The DS is by all accounts a fantastic machine. I know there were a few snide 'lol the DS is my tetris machine' style comments on this forum a few weeks back, but dig deeper than the shelves at Tesco and you'll find a wealth of gaming experiences. It's sucking up all my gaming time at the moment. I can't even remember the last time I fired up Xbox Live.
Every game listed above is worth a play (except Retro Game Challenge, I'm afraid - ugh), but here are some more:
Tokyo Beat Down: ace side-scrolling beat-'em-up in the Streets of Rage mould, with a great sense of humour
Ouendan 1 & 2: Probably the best games the DS has to offer, for reasons that have been picked apart on every other website on the internet, ever. Elite Beat Agents is destined to disappoint, however.
Illust Logic: Picross. If you don't like Picross, you're broken.
Rittai Picross: or 'Cube/3D' Picross. A bit more random and you'll have to make the odd logical leap, but never less than entertaining (and has anti-aliasing, fact fans).
Phoenix Wright/Apollo Justice Games: Utterly flawed nearly to the point of being broken, but so affectingly endearing that I wish I could play nothing but these games for all times
Kirby: Power Paintbrush: Fun little platformer, a good buy if you're keen to make use of the stylus, but tails off at the end.
Nervous Brickdown: WarioWare meets Breakout. Game quality varies, but this is one of the most underrated games ever, IMO. From the makers of Big Bang Mini.
Animal Crossing: born to be on DS. It seems like too much of a faff on Wii/GC
Sonic Rush: The only good Sonic game of the naughties. Watch out for the inferior sequel, Sonic Rush Adventure, although that's certainly not a bad game.
Chrono Trigger: Hey, guess what? You don't hate JRPGs after all! It's just that 95% of the ones on the market have been made by morons!
Peggle: Dual Shot: A bit of a comedown if you've played it on any other format, but it's Peggle and it's more than serviceable.
Honeycomb Beat: Tile-flipping fun. Such a small concept to cause such large hair loss.
Ninja Gaiden DS: Yeah, I know. I'm surprised too.
Space Invaders Extreme 2: Natch.
Bangai-O Spirits: Requires a lot of patience, but an infinitely rewarding game once it clicks.
Pic-Pic: Tragically obscure set of picross-y slitherlink-y puzzles. I wrote the world's first ever review of this game, fact fans (84%, NGamer, May 2007).
Soul Bubbles: The sort of action-puzzler you thought they didn't make anymore.
Namco Museum DS: The rest of the compilation can best be described as 'squalid', but it only costs a tenner or so, which is a laughably cheap price to pay for a copy of Pac-Man Vs (supports multiplayer with just a single cart).
The Castlevanias: None of them as good as Symphony of the Night, but to play that on PSP, you have to jump through fire-y hoops made out of used syringes, so what they hey.
Zelda: Phantom Hourglass: I think it's great, personally. Some people get a bit tired going back to the same dungeon again and again, but canny gamers will notice that their new powers allow them to cut through already-completed floors in seconds.
Trackmania DS: Don't listen to Stu. I bet he just wants all the TrackMania DS to himself.
One day, I'll start that gaming blog I've long promised myself, and do a 'Top 100 DS games' list, thereby crushing the myth that the DS has no good games on it.
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