@lanodan @dj @gray @ins0mniak @p @sun

Painting would be cool, but I've yet to run into a paintjob that will keep up with the wear and tear. Even the paints baked on the SP's wear at the various contact points, revealing the grey ABS plastic underneath.

The DS Lite's had a clear-coat that held up very very well, but people complained about the finger-prints so they went to a mat finish on the DSi.

For the money, the Original Nintendo DS could play Game Boy, Game Boy Color, GBA and DS games. Once you replaced the displays with modern ones (better backlight), you have an excellent handheld that can play a huge library of games and has great build quality.

(All the various Chineseium rom-hack handhelds are made from wet cardboard and Elmer's paste - and quickly fail to anything beyond novelty use - they make modern brand-name handhelds look like tanks in contrast).

This is why I play on original hardware, and have gotten very very good at fixing it over the years. I have 6 bins of repair parts/dead systems that I salvage from.