i was originally gonna write a long post about why this is my favourite console despite (and because of) its foibles, but instead i'm just gonna be standard here and say: good damn console.
neat gimmicky experiments and solid games mixing and mingling together to form a weird era of game design that carried over the spirit of the GBA by combining 4th-7th gen game design aspects into a melange that can only be described as "nintendo ds :)"
mine is Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocketslime
the absolute frenzy of the touchscreen PLUS the D-pad — SO fucking satisfying !!!!!
yess I second TWEWY but I also have fond memories of… skate? tony hawk's american sk8land? call of duty… modern warfare or something? rayman rabbids something? sonic rush?
often regarded as a bad sonic colors port
very good sonic for nintendo ds :) game tho
The DS was awesome and it's hard to give a definitive fave, but those are probably tied for first place. HGSS as remakes of old favorites (Gen 2 and Johto ftw), BW1 as (imo) a great step at advancing the series regarding story and storytelling.
Honorable mentions:
- Etrian Odyssey - 4 on 3DS is my fave, but this one started it all; also a kickass Yuzo Koshiro OST
- Mario Kart DS - still my personal number one of the whole franchise I'd say, tho 8DX is very fun too
- Sonic Rush - another amazing OST, but also a pretty fun game in its own right
- And More™ I can't quite think of atm
(Screenshots via 1234567890num on lparchive.org)
Last Window, the mostly forgotten sequel to DS sleeper hit Hotel Dusk for reasons that'll quickly become clear, has one of the best localizations I've ever played and I might well go so far as to say it's the best Nintendo has ever produced, a feat all the more impressive when you consider that it was handled by Nintendo of Europe and not their more famous American cousins at Treehouse despite the setting (although it wouldn't shock me if NoE's localization team has its fair share of Americans, too). Barring some scattered instances of UK spelling that I imagine are the result of it targeting PAL regions, its voice feels pitch-perfect for the period and it has a certain fluency in its vernacular that games outside this genre rarely have a chance to fully exhibit even when written natively, let alone in localized form, and it's especially on display in the in-game novella that you can read throughout the course of the game, which just boasts genuinely good, page-turning noir prose in its own right. Every good localization strives to make their games sound as though they were always conceived in their target language from the get-go, but Last Window is one of the few I've played that really, really knocks it out of the park, and that's without getting into the environmental exploration using charmingly low-fi polygons, or the simply scrumptious soundtrack. That it was localized at all in the DS' twilight years feels like a miracle, but that it was only released everywhere in the English-speaking world but the States still feels like a tragedy.
It's somewhat of a pricey game to track down these days and Nintendo dropping the ball time and again when it came to digital re-releases hasn't helped, either. Whether you pay up the money (and I honestly would say there's enough meat to it to be worth the premium to experience game writing of this caliber) or prefer to take to other means, if you already loved the original game, you should absolutely play it. If you're a game translator like me and want to experience a master class in the craft to dissect, you should also absolutely play it. And even if you're neither of those things but you just love yourself some good noir or DS-style adventure games, you should also absolutely play it. There was no more Cing after this game, but god damn, what a perfect note to go out on.
God damn.
quite possibly my favourite iteration of the mega man formula