Weird Official DS Games

 While the Wii's non-shovelware games were strange and off-putting, the DS' non-shovelware games were borderline insane.

The DS released at an interesting time, where Nintendo started it’s initiative to create games for “everyone” and also a time where game companies were becoming increasingly aware, and increasingly afraid, of mobile gaming becoming a reasonable competitor in the game market.

The funny thing about the DS compared to the Wii is that the DS was a handheld console, and at the time, the expectations for handheld games were low. Anything too crazy or too advanced just wasn’t feasible. While the Wii is known for it’s shovelware games, I’d argue that the DS is the shovelware console, as most of the games for that system were innately simpler than console games because it had to be. The DS couldn’t handle anything too complex.

Yet, at the same time, the DS was were game companies finally hit their stride with balancing handheld releases and how they differ from console releases, without it seeming too different. The DS is home to some of the most innovative games of it’s generation as well—like Ace Attorney, Professor Layton, 999, and The World Ends With You—making it a fascinating console to look back on.

Compared to the Wii with it’s motion controls, the “gimmick” of stylus controls really wasn’t that strange of a control-mechanic, especially with how similar and it is to mouse inputs based on precision. And as far as I’m aware, there weren’t as many games that used stylus-controls in egregious, imposing ways as motion controls were with a lot of Wii games. It just kinda forced developers to work around it, which made for logical implementations most of the time. Some series likely wouldn’t have gotten their start nor notoriety if it weren’t for the DS, like the Cooking Mama and Style Savvy series.

Then again, there’s also just a lot of garbage that released as well. Let’s look into the garbage that was official!

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Age of Empires: The Age of Kings (2006)

• Idk, something about this is so funny to me; Ah, yes, the DS, the ideal console for normally exclusive PC games to be played on the go. Like, Age of Empires. You can play Age of Empires on the go!! Isn’t that exactly what you’ve always wanted?

• Except not really, because they turned a real-time strategy game into a turn-based one, but the idea is there!

• Conceptually, not that flawed of a game, but there’s a game later in the list that makes this incredibly funnier.

Assassin’s Creed: Altair’s Chronicles (2008)

• Ah yes, Assassin’s Creed, the game series infamous for quick-time parkour sequences. Surely this would be a good idea for a DS game.

• I love how the reasoning for a lot of DS games existing is simply due to the fact that the DS was so accessible for all ages, so like why shouldn’t I make a spin-off game and release it on DS, even though it can’t be the same as the main series because the DS won’t be able to handle it?

• Watching gameplay footage of this, and like I can see the vision, but in the modern era, this looks like an old AppStore game purchasable for $2.

• But also, man, they really tried to make a 3D action adventure parkour game for the DS, huh? They really tried to do that. There were multiple Assassin’s Creed games for DS, by the way.

DK Jungle Climber (2007)

• I love that Donkey Kong in the title is stylized to DK; it feels like they didn’t really know if the name “Donkey Kong” would sell well. Or maybe they wanted to emphasize the weird era they were in. Either way, it feels very unofficial for an official game.

• The controls and style of the game feel like it should’ve been a Gameboy Advance game, like the sprite art and using the L and R buttons to control Donkey Kong feels like that.

• Which, funnily enough, it is technically a sequel to DK: King of Swing on GBA, so like if isn’t broke, don’t fix it, I guess.

• 8/10 from IGN is a crazy score, though, even for the time. Like let’s be so for real, there were better games that released in 2007. Probably, most likely.

Dynasty Warriors DS: Fighter’s Battle (2007)

• Sorry, a Dynasty Warriors on DS???

• You can imagine why this would be strange right, like it can’t be a hack and slash in the vein of a Warriors game, the 3DS could barely handle that!!!

• First impressions aside, it looks like a deck-builder instead of a full Warriors game, which makes sense in hindsight because a Warriors on DS sounds nightmarish.

• Though, the cards seem to be more like the characters that you use, instead of being actual attacks done through the cards ala Slay the Spire.

• So it’s like a very limited version of a Warriors game with like upwards of fifteen enemies max, and you still can still fight them in real time and gain control of the map to win like in a Warriors game.

• So it’s not a deck-builder at all. It’s just a tiny Warriors game. Huh. I think that might just be more impressive than anything. Or sad, depending on who you ask.

Golden Eye: 007 (2010)

• This is here for the same reasons as to why it was there on the Wii list, except I’d reason that this belongs here even more than on the Wii list.

• Yes, surely putting a co-op multiplayer shooter/adventure game, renowned for it’s couch co-op multiplayer from the N64, on the Nintendo DS, where everyone has their own device and it doesn’t really feel like you’re playing a multiplayer game despite being in the same vicinity, will be a good idea. Surely.

• And like I know those controls are ass, like any FPS on the DS is bound to be kinda ass because there’s only one (1) D-Pad, and the only way to move AND look around is to move with the D-Pad and look with the stylus.

• I guess if me and the boys are all suffering with these controls together, it might be less annoying and just dumb as hell.

Guilty Gear Dust Strikers (2007)

• A handheld fighting game isn’t too strange, but a fighting game on DS specifically? There just doesn’t seem to be enough buttons on the DS for a fighting game, let alone a comfortable enough way to hold it without your hands cramping.

• There’s a reason why Smash 3DS isn’t super popular and there’s like hundreds of copies of it at your local game store.

• It’s up to four fighters, and you can jump between the upper and lower screen to fight, which would’ve been sick as hell as a kid with a DS; any time they did that, it was incredibly cool.

• It’s kind of like a platform fighter, except you can’t really fall to your death, as far as I can tell. And there really isn’t anything interesting about the platforms; they’re just straight lines to jump between.

• So it’s like Smash, but worse. But consider, its one of the first Guilty Gear games to have mini games. Does that redeem it? Ehhh…

• Love that this can be shortened to Guilty Gear DS, they knew what they were doing. Unironically, I kinda want a physical copy of this real bad.

Guitar Hero: On Tour (2008)

• Sorry, I love how they did this game, it seems so unpractical.

• The add-on controls for the GBA slot is genuinely so funny, but strumming with that pick stylus just seems impractical.

• Ohhh, but at least there’s a wrist strap to keep your hand in place!

• Fundamentally, I know this shit makes your hand cramp like a motherfucker, maybe not on the OG DS, but for sure on the DS Lite.

• Regardless of how good of a port it is, it is so funny to me; we would do anything to play console games portably back then, huh?

Mario Party DS (2007)

• They really tried to put multiplayer games on DS and pretend local play was more well known and used. Or maybe it’s just that I was a loser kid who had no friends with a DS, so getting a Mario Party on DS wouldn’t have made sense to me.

• Funny as hell they added Lore to Mario Party for the single player campaign, but also holy shit, it sucks that they locked boards behind Lore.

• Structurally, there’s nothing wrong with this, the boards are unique, and apparently the mini games are fun, which is the Bare Minimum expectation for a Mario Party game.

Marvel Trading Card Game (2007)

• I’m not gonna claim I know jack shit about Marvel, never really been an interest of mine, but this is 100% someone’s favorite childhood game they completely forgot about, y’know? That’s the vibes this gives off.

• The era of Marvel before the movies and getting acquired by Disney is always so fascinating to me, like why did they make a trading card game? I guess that’s just the direction to take when you have a shit ton of characters that all have special abilities.

• Ohhhh, it’s just Magic: the Gathering. Like it’s literally just MTG with Marvel characters. Universes Beyond before Universes Beyond even existed.

• The gameplay of this looks boring as hell, like there aren’t any cool animations or voice lines to make it interesting as a video game, it’s just the card game but worse because you’re playing it alone with no real person to interact with.

Metroid Prime Hunters (2006)

• Since I’m apparently a Metroid reviewer now, I will likely have a review of this up once I finish it (not likely to be soon), but it is truly jank in a way that somehow completely wraps back around to being peak.

• The maps are small and repetitive, making it hard to tell where you’re going, but also somehow perfectly linear so that getting lost is hard. It’s such a strange experience.

• You kinda just go to a planet, traverse it in a straight line (more or less), grab a key item, walk back, have a boss fight, then rinse and repeat for like 5 planets (give or take).

• And the controls are weird on official hardware because you’re moving with the D-Pad, aiming with the touch-screen, and shooting with the L button, forcing your hands to be in a weird crab claw for most of the game. Hand cramping guaranteed if you play for longer than 30 minutes at a time.

• But apparently the multiplayer is fire, so I’ll give it at least that.

Need for Speed: Most Wanted (2005)

 

 

• Must I really explain why this is funny to me?

• This feels made for kids who saw their older brother’s play the console version and wanted their own version of the game to play.

• Oh, and it’s just structurally and fundamentally bad, gotcha. Like god awful graphics and shitty gameplay that barely looks functional, gotcha.

• Need for Speed but rated E for Everyone, by the way. That’s because the gameplay looks like this:

 

Pokemon Conquest (2012)

• I will take every opportunity possible to talk about this weird as hell Pokemon game that the Pokemon Company has presumably completely forgotten about.

• This was pitched to me as “Pokemon but Fire Emblem,” but in actuality, it’s more like “Pokemon but Final Fantasy Tactics if Final Fantasy Tactics was about a fascist.”

• They made a real-life historical figure into a video game character, and a Pokemon character at that. Wild as hell. This is some Hamilton bullshittery.

• The devastating part of this is that the gameplay is actually really unique and fun to play, like you get to use up to like six Pokemon at the same time in turn-based strategy, but also uses the type match-ups in Pokemon for added strategy.

• Also if you fumble on a generational level, you lose out on getting new Pokemon added to your team, like the people you fought were so devastated by how ass you were, they’ll decide to just fucking leave. And like, fair.

• I need to see someone Nuzlocke this, it would be really funny.

Pokemon Dash (2004)

• Pokemon Dash has always eluded me as a game collector because I would see it in game shops all the time and simply be baffled as to what it could be.

• Surely it isn’t a racing game but you play as Pikachu, right?

• But now actually looking at the game, and yeah, no, that’s exactly what it is.

• This baffles me in the same way that Sonic R baffles me, like foot-racing as a video game character does not seem appealing to me, and I can’t imagine what the development of that looks like.

• Please, for the love of god, just put the silly characters in karts, it simply won’t be as jank looking or feeling, please.

Populous DS (2008)

• I think this is funny in the sense that it’s a real-time strategy game, when neither Age of Empires or Civilization (two series highly known for their RTS games) couldn’t put an RTS game on DS and opted to make entirely new turn-based strategy games.

• What witchcraft does Populous have that AoE and Civ don’t??

Resident Evil Deadly Silence (2006)

• I love this, I think this is so funny. It’s funny in the same way that RE4 on Wii is funny, in that it just doesn’t make sense.

• I can’t understand how you would control this.

• This is also funny for the fact that RE Requiem was a pioneer of graphics and controls on the 3DS, truly like the peak of what the 3DS can handle, a full fledged RE game on 3DS, and then you look back to see what Capcom was doing with RE on the DS and you like kinda have to wince.

• It’s apparently just a remake of the original Resident Evil game for PS1, but like…why on DS? I know there were other remakes of RE1, but on DS? And not PSP? I guess you could just play the original PS1 RE1 on PSP, but still…

• I guess since it’s just RE1, the controls can’t be too confusing or strange since it originally had to work with the restraints of the PlayStation controller before DualShock, but you’re also working with the DS’ tiny ass screen which would seem rough in my eyes.

• Also, I love M-rated DS game, like of course it is, but the novelty is so funny to me. The DS is so fundamentally a “childhood console” in my mind that the idea that there’s games on it that a kid can’t play is strange as hell to me.

• I’m fairly certain if you were like 18-30 at the time, you just didn’t buy a DS. You probably got a PSP. And if you did, you had RE1 already on there. What is the point of this other than it being a novelty?

Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure (2008)

• My favorite part about making these lists is finding games I’ve never heard of and adding new things to my backlog, like I’ve never heard of this game but it’s apparently a remake of a PS1 game?

• Also, what’s up with the DS being a PS1 remake machine? Is it literally just because the PSP could just play PS1 games, and they needed something to compete with it? Or is it just circumstance?

• Essentially, it’s a JRPG but instead of cutscenes progressing the plot, there’s musical numbers instead. Takes the concept of Mario 3 being a play and expands upon it tenfold, we love to see it.

Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor (2009)

• The more I look into the DS, the more I realize that it truly was the perfect JRPG console, like why was there so many JRPGs on this single console? Why did so many long withstanding series move to DS or get ports to DS?

• Gonna be honest, I’ve never played a Shin Megami Tensei game in full, but trying to put one of those games on the DS and make it appealing to a broader audience is kinda funny to me.

• Because that’s essentially what this was. It is even somehow more anime-looking than any other SMT game I’ve seen.

• This is also essentially the plot of The World Ends With You, but as an SMT game. Clearly a really popular concept back then, where you get spirited into a game-world type scenario, but also you’re technically still existing in the real world, and thus participating in some kind of weird 4th Wall breaking game.

• Just play TWEWY man.

Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey (2009)

• If Devil Survivor was meant for a broader audience, Strange Journey was meant for the hardcore SMT fans, and I think that’s funny as hell given the cover art alone.

• This cover art is so fucking funny, and then you read the synopsis and realize that it’s a fully batshit insane game. It’s got dungeon explorer aspects on a DS screen, and I know that shit is jank as hell.

• I need to emphasize that I’ve never played a Shin Megami Tensei game, I don’t know what the series is about, but god, what are we doing.

• Sometimes I wonder if devs back then were like actively aware of how small the DS screens were, pre-DSiXL; like that shit was tiny.

• Love that it’s a mainline game though, like show someone this game and ask them what the fuck is Shin Megami Tensei, and I don’t think you’ll ever get a straight answer.

• I love how the synopsis sounds like a historical warfare game, and you look at gameplay, and it’s got all of the demons and anime characters of a typical Atlus game, and like I think that’s so funny.

Shining Force Feather (2009)

• Dude, they were just releasing whatever the hell on the DS.

• “It is the 20th entry in the Shining series” WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS SERIES

• That’s all man, I just need to know what the hell Shining Force is and why it persists throughout gaming history when I also like haven’t heard of the series before starting to collect games.

• I love when you see an old game that’s very clearly an anime game but because localizers in America were afraid that marketing it as an “anime” game wouldn’t sell well in the 90s, they created box art to represent how cool and sick as hell the game is in a generic art style, and then further on into the series’ life, you see it become more and more anime.

• Like how the hell is this in the same series as the Genesis’ Shining Force? I may never know, JRPGs take fucking forever to get through. Same series, by the way:

SNK vs Capcom: Card Fighters DS (2006)

• I can’t even be mad at how silly this seems because of how sick it is!!

• I do love it when devs try to make card-game based games on small ass screens, like the Pokemon TCG games on Gameboy, like idk man I can’t see the fucking cards.

• But also this does everything about porting a trading card game to a video game console right, compared to Marvel TCG, like there’s cool card art and animations, and an actual story to follow outside of just a trading card game; they peaked with this one, for sure.

• Also funny as hell that the majority of the section on this game on the Wikipedia page for it is about a game-breaking bug.

Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood (2008)

• A classic, frankly, when talking about weird ass DS releases.

• I love it whenever a Sonic developer decides that they need to make Sonic “dark,” and have a more “mature” plotline, like it’s Sonic man, you really don’t need to do all of that.

• And it’s so devastatingly funny to me that the creators lost a lot of their music files right before launch, so they had to frantically recreate it from memory. Like nightmarish situation, but resolved in the funniest game soundtracks known to history.

Super Mario 64 DS (2004)

• As one of the major release titles for the DS (if not the major release title), it definitely showcases the DS’ power, acting as the first way to play Mario 64 portably.

• Didn’t say it was a good way to play Mario 64 portably…

Viewtiful Joe: Double Trouble! (2005)

• I feel like Viewtiful Joe is one of those series you vaguely hear mention of in like gaming history videos about being incredibly unique and having an estranged release, but like you don’t ever hear people talk about actually playing it or wanting to play it.

• There’s four games in this series, by the way. This is the fourth entry, by the way.

• For all intents and purposes, it looks like an interesting game, but like, to get to this point, you’d have to really be a Viewtiful Joe fan, and I just don’t think those fans exist.

Viva Piñata: Pocket Paradise (2008)

• Do you ever have a moment when you remember a game you watched your dad play maybe once in your life, and it just kinda sticks in your mind because of the naming convention, only to find out that there were more games released in that series? And like you never looked into it because that thought never crossed your mind? That’s what I’m experiencing right now.

• I don’t even know what Viva Piñata is, outside of it being a game that my dad had on his Xbox 360 digital catalog. I actually don’t even think I’ve seen gameplay of it.

• Oh, it’s a lifesim made by Rare. What. I only have more questions now.

• This almost makes more sense than an Xbox 360 release, because lifesims thrived on DS, but what person bought an Xbox to play lifesims? Like truly, I’m more confused.

Warhammer 40K Squad Commander (2007)

• Dude, they made literally anything portable; who up playing Warhammer 40K on their Nintendo DS?

• Y’know, I don’t know anything about Warhammer 40K and frankly, I don’t care to learn, but it just doesn’t seem like the most ideal game to play on DS.

• Essentially the summary of most of these titles in this post: why is this even on DS in the first place?

You Don’t Know Jack (2011)

• I’ve seen this shit at my local game store, and it’s just so funny to me.

• “Party” “Game” on the Nintendo DS is like structurally such a funny concept to me, but what’s worse is that there’s online multiplayer.

• Like, I feel like the one redeeming factor of Jackbox games in general is that you get to play it with your friends and at least try to make them laugh with the format presented to you. You don’t get that satisfaction if you can’t even see the other person’s reactions.

• What’s worse than that is that there’s a single player. Playing You Don’t Know Jack with people you don’t know is one thing, sitting in your room alone trying to make funny quips to absolutely no one is a level of devastating and depressing that I can’t even fathom.

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And that’s about it! Nintendo’s seventh generation of gaming will forever be interesting as hell to look back on because of how gimmicky the consoles were, but also how third-party support handled the gimmicks, or even how first-party developers handled it. It’s like truly impressive how many games were released during that generation, and how much of it was slop even at the time.

Did you play any of these games? Which were your favorites? Did you find a new hidden gem amongst this list? Lemme know in the comments below!

Man, we’re finally done with the back-to-back-to-back release nightmare. I’m gonna go into hibernation until my next upload. My next post will be going live on 4/15 at 3 PM EST, which will be a retrospective on UNBEATABLE and it’s diversion of expectations, so stay tuned for that! I’m giving y’all fore-warning: it’s gonna have a lot of spoilers of the plot of UNBEATABLE, so you get two full weeks to buy and play the game (to the end). Writing about how a game masterfully diverts expectations kinda requires spoiling the ending of the game, so I highly recommend checking out the game before reading that post.

And as always, see you next time!