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Sno

The DS is ten years old.

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Does that make you feel old?

How about a fun retrospective thread to take the edge off?

Which DS games do you look back on fondly?

 

Also: Go play Ghost Trick, goddammit.

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I bought the DS soon after launch with money from my confirmation (Christian form of bar mitzvah basically, I don't think it's as common in the Americas?).

I feel super old since this means it was nearly half my life ago (even though that obviously means I'm not old at all).

 

Also: Go play Ghost Trick, goddammit.

 

GOD yes. Classic game. In retrospect, I love the idea of the DS being filled with visual novels/mild puzzle games like Phoenix Wright and 999 but those were always a niche :( ...though they also never nailed how to make that stuff seamless. For such simple systems, they were pretty clunky and slow to click through.

 

Other favourite was The World Ends With You. Just a classic in my mind. Probably hit close to home as a teen who was shedding a reclusive shell at the time and it reinforced the feelings I was having. But even aside from an angst reflection, it's just really fuckin good. (...as long as you can get through the previously mentioned clunky text to skim through cause TWEWY has a lot)

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Sunrise, sunset.

 I thought the battle system was interesting, but stopped after a couple hours because the main character is just so awful.

 

TETRIS DS, MOTHERFUCKERS

 

I was in the Navy at the time, and it was not uncommon that a number of people would be chilling out in berthing after a watch rotation, playing games on a DS. Mario Kart DS was also good, but Tetris download play allowed for 10 players on a full-featured multiplayer match, unlike so many other games that provided a stripped-down download play experience.

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 I thought the battle system was interesting, but stopped after a couple hours because the main character is just so awful.

 

I'm sorry to explain why an offputting creative choice is supposed to 'work' but my fan love compels me.

 

That is kinda the point? Neku was meant to be too antisocial for his own good, the overall arc of the story is him getting over that and becoming someone who can actually connect with people really well and trust in their connection.

 

Of course it can easily fall flat, and I think it is mainly aimed at people who will identify with him to some degree. Feeling like they'd rather not bother with people or used to feel like that or whatever. So to people like that the intention is to ideally help them grow alongside Neku while the game progresses. Which I really did love.

 

And also if you hated him there was an alternative universe level in the New Game+ style thing where they parody his characterisation by having alternate universe Neku constantly fighting back his dark emo thoughts.

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Considering I'm always backlogged on Nintendo and I have to play games in order just because, the DS feels pretty new to me still as I owned one for three years since 2005 and didn't really play it until 2008 and on. SO I DON'T NECESSARILY FEEL OLD BECAUSE OF THAT. However, when I talk to people who are in their early 20s and have never touched a NES, SNES, or Genesis I feel really old. No one has touched a Master System though.

 

Also Master System is an awful name. I suppose Playstation is pretty awful too, but if you say it for two decades, it's fine I guess.


So far, Layton games have been what my DS and 3DS has been used for most. I really wish I owned a DS lite, since I keep my fat grey one around because some games require the GBA port for a few things, but god the original DS was so ugly. Mine also has a broken hinge and I because the plastic was sort of cheap and I had to replace a cracked LCD screen once and it was terrible to get to, so it doesn't sit exactly right in the unit anymore. Replacing the PSP screen is such a breeze though, which I have managed to crack twice since I've owned it, like a dummy.

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Let's take a moment to honor the greatest rhythm game there ever was, Elite Beat Agents.

I actually prefer Ouendan, the original, but they're both fantastic for sure.

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I'm sorry to explain why an offputting creative choice is supposed to 'work' but my fan love compels me.

 

That is kinda the point? Neku was meant to be too antisocial for his own good, the overall arc of the story is him getting over that and becoming someone who can actually connect with people really well and trust in their connection.

 

Of course it can easily fall flat, and I think it is mainly aimed at people who will identify with him to some degree. Feeling like they'd rather not bother with people or used to feel like that or whatever. So to people like that the intention is to ideally help them grow alongside Neku while the game progresses. Which I really did love.

 

And also if you hated him there was an alternative universe level in the New Game+ style thing where they parody his characterisation by having alternate universe Neku constantly fighting back his dark emo thoughts.

 

Oh, I fully expected that. No amount of redemption would have made me like him. It was as if someone boiled down the "angsty teen" stereotype into a lazy caricature and then made a cardboard cutout of it. And then Tetsuya Nomura scribbled some zippers on it.

 

 

I actually prefer Ouendan, the original, but they're both fantastic for sure.

 

I 100%/perfected/whatever you want to call doing everything on all difficulties in both EBA and Ouendan. I love those games so much how could I have forgotten about them I'm a terrible person.

 

 

Mine also has a broken hinge and I because the plastic was sort of cheap and I had to replace a cracked LCD screen once and it was terrible to get to, so it doesn't sit exactly right in the unit anymore. Replacing the PSP screen is such a breeze though, which I have managed to crack twice since I've owned it, like a dummy.

 

I accidentally stepped on my DSLite and cracked the top screen. I ordered a new one and somehow didn't fuck up following a YouTube guide. The way they squeezed the screen's ribbon cable through a partially hollow hinge complicated things a bit.

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Did you use tweezers? My hands are too clumsy for things that small but even with tweezers I remember the ribbon being difficult to get in there.

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I bought my DS Lite the summer after graduating high school. I was working at the desk at a lake, taking admission and playing Mario Kart for $8 an hour. That summer I went to my first kegger, and drank my first beer (a warm Bud Light I shotgunned in the back seat of one of the older kids cars).

 

Yeah I feel pretty old right now.

 

A fond memory for me will always be playing Trauma Center on the bus and accidentally slashing peoples insides every time we took a sharp turn.

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There is no way I can boil down the awesomeness which is the Nintendo DS, one of the finest gaming systems ever made, into a single game. There were several game series that stood out, among which Ace Attorney, Phoenix Wright, everything from the Mario stable, the two Zelda games, Animal Crossing, the Cing series of adventure games, the Castlevania's...

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The DS also had some of the best Kirby games ever, like Canvas Curse and Mass Attack.

 

Did anybody here ever play Infinite Space? That was a preposterously complex RPG, a really wild Platinum Games release.

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I couldn't really get into it. The gameplay was rather off-putitng, regrettably. Either that or I really didn't understand how the battles worked. I liked the concept of Tetrissing your ship together, but the execution failed to appeal to me.

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The ship to ship fights were superficially kind of a rock-paper-scissors thing that could be kind of offputting at first, but with a developed fleet of ships, they end up being quite involved. Boarding crew fights were kind of a mess though, much more explicitly based in chance.

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E. B. A.

E. B. A.

E. B. A

E. B. A

EBA

EBA

WAAAAaaaaaaaaa

The best.

Also, as tegan posted, TWEWY was amazing.

Also beloved to me are kirby power paintbrush and kirby mass attack. I just love the wacky shit they tried with those games.

Oh, and big bang mini.

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Metroid Prime Hunters came out in 2006 and was a Nintendo game that let you add people that you played against in the normal matchmaking playlists as friends, and it even had voice chat in friend match lobbies. There were multiple playable characters, multiple gametypes, and tons of maps. It even has bots, smart bots that do a totally acceptable job playing the different gametypes. (With nintendo's WFC service shut down, those bots are also now the only particularly accessible way to experience that game's multiplayer.)

It gave me so much hope for Nintendo's online future, but seemingly Nintendo is just now finding its way back there.

MPH though, i love that game, played it tons with friends. It's always been pretty divisive for taking Metroid and sort of distilling it down into a fast-paced FPS that oddly echoes Quake, but all of its multiplayer action is still secondary to a solo campaign that is acceptably authentic to the Metroid series. (It's big and it's open-ended and it's still filled with puzzles, but it controls like an FPS.) That solo game just happens to also come alongside a frantic multiplayer FPS that had some really cool ambitions.  (Though if i'm going to be completely honest, the public playlists eventually imploded. People found out-of-map exploits and used those to dominate matches with sniping weapons. It was the kind of thing that would have been patched if it was a system that could accept patches.)

 

I'm still wishing for a sequel to this game. It will probably never happen.

As an aside: Metroid Prime Hunters, two years earlier, was also the pack-in game for launch-day DS's, via a "First Hunt" version of the game that was very different and very much a tech demo. Even as a launch day game though, First Hunt and the eventual full retail release of the game are both some of the most technically impressive games on the hardware.

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I used to play Metroid Prime Hunters on the bus to school. Those games would get pretty ugly, and I remember being extremely annoyed that a few guys would always be the sniper guy and would always be better than me. It was a fun game though. Mario Kart was also a favourite to play with friends at any opportunity. 

 

I was about to say that it sucks that my friends wouldn't be up for that any more, and then I realised they totally would. Rad.

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Did you use tweezers? My hands are too clumsy for things that small but even with tweezers I remember the ribbon being difficult to get in there.

 

I don't think I used tweezers, but I do remember it taking a few tries.

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I bought my first DS during college.  It was at a Black Friday sale.  I went to Best Buy at 4 AM and stood outside in the cold for 2 hours, but I got my hands on one of these

 

41Yv0PQk8LL.jpg

 

I also will also guiltily admit that I picked up an R4 while in China and may have played some things I wasn't supposed to.

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I always wish I was around for special edition sort of styles for consoles or handhelds, but I've never been lucky enough for the timing to be right.

 

I will forever wish I had this:

gba-sp-nes-classic.jpg

So awesome.

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The DS is also home to what i will assert is the only great Sonic game, Sonic Rush. (Featuring a bangin` soundtrack by Hideki Naganuma of Jet Set Radio fame.)

So many cool things about that game, the way it used those two screens for a tall portrait perspective that reveals its stages as these enormous, layered, multi-pathed constructs, with sonic swinging back and forth between the two screens as you play through those stages, and how the game subdues any criticism of the game just being about you holding right by giving you a trick system to be actively engaged with, building boost so you can go even faster. (Why haven't subsequent Sonic games used that trick system? It was a great addition.)

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The only games I played on my DS were Mr Driller: Drill Spirits (awesome game), Cardfighters Clash 2 (I liked it but there was a bug that meant you couldn't beat the game) and a lot of Doom for the GBA.

 

The way that my life changed circa 1996 it meant that the handheld world left me behind. I don't commute anywhere regularly to want to play games (and when I do commute I prefer to read a book) and I would never play at home because there are bigger, more exciting things to play.

 

Still, I remember seeing people get together in the stairwell of our building to play Mario Kart - just a group of super nerds having fun - Gawd Bless 'em.

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