Got a Nintendo DS in 2024

[Ferris]

When we moved into this place, the previous residents left a drawer in the kitchen full of their old stuff. In addition to a drivers license, chequebook, and a seeming inability to change their address* they left a fully functioning Nintendo DSi (which I forgot about until I found it again this week).

I know absolutely nothing about the DS/DSi - it launched during a period of financial dire straits and as a result totally passed me by. But now, I have one and am going to use it for travelling/commutes where I don't want to take my switch cos the battery is shite and it's a bit fragile.

I just ordered an R4 Cartridge (completely legal in Canada) and will have the ability to pick up some games (legally for the Five Eyes agents reading) and am looking for recommendations!

What games are good (and which are terrible)? What are your memories of the DS/DSi/3DS? What's your favourite handheld console that sounds like a small car? All that and more can be discussed in this thread.

_{*seriously it's like they're desperate to be defrauded - 4 years on and we still get important stuff for them in the post.}

[Lemming]

Random memories: Nintendogs seemed fun at the time, undoubtedly turbo-naff in retrospect, but washing the shite out of the dogs' fur was unfathomably cathartic. Mario Kart DS was great fun if you could find anyone to play it with. The WarioWare game was pretty good fun. New Super Mario Bros was probably the best thing on the system. And the DS Animal Crossing game is good if you like that kind of thing.

Also, drawing knobs in Pictochat was ace.

[Pink Gregory]

get on Warioware Touched pronto

[tourism]

Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan

[tourism]

oh and Elite Beat Agents

[C_Larence]

The Phoenix Wright/Ace Attorney series is probably my favourite thing on the DS. I'd highly recommend 999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors. It's a visual novel with some puzzle solving, but has a fantastic story and a plot twist that makes perfect use of the fact it's on DS.

In terms of less wordy games, Elite Beat Agents and WarioWare are good shouts, Rhythm Heaven is another in a similar vein.

[madhair60]

The DS has probably the best library of exclusives of any machine, so well done. Christ, I don't even know where to begin with recommendations.

Play the first Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, if you haven't. The sequels were - in my opinion - very diminishing returns, but they have their moments (and the final case of the second game is an all-timer).

Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective is a masterpiece and you must play it immediately without looking anything up about it.

New Super Mario Bros. gets a lot of shit from idiots with no taste; it too is excellent.

Bomberman 2. Yes, on single-player. Bite-sized challenge stages with customisation of your Bomber. Bomberman single-player is always dogshit, this is the exception. It's not just decent, it's great.

Sonic Rush/Rush Adventure/Colours were enjoyable 2D Sonics, not perfect but plenty of fun to be had zipping about to mental techno music.

Castlevania, any of them, they all fuck. People will talk about the relative merits of each game but the fact is they're all fucking great.

Bangai-Oh Spirits is sort of shmup, sort of puzzle game, entirely mental, fundamentally perfect.

Advance Wars: Days of Ruin is the best Advance Wars game mechanically, though many lament the loss of the GBA cast. They are wrong to do so.

Chrono Trigger is the best SNES JRPG and now it's on DS and even better.

Kirby! All the Kirbys, but especially Canvas Curse (genius ball-rolling game) and Superstar Ultra (improved remake of amazing SNES game).

Game you won't like but is one of the best games ever made, actually: Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days. There's a reason it's the longest entry in my book.



There are tons and I mean tons of other great DS games. It's a banger system.

[Kelvin]

New Super Mario Bros was probably the best thing on the system.

Stick it back in the drawer, then.

[madhair60]

ER EXCUSE ME!!

ACTUALLY EXCUSE ME?? NEW SUPER MARIO BROS. IS BAD ACTUALLY!! I JUST NEED YOU TO KNOW THAT I THINK THAT

THANKS!!!

[Huxleys Babkins]

Probably the absolute best system ever for puzzle games. Any fucker could fart out a half-decent puzzle game for the system and they did in droves.

Polarium, Tetris DS, Pokemon Link, Picross 3D, Picross DS, Puzzle Quest, Puzzle League, Pac Pix, Meteos, Henry Hatsworth, Gunpey, Zoo Keeper, Peggle, loads of Puzzle Bobble ones, loads of Puyo Puyo ones, all the Professor Laytons for something a bit more long form. There's just loads of them, I'll have missed tons off that list.

[Kelvin]

ER EXCUSE ME!!

ACTUALLY EXCUSE ME?? NEW SUPER MARIO BROS. IS BAD ACTUALLY!! I JUST NEED YOU TO KNOW THAT I THINK THAT

THANKS!!!

I dun you tho diden I

I dun you

[madhair60]

like a kipper pal

[Old Nehamkin]

The thing about new super mario bros is that it's obviously, objectively very good, and in a universe where the rest of mario never existed it would probably rank as one of the greatest games ever made. It's only because it inconveniently belongs to a series with maybe a dozen completely dazzling, majestic, paradigm-shifting entries in it that NSMB can feel a bit vanilla and utilitarian. Still definitively fun and engaging to play though! As I think the kids say now, it's a pretty enormous "flex" from Nintendo that even when they're kind of phoning it in with mario the result is still usually better than 99% of all platforms ever.

[Jerzy Bondov]

3DS also has some real bangers on it, is there any way you can find one of those in your kitchen drawer instead?

[fortune palace]

As others have mentioned, Chrono Trigger is probably the greatest 2D JRPG ever made. The DS version is the best way to play it, but I'd ignore the additional content - sub-RPG Maker tacked-on shite.

Heart Gold and Soul Silver are the best Pokémon games, and Diamond and Pearl are decent as well.

[Ferris]

3DS also has some real bangers on it, is there any way you can find one of those in your kitchen drawer instead?

Having another dig now, found an iPhone 5 and half a pack of Pokémon cards.

[TommyTurnips]

Sounds like your neighbours moved to avoid run from some sort of punishment from the law. They moved in a hurry which explains not emptying all the drawers and they didn't change their address so stop the paper trail from following them.

But anyway, DS games, I recently got one of those cartridges for my 3DS after losing my old one years ago and after faffing about trying to install the software onto the micro sd card it is great. It plays NES, Gameboy, Gameboy advance games too which is a bonus.

I recommend a lot of the games already mentioned, particularly "Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan!" one and two and the English remake "Elite Beat Agents". Mario Kart DS is a great game too.

[Memorex MP3]

You don't actually need an R4 card for the DSi, it's not too hard to softmod at all.

I'd still go the r4 route for convenience, mind

[TommyTurnips]

3DS also has some real bangers on it, is there any way you can find one of those in your kitchen drawer instead?

It's great being able to play Ocarina of Time and Majoras Mask on a hand held with better graphics than the N64 for sure. That whole 3D thing was a gimmick though. Most of the time I played with it turned off.

[Huxleys Babkins]

The great thing about flash cards is being able to play fun little curios like Feel the Magic XX/XY, without feeling like a twat for having spent £30 on it.

[waste of chops]

Pic Pic is a hugely underrated puzzle compilation. The minesweeper-meets-picross mode was my favourite by far.

[Memorex MP3]

You don't actually need an R4 card for the DSi, it's not too hard to softmod at all.

I'd still go the r4 route for convenience, mind

One actual bonus upside of the softmod I forgot is extremely reliable GBA emulation (not even sure it's actually emulation)


Beyond things already mentioned I'd suggest:
Electroplankton
Meteos
Animal Crossing (if you want a simple one that isn't designed to take over your life)
Retro Game Challenge
Pokémon Conquest maybe I haven't actually played it yet but it sounds intriguing

The great thing about flash cards is being able to play fun little curios like Feel the Magic XX/XY, without feeling like a twat for having spent £30 on it.

This was called Project Rub in Europe iirc?

[Rizla]

When my band was touring lots back in the day we had 4 or 5 of them for the van. Multiplay Mario Kart tournaments is some of the most fun I've ever had playing video games. I used to do Dr Kawawhatsit's Brain Training every day and I'm pretty sure it did actually make me temporarily sharper, if not smarter. I liked Bomberman, SMB and the retro arcade sim thing, as well as downloading episodes of Seinfeld onto it, all via some sort of hooky cartridge thing that took a micro SD card.  Oh, and Korg DS-10 - hours of fun.

I got it out recently and it had come apart at the hinge somehow. Very sad.

[TommyTurnips]

The great thing about flash cards is being able to play fun little curios like Feel the Magic XX/XY, without feeling like a twat for having spent £30 on it.

Oh for sure, I remember downloading all kinds of stuff that I would never have paid for like Nintendogs and cooking guide: can't decide what to eat.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

Bangai-Oh Spirits is sort of shmup, sort of puzzle game, entirely mental, fundamentally perfect.

this and Dragon Quest: Rocket Slime were my top 2. along with Links Awakening, Warioland 4 and the original Tetris they're top five portable games pre-smartphone era.

Dragon Quest: Hand of the Heavenly Bride is my favourite of the JRPG remakes. beautiful game and use of the PSX-ish engine elevates it.

Retro Game Challenge/Gamecenter CX is funny and more so if you know the source material, the second of the Ninja Jajamaru Kun parodies on it is one of my favourite DS games just on its own

for original RPGs i liked Infinite Space a lot although about 50% of the way through it stops being a jrpg and starts being Zachtronics puzzler with visual novel attached, never finished its just too hard towards the end. i also liked Dragon Quest 9 but it suffered from the same thing as many Jrpg of the time - too much grind to imitate an MMO. when its just a Dragon Quest game, its great. when it becomes open world/MMO about 75% of the way in, its boring. sad that they locked so much of the levelling, prestige classes and progression behind this. a proper remake would make it one of the better DQs.

The World Ends With You is also superb. i need to finish both Pokémon Conquest and Magical Starsight too at some point - enjoyed them both but they both suffered from sloggy middles

Contact is clunky and fiddly, but its underrated. fun little game with cute gimmicks. my favourite Castlevania was Ecclesia - second best after SotN imo, genuinely prefer it to both Harmony of Dissonance and Aria of Sorrow

shitlist: the Final Fantasy Tactics A2 is a boring, ugly sequel to one of the best games ever and the Warios were such a let down after the perfection of Warioland 4 and Warioware (and Twisted, which is superb - even better on DS because the grip made the motion better). i did not enjoy the mainline pokémon games on the DS, the Zeldas were ugly and not very Zelda feeling (although arguably both better than Minish Cap)

[Jerzy Bondov]

Picross DS and Picross 3D if you like solving little puzzles
GTA Chinatown Wars if you like running drugs around town and shooting people

[Huxleys Babkins]

This was called Project Rub in Europe iirc?

Yes. It also got a prequel called The Rub Rabbits! Their exclamation, not mine.

GTA Chinatown Wars if you like running drugs around town and shooting people

Yes, the drug running gameplay loop is very, very addictive.

[Milo]

One actual bonus upside of the softmod I forgot is extremely reliable GBA emulation (not even sure it's actually emulation

The full size DS had a GBA cartridge slot so I think it had the GBA processing built-in. Presumably the dsi still had the processing even though it lost the GBA slot.

[RHX]

I'd highly recommend 999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors. It's a visual novel with some puzzle solving, but has a fantastic story and a plot twist that makes perfect use of the fact it's on DS.

I second this recommendation. Shame it doesn't have the QoL features the updated PC/console versions got but it's bloody great.

[oggyraiding]

Trauma Centre is good, gets a bit mental towards the end but in a good way.