Less than a week until the official launch, but Nintendo of America has already released the manual for public viewing. The full manual can be found here (Adobe pdf), but you might want to continue reading for an in-depth analysis first...

First of all, Nintendo warns of the incompatibility of the Nintendo DS. When Reggie showed the Nintendo DS back at E3 and told the crowd that the NDS was capable of playing GameBoy Advance games, people started wondering whether GameBoy and GameBoy Color games were included as well. Shortly after that, questions on compatible GBA peripherals came into mind.
Nintendo warns the NDS owner that the unit is not compatible with:
� Original Game Boy Game Paks
� Game Boy Color Game Paks
� Game Boy or Game Boy Advance Game Link cables
� Game Boy Advance Wireless Adapter
� Game Boy Advance e-Reader
� Nintendo GameCube Game Boy Advance cable
� Game Boy Printer
� Game Boy Camera
Even though this isn't the best news ever, it's still good to know.

Next up: charging the Nintendo DS.
The internal battery can be recharged about 500 times, which takes about 4 hours a time for a full charge. Nintendo warns that after those 500 recharges, battery life may have decreased to about 70% of its maximal potential.
We already knew that the AC adapter which comes with the Nintendo DS was compatible with the GBA SP: you can charge your GBA SP with the DS adapter. However, many people automatically assumed the opposite was also true: using the GBA SP adapter to charge your Nintendo DS. The manual doesn't explicitly deny or confirm this theory, but does throw in a warning to "ONLY use the included AC Adapter, Model No. NTR-002" (that's the Nintendo DS adapter).

The Wrist Strap
The wrist strap was shown back in October for the first time. The strap has a small plastic pad attached to it, that can be used for controling games using the touch screen, rather than using a stylus. Analogue steering in Ridge Racer DS will be a bit easier than using the stylus.

Wireless Play
The Nintendo DS is capable of wireless multiplaying. Nothing new there. However, just like with the GameBoy Advance there are two types of multiplaying options: single-pack linking and multi-pack linking. The Nintendo DS game-boxes will feature an icon showing you whether it is possible to play multiplayer games using just 1 cartridge, or whether everybody needs their own copy.

On the left, we can see an example of a game that does not allow single-pack multiplaying; A game featuring the icon on the right can. The numbers under the icon show the amount of players who can play simultaneously.

The manual also recommends to play use the wireless features at a distance of 30-65 feet (10-20 meters). An icon on the Nintendo DS's display will show the signal strength so you know whether or not you're to far away or not.

DS Menu
The manual also shows a few pages filled with information on how to set up your nickname (used in PictoChat for example), the background color, your birthday, alarm timers and all kinds of other stuff. We'll leave that part for your own reading, because we don't think we can express this part better than the manual itself.

For now, while you wait till your own Nintendo DS arrives: read the manual (Adobe pdf)