound half good either

    these books should just be displayed nicely from an SD card on the DSi as you can download them all free legally and a cart to fit them onto is costing pennies.

  • Domovoi #9 3 years ago

    Great idea. Love the list of titles, too. I'll wait until a couple of reviews pop up though.. from those screenshots, they're breaking off some words in a really odd way. "Herse-lf"? That's just annoying to read. If they allow you to customize this, it could turn out pretty great.

  • the_dudefather #10 3 years ago

    @Canyarion
    'I love how they only have books that are 100 years or older. So no more copy-right. ;)'

    works for Wii music

  • Markusdragon #11 3 years ago

    Lovely idea, but much cheaper to just download them off of Project Gutenburg.

  • moggsy #12 3 years ago

    £20 for a load of copyright free books and you won't even be able to add any other books to it? Pretty pointless imo - I seem to be in the minority though.

  • clockworkzombie #13 3 years ago

    I like the sound of this. The only problem with these out of copyright items is the language. Some of the books will be obtuse for sure.

  • HolyJebus #14 3 years ago

    can't believe they didn't get this out for Christmas. Seems like perfect present material.

  • otto #15 3 years ago

    "The collection has a lighter side too, though, with a couple of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes mysteries, some high adventure from Alexandre Dumas, Jules Verne and Robert Louis Stevenson, wit from Wilde, Swift and Twain, an Edgar Allen Poe collection, and even a bit of racy old D. H. Lawrence for bored housewives everywhere."

    OK Oli now I know you're not setting yourself up as F. R. Leavis but, really... come on. Lawrence is not some kind of fluffy lightweight gusset-busting housewife trash. Naughty. Beta gamma double minus. >:p

  • lamontnoble #16 9 months ago

    I like the idea of selling Book Collection that you can read with DS from Nintendo. It`s like having with you 100 books in your backpack and read whatever you like, whenever you like. I had a big collection of books, some of them were very old and rare, till someday I decided I must get rid of them, not because I don`t like having them, but because there are a lot of people that want to read a certain book and cannot find it anywhere. So I <a rel="follow" href="http://www.SellUsedBook s.com">sell used books</a> and maybe I will buy a Nintendo DS with some book collections, to read while I go to work.