By 2004, everyone I knew had a Game Boy Advance or Game Boy Advance SP. Nintendo had well and truly taken hold of the handheld gaming market, which meant it was the perfect time to try something new. That holiday season, something new was unleashed upon the world: the Nintendo DS. At first, we thought it was just an SP with an extra screen. How wrong we were.
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The Nintendo DS was a major leap in handheld gaming standards, not only thanks to its signature dual screens, but the introduction of a touchscreen and generally better processing power. This, naturally, lent itself to a slew of games, some brand new, some improved from previous Nintendo titles, but so many fiercely addicting. The DS had no shortage of certified bangers, but amongst the titles you could properly enjoy once, maybe twice, there were plenty of games that you could play over and over again.
10 Brain Age: Train Your Brain In Minutes A Day!
Who Says Games Can’t Be Educational?
As a cool dude once said, “video games need to learn that you can’t learn from video games.” It’s an understandable perspective, and certainly most folk don’t play games to be educated. However, the Nintendo DS was in a unique position as a handheld in that, if you were amenable to learning, you could do so in a quick and entertaining manner. All you needed was a game like Brain Age.
Rather than a traditional game, Brain Age is more like a mental stimulation tool, designed to be played a little bit every day rather than blazing through it in one sitting. You hold the DS vertically, and use the touchscreen to complete a variety of puzzles, problems, and brain-teasers like simple math, picture identification, and memorization. It also had a dedicated Sudoku mode, if you were into that.
Brain Age was an amusing and surprisingly addicting way to stimulate your mind on a daily basis. It kind of felt like homework at first, but as you got good at it, chipping away every day, you start to become sharper, quicker, more perceptive. If nothing else, it made for a nice little daily confidence booster, and everyone could use that.
9 Sonic Rush
First Appearance Of Blaze The Cat
While the mid 2000s were something of an awkward phase for Sonic games, Sega’s favorite hedgehog did some of his best work at the time on the handheld scene. The Sonic Advance games on the GBA were positively received for their similarity to classic Sonic platformers, and on the DS, that drive was inherited by Sonic Rush.
Sonic Rush is a 2.5D game, opting for 3D character sprites on 2D environments. It’s the same basic vibe as Sonic Advance, though, with either Sonic or then-newcomer Blaze the Cat blasting through sidescrolling stages at high speed and bouncing on the occasional robot boss. Sometimes, when going through a large loop or down a large cliff, the game would switch on the fly between the top and bottom screens. It didn’t affect gameplay, but it looked really cool.
Sonic Rush is a bit of a short game as far as platformers go, but that just makes it even easier to replay and speedrun for fun. Like the retro Sonic games, there are hidden special stages you can clear to get Chaos Emeralds, so that’s definitely a good excuse to run through the whole game again.
8 Scribblenauts
If You Can Write It, You Can Make It
The Nintendo DS had no shortage of puzzle games, some opting for classic problem-solving approaches, others making more dedicated use of the console’s specialties like its touchscreen and microphone. One standout puzzle game on the platform, however, opted for neither approach. Instead, Scribblenauts centered its problem-solving gameplay on the power of words and descriptors.
The original Scribblenauts is a sidescrolling puzzle game in which you’re presented with a variety of open-ended puzzles and challenges. Rather than confronting them head-on, you’re encouraged to use your notebook to conjure up items, NPCs, machinery, and whatever else you can think of to solve the problem for you. You can add a variety of adjectives to things you summon, allowing for a surprising breadth of open-ended puzzle-solving possibilities.
Scribblenauts’ main campaign has plenty of levels and puzzles to try your hand at and seek out every potential solution you can think of, of which there are many. There’s also a dedicated level editor for making your own puzzles to test your friends with, and if you’re bored, you can summon a chicken and see how many ridiculous adjectives you can apply to it until it becomes an uncontrollable monster or catches fire or something.
7 Rhythm Heaven
The First In A Rhythmic Legacy
Rhythm games found a surprisingly consistent home on the Nintendo DS. I guess it’s a similar appeal to pulling out your MP3 player on the bus, except it’s music you can actively participate in rather than just dozing off. One of the best examples of rhythm games on the platform, and one that would start a favorite series amongst rhythm enthusiasts, is the first Rhythm Heaven. Or, well, the first one released in the west, anyway.
Like Brain Age, Rhythm Heaven had you holding your DS in a vertical grip, using your stylus to tap, scratch, and strum on the touchscreen in time with its fifty different rhythm games. All of these games were exceptionally simple, requiring no complicated inputs or deep strategy. All you had to do was listen to the beat and tap in time, and you too could be a master of rhythm.
You could clear the whole game without getting perfect ratings, but if you really wanted to challenge yourself, you could try for the highest Superb rating on each level with a Perfect score. It was quite an undertaking, and the feeling that you’ll get it right if you try just once more always kept players coming back to hear those fresh beats.
6 Elite Beat Agents
The Shadow Boss Of The Rhythm Genre
In 2005, iNiS released Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan, a Japan-exclusive DS game where hot-blooded Japanese cheer squadmen would empower the downtrodden with their fierce beats. The game did well enough in Japan, but it was a surprisingly big hit as an import title, prompting the devs to release its follow-up, Elite Beat Agents, to international markets in 2006.
Elite Beat Agents is a rhythm game developed with the DS in mind, having players tap, drag, and spin on beat markers in time with a soundtrack of pop and hip-hop hits. Like any good rhythm game, Elite Beat Agents has a very simple core loop, but it’s that simplicity that makes it so fiercely addicting. Whether you want to hear the music again or think you can get a better score than your last attempt, it’s hard to resist one more go-around.
Besides being a great and addictive game in its own right, Elite Beat Agents, and the Ouendan series overall, should be commended for inspiring one of the most popular indie rhythm games out there, osu! Everyone who likes rhythm games has played osu!, and esports players even use it as a tool for training their reflexes.
5 Kirby Super Star Ultra
A Certified Classic, New And Improved
The DS was home to a handful of Kirby games, including Canvas Curse, Squeak Squad, and Mass Attack. These were all great games, but I can’t help but be drawn back to my old favorites. Indeed, one of the best Kirby games ever made remains Kirby Super Star on the SNES, and by extension, its updated version, Kirby Super Star Ultra, carries that similar pedigree.
Super Star Ultra carries over all the game modes and minigames that were present in the original Super Star while adding a metric whoa-ton of new content. These include entirely new game modes like Revenge of the King, special modes like Helper to Hero and Meta Knightmare Ultra where you play as helper characters and Meta Knight, respectively, and everyone’s favorite, The True Arena for that difficulty-scaling boss rush experience.
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Even after you finish all of the campaigns, which will take a hot minute, just breezing through any of the modes or the arena again is as good a reason to pop open your DS as any. The addition of the True Arena in particular was an excellent choice for those looking for a little extra bite in their sub-games, and its become a mainstay feature in sidescrolling Kirby games since then.
4 WarioWare: Touched!
Put That Touchscreen To Work
The original WarioWare Inc. on the GBA was another surprise hit on Nintendo’s board, cramming a myriad of light-speed microgames into a series of high-score-hungry collections. It was clearly a winning formula, highly amenable to console gimmicks, so it was perfect for the DS. Thus, we received WarioWare: Touched, which still holds a place of esteem, at least in my heart.
As with its predecessor, WarioWare: Touched has you tackle a series of microgame collections, each hosted by Wario or one of his wacky friends. The gimmick is that nearly every collection exclusively uses the DS touchscreen, and in different ways. Mona’s collection is about cutting stuff, Jimmy’s collection uses rubbing motions, Mike’s collection uses the DS microphone, and so on.
Whether you’re focusing on a specific collection or playing one of the mixpack modes, the formula of “do a thing in five seconds over and over until it gets too fast” never stops being fun. WarioWare: Touched was a mainstay on long trips in my childhood, with my sister and I passing the DS back and forth to set and beat new high scores.
3 Animal Crossing: Wild World
A Living World In Your Pocket
One of the nifty things about the DS over the GBA was that it had an internal, programmable clock and calendar. Only a handful of games made any particular use of this feature, but it just so happened that one of those games was one of the best on the platform: Animal Crossing: Wild World.
The first follow-up to the original Animal Crossing on the GameCube, Wild World was the game that helped to cement the series’ compatibility with handheld platforms. By syncing to your DS clock and calendar, you’d have accurate daylight periods and seasons in-game. Granted, the original did that too, but it was cool to see in a handheld game. Since it was a portable game rather than console, it was also easier to share your village experience amongst friends, either console-to-console or online.
Wild World was a much more interactive, customizable experience than its predecessor. Your villagers had more to say and more varied requests to offer, and you could design your own clothes by drawing on the DS touchscreen. Whether it was chatting or doing chores, the game always offered a good reason to pop open your DS and check in with everyone.
2 New Super Mario Bros.
A Return To Form
By 2006, the Mario series had largely moved away from the sidescrolling platformers of old, focusing more on 3D games like Super Mario 64 and Super Mario Sunshine. The GBA saw ports of Mario sidescrollers from the SNES, but there hadn’t been anything new in a while. That year, Nintendo decided to dip back into the classics, giving us New Super Mario Bros.
As its name no doubt implies, New Super Mario Bros. was deliberately evocative of the very first Mario sidescrolling platformer. It returned to the linear, timed level format, as well as classic power-ups like the Super Mushroom and Fire Flower. However, the game also incorporated some of Mario’s newer playbook, including ground pounds and wall jumps, creating a sidescrolling experience that felt more fluid and receptive.
New Super Mario Bros. was one of the definitive DS games, just as much fun to pick up and play as its ancestor. It certainly helped that its levels had a little more in the way of distinctive layouts and setpieces. I can’t tell you how many times I went back and played the first level where you get a Mega Mushroom just for laughs.
1 Mario Kart DS
Another Nintendo Console, Another Mario Kart
I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it many times more: every single Nintendo console needs its patron Mario Kart game. Mario Kart is one of Nintendo’s most accessible, widely-beloved franchises, and it’s the company’s go-to for putting controllers in hands. The DS was no different, which is why it received its own game, Mario Kart DS.
Mario Kart DS was a big improvement over the previous handheld Mario Kart game, GBA’s Super Circuit, opting for full 3D graphics more in line with Mario Kart 64 and Double Dash. You had a big roster of racers to choose from, each with a selection of unique karts to choose from based on your playstyle. Mario Kart DS was also the game that started the series’ tradition of bringing tracks back from previous entries, helping to preserve our favorite moments from across Mario Kart history.
You don’t need me to explain the appeal of Mario Kart DS, because it’s exactly the same as the appeal of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe or World. It’s fun, fast, accessible racing, and you can pull it out and enjoy it whenever you have five minutes to waste. It was also the first Mario Kart game to have online play, at least until the servers went offline in 2014.
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Author: 360 Technology Group
