[Ni Go Zero Ichi]

So today I finally got my DS Lite back from a somewhat unreliable friend who's been "borrowing" it for approximately the last 2 years.

Getting my hands on it again, I'm reminded of what an odd, neat system the DS was to begin with: situated a little bit awkwardly in between the traditionalism of the GBA and the modern-console feature set of the 3DS, it sort of feels like an intermediary machine in retrospect - but not in a bad way.

As a system "small" enough to avoid the expectated bells and whistles of console-style games yet "big" enough to handle relatively complex games, and popular enough to attract even small publishers, the system unsurprisingly attracted a generous number of offbeat, under-the-radar titles that couldn't have shown up anywhere else. Furthermore, being one of the very first mainstream pieces of gaming hardware to experiment with input methods and modes of interaction beyond traditional button controls, it also had some striking instances of radical experimentation by developers testing the aesthetic and mechanical limits of the dual-screen presentation, touch controls, built-in microphone and even the automatic sleep function, all without the limitations and risk-aversity of a console-sized budget.

So with the system now effectively dead and buried and its last games slowly disappearing from retail shelves, I've been thinking lately about searching for some of the more introguing, lesser-known titles for the system that I might have missed during its lifetime. I've already played just about every Castlevania, Zelda, Final Fantasy and Shin Megami Tensei title on the system; I played (and was disappointed by) New Super Mario Bros., Radiant Historia, Sands of Destruction and The World Ends With You; I've relished obscurities like Deep Labyrinth, Bangai-O Spirits, Contact, and Flower, Sun & Rain; and not-so-obscurities like Professor Layton, GTA: Chinatown Wars, Chrono Trigger, WarioWare: Touched!, and even that weird touch-controlled Ninja Gaiden. I have unfinished copies of FF: 4 Warriors of Light and several of the above games waiting for me, and copies of Mega Man ZX and Feel the Magic: XY/XX that I haven't even opened yet. And my cartridges for Super Mario 64 DS, Meteos, and Metroid Prime Hunters have been AWOL for years.

The other day I ordered a copy of Magical Starsign, a game which I'd always dismissed as too kiddy to be of much interest, after reading that it shared some portion of its development team, including the head artist and the director (who also directed Mother 3) with Legend of Mana, an old gem I've just recently discovered. I also considered ordering Heroes of Mana - yes, I've heard the game's broken, but considering the talent behind it I'm curious to at least try it for myself - and Elite Beat Agents, a game that I've never stopped hearing about over the years and is pretty cheap on Amazon.

So SB, what are some of your own DS memories, and what curiosities or diamonds in the rough can you recommend for your bros here? (Remember, it's not the "Dual Screen" - it's the Developer's System.)
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Just another savage day on Planet Earth.

[Loki Laufeyson]

chou shoujuu mecha mg is a game about giant robots and variety. there are many robots to pilot in the game, and all have their own unique controls on the touch screen. there's robots with josticks that control how they swing their sword, boxing robots with just a left-right stick for alternating left and right punches and various other gimmicks.

shiren the wanderer is a roguelike and one of the best games ever made.

nostalgia/winds of nostalgeo is an average rpg, that perfectly captures the feel of mid-budget playstation-era rpgs.

great giana sisters is very, very easy, but has really really nice animation.

monster party is a pretty cool metrovania that has a stage taking place in an underground monster night club.

super scribblenauts is a cool sandbox thing to pass time with

sideswiped/clash king v201 is pretty much destruction derby, but on the ds

gg series collection is like finding a box full of cartridges for some weird japan-only 16 bit console

pang magical michael is the best version of pang, just because it has an endless survival mode

i'll do another post about simple ds series vols. 4, 16, 18, 21, 31 and 39 later
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[Loki Laufeyson]

when i was at college, pictochat was very important. it allowed me and my friends to silently communicate across the room and talk about the people in the class we hated, and so on.

and during breaks, we'd have huge multiplayer games of bomberman, mario kart and lunar knights. (i should write about lunar knights later too)
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[Ni Go Zero Ichi]

Oh man, I... never once had a genuine opportunity to use PictoChat. :(

I was thinking of getting Shiren the other day, too. I've also been curious about Lunar Knights for a long time.

I used to have Super Scribblenauts, but it was one of numerous games to be taken when my first 3DS (+ PSP and laptop) got stolen from me about 2 years ago. I loved it for a little while, but eventually the novelty began to wear thin and the large cracks in the (boring) game design started to show. The soundtrack was also really obnoxious.
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[luvcraft]

I remember really liking Retro Game Challenge. Here are my thoughts from when I played it.

Flower Sun Rain is pretty neat in a Suda51 / Deadly-Premonition-ish way.

999 is pretty super-great, too.

EDIT: Professor Layton and the (Bi-)Curious Village (and probably the rest of the series, although I've only played that first one).

EDIT EDIT: oh, now I see that FSR and Layton were already on your original list. Never mind.
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[Ni Go Zero Ichi]

Retro Game Challenge is another game I've been curious about for a while but never had a chance to try.
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Just another savage day on Planet Earth.

[probably fine]

Trackmania Turbo is about time trialling your way through brief, challenging series of floating bits of road. The generic, real world veneer over everything gives it an almost surrealist quality. I really loved the original Trackmania DS, but Turbo is such an improvement in terms of mechanics and the fixing of glitches that there's very little point in playing the first game anymore. Probably neither holds a candle to their PC counterparts, but I still had tonnes of fun with them.
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Drawing & writing, mostly.

[Mikey]

It's received a mixed reception around here but I absolutely loved Ghost Trick and I might call it my favorite game on the system. It just oozes so much personality, the animation alone is so expressive.

[guest253]

- the ds has a clandestine TGM3 port and it's the best thing ever.

- taiko no tatsujin works really well on the system. even comes with tiny drumsticks... went back to this recently, i'm golding some oni tracks now.

- both space invaders extreme games are pure, joyous, beautiful pew pew pew and i love them very much.

- kage no densetsu is weird and atmospheric and one of the very few platformers that's compatible with my attention span, due to being a total twitchfest. that and the fact that your jumps cover a couple of screenheights.

some other misc. stuff:
- i remember dig dug digging strike as a fascinating experiment that didn't quite fail but i don't actually remember how it worked so don't quote me on that.

- clash king v201 is hilarious. in a good way.

- speed racer. really. no joke.

[dementia]

I remember loving Kirby Canvas Curse. IIRC it tracks your clear times so there's incentive to shave time off and best your previous times if you're into that.

[Ni Go Zero Ichi]

[username]

Rocket Slime is just such a charming game, enough that I think most should give it at least a try.

I love both the Nintendo Picross titles for the thing, it depends on if you actually like picross or not though.

I only ever played the DS version of N+ so i don't know if others are better or not, but I got a lot of enjoyment out of it.

Trauma Center is hard as hell but one of the better uses of the touchscreen I've seen.

Let me second both Kirby Canvas Curse and the Space Invader Extreme games (particularly with the paddle controller). All of them are pretty remarkable in their own ways.

This probably falls under the guilty pleasure heading but I liked Elite Beat Agents. I never played the japanese original so I have no idea which version is better but I thought it was a rather swell take on the rhythm game.
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[Ni Go Zero Ichi]

Oh yeah, I was also looking into Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume, Lux-Pain, and Away: Shuffle Dungeon. Any of those any good?

(Just impulse-ordered Away and EBA. Both under $10. Damn my inability to resist weird cheap games.)
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Just another savage day on Planet Earth.

[Tulpa]

KORG DS10 and KORG M01 are great music tools, with the latter being especially accessible and fun to mess around in, even if it lacks the sheer plethora of options of the DS10.

Might and Magic: Clash of Heroes is just about the only casual puzzle-rpg hybrid I can get behind. Well realized mechanics, very skill based. Emphasizes the puzzle instead of the casual. It's been ported to everything though so...

Style Savvy is also good but the 3ds sequel is better.

Umihara Kawase DS edition is the best iteration of the game, containing all the levels of the original, the psx and the special edition. An imperfect platformer but this is the way to play it, and what it does right is better than anything else.

The Dark Spire is a beautiful dungeoncrawl, mechanically riffing on the original Wizardry more than anything else. I'm the only person in the world that prefers this game to the Etrian Odyssey games.

If you have homebrew, you can download all the Lone Wolf gamebooks and play an actually decent choose your own adventure series in the most convenient way possible (it even keeps track of your inventory and equipment book to book)

SaGa 2 is a really excellent remake of the GB SaGa 2, though remake is a loose term since it feels like the most refined take on Kawazu madness.
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[remote]

[luvcraft]

Oh man, I totally forgot about Rocket Slime! Great game.

Also, if you can read the Japaneses, Houkago Shonen looks painfully charming, and I really wanted to play it, but it is very full of the real Japanese, which is far beyond my skillz.
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[Takashi]

Phantasy Star Zero is a neat PSO-lite that is really well thought out (the story might be a bit ridiculous, tho).
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low-end.net | Whimsy (soon) | Serfdom 2.0

[tacotaskforce]

So of all the DS Harvest Moon games which one is The One to get?
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[GrimmSweeper]

Semi-serious: Rune Factory 3

Actually serious: Sunshine Islands
Tale of Two Towns and Grand Bazaar have neat ideas but if you want the "Harvest Moon" experience Sunshine Islands does the best and most efficient job at it. Avoid Harvest Moon DS.

[Ni Go Zero Ichi]

Wondering if maybe we should do a DScast
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Just another savage day on Planet Earth.

[Dark Age Iron Savior]

I can't really distill my own feelings it, but I'm looking forward to your reaction to Shuffle Dungeon.

[zombieman000]

I played Meteos enough to break off a chip of the stylus and eventually scratch up my screen. :(

If you don't already have another version of Kirby Superstar the DS one has the most content. Like the GBA remakes of other Kirby games, parts of DS Superstar have gone through some aesthetic changes and I'm not familiar enough with either version to say whether they were better or worse. There is just so much game in that game that it probably doesn't matter overall.

[Loki Laufeyson]

time for the simple ds series post~!

vol. 4 - the block kuzushi
a fairly generic arkanoid-clone, though it has a nice little evolution gimmick that doesn't really do anything other than show a picture of a different animal as you gain points. i still like it though, and it's better than the actual arkanoid ds game.

vol. 16 - the sasagou fushigi na konchuu no mori
it's a dream factory game, so of course it's a roguelike beat em up. it's about beating up and catching insects. it's alright.

vol. 18 - the soukou kihei gunground
an assault suits valken-like. you can customise your robot with new parts, weapons and colours. it also has an awesome vs mode and a crap co-op mode

vol. 21 - the hohei ~butai de shutsugeki! senjou no inu~
a technically impressive world war ii third person shooter. if you like it, there's a ps2 version that's almost identical and another (non-simple series) ds game by the same developers along the same lines called unknown soldier: mokuba no houkou

vol. 31 - the choudangan! custom sensha
i can only barely remember this, but it's a platform game in which you control metal slug-esque cartoony tanks that can be customised

vol. 39 - the shouboutai
probably my favourite of the simple ds series, it's another third person shooter by tamsoft, but rather than a soldier, you're a cute anime firefighter, walking round corridors shooting fires with a hose
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[Felix]

Meteos was by far the best use of the feature where if you were doing local multiplayer with only one game cartridge it could send the other players enough of a game stub on the fly to actually play multi

I was way too good at it and I wasn't totally sure why

[Loki Laufeyson]

the bleach fighting games let you use the entire roster of characters in download play, but as a result, it took eons to load
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[Ni Go Zero Ichi]

That feature hasn't gone anywhere btw, a few 3DS games (e.g. SSF4 3D, Kokuga) can still do it.
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Just another savage day on Planet Earth.

[Deets]

[Felix]

I really think Meteos was underrated, though I could never decide whether the actual competitive elements were ultimately too shallow (cf. my being too good at it, as far as twitchy Tetris Attack games are concerned)

it loses a lot in emulation because it's very reliant on the quick one-dimensional movements that a human wrist can make with a stylus and not so much with a mouse.

Trauma Centre has this issue up to a point too (even in the Wii version, using the shipped control scheme rather than an emulated one), but Meteos is the only notable game I can think of that really needs stylus control.

[luvcraft]

[Clumo]

I got a DS too today, my Brother is pretty interested in Infinte space, looks like a rpj from sega so I have faith. Bubble Bobble Double Shoot is neat, but I played to the second stage so far. if you people are saying rocket slimes is awesome, I have to try it. there's some dating sims too like Love Plus and Tokimeki Memorial that got a fan patch.
Megaman ZX Advent is fabulous. you don't lose as much time traveling as in ZX and the bosses and levels are better. what a pity there's not gonna be any ZX 3.
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[Wall of Beef]

I will add to the dog pile for Rocket Slime.
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[Ni Go Zero Ichi]

I have a friend who really dug Infinite Space, though I've never tried it. I believe it was co-developed by Platinum Games(!!) and Nudemaker, a small Japanese studio that's mostly done visual novels otherwise.

It's too bad that Rocket Slime is now impossible to find new for a sane price.
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Just another savage day on Planet Earth.

[skelethulu]

I had a summer fling with Picross 3D
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[GrimmSweeper]

Infinite Space is only good if you get invested into the plot. Otherwise it's a grind and I lost interest after finishing sector two because I didn't care for the cast of characters.

[Tulpa]

I liked the Suikoden-esque collecting crew members like trading cards aspect of Infinite Space but there really wasnt' any personality in any of the crew (Someone make a space opera game with the suffusion of personality of Suikoden 1+2)
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[Ni Go Zero Ichi]

Picked up Populous DS for 5 bucks at a local store. I vaguely recall hearing this was good?
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Just another savage day on Planet Earth.

[BenoitRen]

A friend of mine is a big Populous fan, and he didn't like that version much. But, hey, 5 bucks! I'd give it a try too at that price.
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Get Xenoblade Chronicles!

[RadRad]

Funny you bring up the DSlite.
I WISH it could play 3DS games (or really, I wish 3DS could play GBA games), because I LOVE the form-factor of the design.
Light, compact, GBA slot, sharp-pixel screens, and a GIGANTIC library of games. Which, I too, have been distracted by and putting my 3DS down lately because of it.

As for recommendations, well here are my suggestions:
Professor Layton: The Last Specter - solely for London Life game developed by Brownie Brown, and it basically a Professor Layton Animal Crossing in Mother 3 art style.

The Rub Rabbits - Its feel the magic, but EVERYTHING is better about it. One of my favorite video game intros next to Katamari Damacy.

Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies - A great, true to form but modernized classic RPG.

Wario DIY- Basically Wario Paint. The comics in the game are worth the admission alone.

Knights in the Nightmare- Bullet-hell Tactical RPG with great art.

Solatorobo- Star Fox Anime The Game. Pseudo-Sequel to Tail Concerto. Stunning art.

And I second Ghost Trick, Slime Rocket, and Kirby's Canvas Curse.
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[Ni Go Zero Ichi]

I used to have Knights in the Nightmare, but it was stolen before I ever really had a chance to play it. ;__;

I agree though that ergonomically speaking the DS Lite is hugely superior to the 3DS. The stylus in particular is way better, easily accessed mid-game and comfortable to hold. It's telling of the 3DS's diminished emphasis on the touchscreen that the system's stylus seems almost like a concession. (Not to mention it opts for higher screen sensitivity and simple iPhone-style finger-operable controls for most games that do incorporate it in any substantial way. Going back to the much more resistant and stylus-intensive DS screen can take some getting used to.)

Speaking of the 3DS, for certain DS games choosing which system to play on is kind of a conundrum. I usually prefer not to play DS games on the 3DS because A) they look like crap because of the greater screen resolution, B) the stylus is such a pain to use, as mentioned above and C) all of the 3DS's you say no to drugs, juicy j can't functions, i.e. StreetPass, the pedometer, SpotPass, etc. are turned off while playing DS games. However, there are a few games (e.g. Super Mario 64, GTA: Chinatown Wars, and pretty much any game with 3D polygonal environments) that play noticeably better with the 3DS analog nub than the DS control pad, which does make 3DS play tempting.
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Just another savage day on Planet Earth.

[1CC]

[RadRad]