A reader argues that the low-tech Nintendo DS is the best console ever made, with a line-up of exclusive games unlike any other.
I very much enjoyed the recent feature on the 10 weirdest Nintendo DS games and was proud to realise that I own most of them. They were categorised as the best and the weirdest and I feel that sums up the DS very well. It had a mountain of great games but almost all of them were odd or peculiar in some way, and not something you could imagine existing on any other format – not even a fellow handheld like the PSP.
A lot of this had to do with the DS’s peculiar design, with two screens, only the bottom one of which was a touchscreen, and even that you had to use with a stylus if you wanted any kind of accuracy. Combine that with the low-tech graphics, that could barely do 3D, and it was not a machine that could coast by on flashy visuals and shallow gameplay.
Games on the DS had to be good and interesting and unique to make any impression and the best ones absolutely were. In fact, there were so many great games I genuinely think it’s the best console ever made. Even more so than the Switch, which shares many of the same qualities. That shouldn’t be a controversial opinion, considering it is the second best-selling console ever, behind the PlayStation 2, but for some reason it is.
The DS isn’t a flashy console, it can’t do ray-tracing or run anything at 60fps and all the models were varying degrees of ugly (not that the PlayStation 5 can say any better) but in terms of the range and variety of weird, innovative, and completely unique games goes there’s simply nothing like it. And that’s largely without any indie games either. These were all odd little games made by mainstream publishers and developers that were like nothing else they’d make on any other format.
So, you had Nintendo-published games like Freshly-Picked Tingle’s Rosy Rupeeland and Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan sitting alongside Soul Bubbles, while even EA got weird with Henry Hatsworth In The Puzzling Adventure and Rockstar Games made a whole exclusive GTA game for the format.
There were regular Nintendo games as well, including two Zelda games, New Super Mario Bros., Animal Crossing, Mario Kart DS, and new Mario & Luigi games. Plus, multiple Pokèmon games – including Pokèmon Conquest, which was a crossover with serious strategy game Nobunaga’s Ambition!
From third parties you had all the Konami Castlevania games, Dragon Quest 9, Ace Attorney, Professor Layton, Bangai-O Spirits, Meteos, Ghost Trick, Etrian Odyssey, Pac-Pix, Might & Magic: Clash Of Heroes, Scribblenauts, and so much more.
Although I understand it was inevitable, it’s such a shame that dedicated handheld consoles had to die. They required their own specific games and in many cases those styles of game aren’t being made today anymore. Naturally, the Switch is the closest relation but it’s games never have the same constraints and almost always have a higher budget than on the DS.
I do think it’s the constraints that make the magic too. With all these companies you can just imagine them looking at the DS and realising they can’t just develop a typical game for it; they can’t just port over something that already exists. And so, they’ve all asked the question, well okay: what can we make for it?
They’ve been forced by the nature of the device to come up with something new and different and something that doesn’t rely on its graphics to see the experience. Of course, they wouldn’t have bothered if the DS hadn’t been so successful, but because it was they were compelled to make an effort and the end result is something very special.
The problem now is that not only is there nothing else like the DS but it’s very hard to emulate the console. The games look terrible on a big TV and you can’t emulate the touchscreen normally with a controller. Maybe you could turn the Switch vertically and play them like that but I’m not surprised Nintendo hasn’t gone for that because you still can’t use it on the TV.
You can remaster 3DS games, as has already happened a few times, but DS games are just too low-tech. So they’re stuck forever on the console that spawned them and while it’s a shame that means they’re not easy for others to experience I kind of like the fact that the DS is so unique it’s impossible for other formats to even get close to emulating it.
By reader Roadie
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Why I’m convinced the Nintendo DS is the best video game console ever