The Nintendo DS Thread (NDS) - THE LIST

[Skykid]

Huge clean up and categorisation. Let me know if there are any probs in the placements etc.

Nintendo DS: THE LIST





Nintendo DS:

~ Shmups ~
Ketsui: Death Label
Space Invaders Extreme 2
Nanostray
Nanostray 2
Geometry Wars : Galaxies


~ Action ~
Contra 4
Mega Man Zero Collection
MegaMan ZX
MegaMan ZX Advent
Legend of Kage 2
Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow
Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin
Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia
Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars
Aliens Infestation
Super Princess Peach
Monster Tale
Ninja Gaiden
Kirby Canvas Curse
Kirby Mass Attack
Kirby Superstar Ultra
Dragon Quest: Rocket Slime Adventures
Solatorobo: Red the Hunter
Retro Game Challenge
Sonic Colors
Sonic Rush
Sonic Rush Adventure
Metal Slug 7
Dragon's Lair
Impossible Mission
Yoshi's Island 2
Soul Bubbles
Metroid Prime Pinball
Thor: God of Thunder
Batman: The Brave and the Bold

~ Puzzle/Action ~
Trauma Center: Under the Knife
Trauma Center 2 / Kyuukyuu Kyuumei Caduceus2
Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective
Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure
Meteos
Mr Driller: Drill Spirits
Doki Doki Majo Shinpan (JP text)
Picross DS
Picross 3D
Tetris DS
Bangaio Spirits
N+



~ Rhythm Action ~
Ontamarama
Rhythm Tengoku Gold
Quendan
Quendan 2
Elite Beat Agents
Rhythm Heaven DS
KORG DS-10 PLUS

~ Fighting Games ~
Jump Ultimate Stars
Bleach
Dragon Ball Z: Bukuu Ressen

~ Racing ~
Mario Kart DS
Ridge Racer DS
Trackmania Turbo
Ferrari Challenge
Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing

~ Survival Horror ~
Nanashi no Gemu (JP only w/text)

~ Text Adventures ~
999: 9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors
Gyakuten Saiban (Ace Attorney)
Gyakuten Saiban 2 (Ace Attorney 2)
Gyakuten Saiban 3 (Ace Attorney 3)
Gyakuten Saiban 4 (Ace Attorney: Apollo Justice)
Gyakuten Kenji (Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth)
Gyakuten Kenji 2 (JP Text)
Jake Hunter: Detective Story
Theresia
Hotel Dusk

~ RPG ~
Soma Bringer (JP only, but an English patch is available)
Dragon Quest V-VI
Final Fantasy Tactics A2
Radiant Historia
Knights in the Nightmare
Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume
Chrono Trigger
The World Ends With You
Infinite Space
Rondo of Swords
Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor
Rune Factory 2
Rune Factory 3

~ Action RPG ~
Okamiden
Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story
Zelda: Phantom Hourglass
Zelda: Spirit Tracks

~ Strategy ~
Advance Wars: Dual Strike
Harvest Moon DS Cute
Lost Magic
Anno: Create a New World
Zombie Daisuke (JP text)

~ Classic Dungeon Crawlers ~
Etrian Odyssey
Etrian Odyssey 2
Etrian Odyssey 3
The Dark Spire
Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey

~ Roguelikes ~
Shiren the Wanderer DS 1,2,4,5 (only 1 is in English; 2 has a translation patch; 4 & 5 have English wikis)
Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Series
Izuna
Izuna 2
Disgaea (Item Dungeon Mode)



DSi Ware:

Shantae: Risky's Revenge (Action)
X-Scape
Mighty Flip Champs
Art Style Pictobits
Metal Torrent (shmup)
Pinball Pulse: The Ancients Beckon
Mr. Driller Drill 'Till You Drop
Aura Aura Climber



Homebrew:

POWDER (Roguelike)
Angband (Roguelike)
FAAngband (Roguelike)
Oangband (Roguelike)
NetHack DS (Roguelike)

[KAI]

Space Invaders Extreme 2
Gyakuren Saiban/Kenji series
Trauma Center 2 / Kyuukyuu Kyuumei Caduceus2
Kyokugen Dasshutsu 9 Jikan 9 Nin 9 no Tobira / 999: 9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors
Ontamarama
Meteos
MegaMan ZX
MegaMan ZX Advent

[moonblood]

Love the DS. This Neogaf thread is a great start with lots of screenshots

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=222049

[CMoon]

So should this be merged with the old thread?

http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=42268

Also...

http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=30479

Edit: Still amazed at how many titles there are on this console I want to play...or replay for that matter. I really like the 3DS so far, but just don't know if it can manage as much greatness as the DS.

[Jonathan Ingram]

999: 9 Hours 9 Persons 9 Doors
Advance Wars: Dual Strike
Soma Bringer(JP only, but an English patch is available)
Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow
Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia
Dragon Quest V-VI
Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective
Final Fantasy Tactics A2(good gameplay with garbage story)
Radiant Historia
Knights in the Nightmare(also on PSP)
Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars(also on PSP and iOS)
Rune Factory 2-3
The World Ends with You
Anno: Create a New World
Aliens Infestation
Zombie Daisuke(JP only)
Tetris DS
Theresia

[Skykid]

^ That's a great list. I haven't heard of a lot of these.

I'm wondering about some action stuff as opposed to more RPG's though. Obscure actioners would be really appreciated too.

Has anyone played Supah Princess Peach or Shantae: RR?

[BrianC]

^ That's a great list. I haven't heard of a lot of these.

I'm wondering about some action stuff as opposed to more RPG's though. Obscure actioners would be really appreciated too.

Has anyone played Supah Princess Peach or Shantae: RR?

Shantae Risky's Revenge is good stuff, but it's only on DSiWare. Wonderboy-ish game with some Metroid elements (beating the game faster unlocks different ending photos). If you are interested in DSiWare as well as regular DS games, I definitely recommend X-Scape. It's a sequel to the GB b/w unfilled polygon game, X. It's a mission based, 3D style, tank game with flying corridor levels and free roam areas. The tank can also turn into a flying craft for flight mode. It's kind of Star Fox-ish and was done by Q-Games (not to be confused with Q? Entertainment), Dylan Cuthburt's company.

I like the DS Ninja Gaiden quite a bit, though the game uses the stylus rather than button controls.

[CStarFlare]

Harvest Moon DS Cute is probably my most played DS game. It's got tons to do, great if you like Harvest Moon.

[BrianC]

If you don't have them on GBA, all four Mega Man Zero games are in one cart for DS with the Mega Man Zero Collection. It also includes unlockable cards for Mega Man Zero 3 to simulate the e-reader cards that were only in the JP GBA version of the game.

[STG]

To add to the awesome recommendations above:

Ouendan 1 & 2, both essential games.

[louisg]

I just got Rhythm Heaven DS. I played the Wii one to death, and so if this is half as good as that one, I can recommend it

[iconoclast]

^ Ouendan 1 & 2 are still the best games on the platform imo. Other than that, I also liked:

Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia (Dawn of Sorrow is decent too, Portrait of Ruin sucks)
Trauma Center: Under the Knife (tried the sequel, thought it was boring)
Mario Kart DS (still the best in the series)
Ghost Trick, 999, Ace Attorney (not particularly great games, but they have entertaining stories)
SMT Devil Survivor
Advance Wars: Dual Strike
Picross DS and Picross 3D
Rhythm Tengoku Gold (decent rhythm/mini-game collection thing)

Never been a big fan of the DS though.

[Friendly]

Ghost Trick [..] (not particularly great games, but they have entertaining stories)

What is wrong with you? Ghost Trick is fantastic in every regard (level design, art, music, story).

Portrait of Ruin sucks

While it's not quite as good as the other two DS Castlevanias, it certainly doesn't "suck".

[BrianC]

Portrait of Ruin sucks

While it's not quite as good as the other two DS Castlevanias, it certainly doesn't "suck".

Kirby does suck, though Literally. I highly recommend both Mass Attack and Canvas Curse

I also recommend Elite Beat Agents. No Japanese music like Ouendan, but still a lot of fun.

[iconoclast]

Ghost Trick does have excellent presentation, but the puzzles are nothing special. They are fun to solve of course, but they're not interesting enough to go through more than once. And in my view, if a game isn't worth playing more than once, it's not great.

I haven't played Portrait of Ruin in years and I can't remember a whole lot about it, but I do know that I did not like it one bit. It's a bad game full of bland stages, mostly-boring boss fights, bad art and awful music. Edit: Actually, the OST isn't that bad. I think my hatred of the circus theme that plays during the Nation of Fools made me disregard the soundtrack as a whole.

[Drum]

Kirby Canvas Curse and especially Mass Attack are awesome games.

Ghost Trick does have excellent presentation, but the puzzles are nothing special. They are fun to solve of course, but they're not interesting enough to go through more than once. And in my view, if a game isn't worth playing more than once, it's not great.

They're fucking puzzles, of course they're not going to be fun once they've been solved. Nobody gives a shit about your arbitrary rules for determining greatness - they're poorly thought-out nonsense.

[iconoclast]

They're fucking puzzles, of course they're not going to be fun once they've been solved.

Dunno about that. The Adventures of Lolo games are fun to play through more than once because they're designed to be challenging puzzle games first and foremost. Sure, you might not want to play one of them over and over, but they're still fun to revist every once in a while because the puzzles are the main focus of the game. Ghost Trick, on the other hand, is more focused on having an interesting story rather than interesting puzzles. The game is not worth playing for the puzzles alone.


A good comparison would be Nier. It's competent as an action-RPG, but the story, music, world, etc. are what make it worth playing. Not the portion that's actually a game.

[BrianC]

Kirby Canvas Curse and especially Mass Attack are awesome games.

Mass Attack isn't only awesome on its own, some of its mini games are awesome too. I love Kirby's Brawl Ball and the shmup.

[RNGmaster]

The DS and 3DS are, IMO, the best portable consoles ever made. I agree with Jonathan's list but I'd also suggest:

Infinite Space
An SRPG centered around spaceship customization. it has a fucking huge amount of content.

Kirby Superstar Ultra
You know what you're getting yourself into.

Okamiden
An actually competent successor to Okami (sadly not a direct sequel though). It holds up better on the transition to a small screen than the DS Zelda games do.

Retro Game Challenge (CX is better but JP-only)
A bunch of fun retro demake-style games including a Star Soldier clone and a Ninja Gaiden clone. Lacks depth but very entertaining and challenging.

SMT: Strange Journey
Opinions are divided about this game. I loathe the level design but it succeeds at capturing the intensely frustrating nature of early SMT dungeon crawlers. Demon fusion doesn't go as smoothly as in Nocturne or P3/4 but there's a lot of diversity in terms of builds. Shame that at the end it comes down to spamming Jihad.

Sonic Colors
For a modern Sonic game it's actually quite good. Uses the dual screen very well. It's an ideal game for speedrunning.

Nanashi no Gemu is also p damn cool but it's JP only.

The Korg DS-10 is a pretty felxible synthesizer cart for your DS and a good way to get introduced to electronic music production. It's not a game, though.

[BrianC]

The Korg DS-10 is a pretty felxible synthesizer cart for your DS and a good way to get introduced to electronic music production. It's not a game, though.

There's a plus version of this with added DSi features.

[guigui]

After having spent lots and lots of hours on every kind of games on my DS, I must say I was really surprised by how addictive 999 9 hours 9 people 9 doors is.
Try it out if you like reading.

[Skykid]

I just had a look at Aliens: infestation that JI recommended on YouTube. Didn't know it was Wayforward. Looks quite decent actually, the marines seems pretty limber (I'm sure I spotted a marine crawling backwards while firing) and with a similar vibe to Alien 3's search and destroy map/door navigation. Might check it out (was surprised it was in 2D as well.)

[null1024]

Okamiden
An actually competent successor to Okami (sadly not a direct sequel though). It holds up better on the transition to a small screen than the DS Zelda games do.

Sonic Colors
For a modern Sonic game it's actually quite good. Uses the dual screen very well. It's an ideal game for speedrunning.

The Korg DS-10 is a pretty felxible synthesizer cart for your DS and a good way to get introduced to electronic music production. It's not a game, though.

Okamiden is fantastic and I recommend it wholeheartedly.

I'd recommend Rush and Rush Adventure [shame about the sailing] 100x more than Colors DS. Rush gets a weak recommend, the level design has horrible gaping flaws at times, but it flows quite well otherwise and feels right. Colors DS has some fairly weak level and boss design, especially compared to Rush Adventure.

Also, Korg DS-10 is really nice, except a bit limited in terms of polyphony. DS-10+ fixes some things, but only on a DSi or 3DS [thanks to the increased CPU speed of the DSi]. Good for hammering out a beat on the go.

[BulletMagnet]

Here's my obligatory Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure recommendation.

I also like to name-drop Soul Bubbles as a good candidate when you feel like something more relaxing.

So should this be merged with the old thread?

Yeah, it probably should, but this one's already gaining a bit of traction, so it appears people aren't yet tired of recommending stuff for the system, heh.

[Moniker]

A few that haven't been mentioned:

Metal Slug 7
Dragon Quest: Rocket Slime Adventures (highly recommended)
Rondo of Swords (Unique SRPG)
Etrian Odyssey 1-3
Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story
Yoshi's Island 2
Zelda: Spirit Tracks (way better than Phantom Hourglass; I loved it, but YMMV)
Metroid Prime Pinball
Chrono Trigger (lots of new features over the SNES version)
Shiren the Wanderer DS 1,2,4,5 (only 1 is in English, but 2 and possibly others have translation patches)
Pokemon Mystery Dungeon games are also apparently quite good once you get through the BS story parts and can enter the true roguelike dungeons.

For homebrew:
POWDER (awesome roguelike; a sort of streamlined NetHack - highly recommended)
Angband, FAAngband, Oangband DS (Was in a playable, if not ideal state a few years back, haven't checked in in awhile)
NetHack DS (very well done, once you set up your keybindings properly)

[Skykid]

Another shout for Chrono Trigger, perhaps the best of all localisations (rewritten) with all the PS version's animated cut scenes but none of the loading times.

Only Caveat is DSi XL required to get the best from the visuals.

Good to hear positivity for Spirit Tracks, I might need to go for that after all. P.Hourglass was just... bad, at least by Zelda standards. Only Zelda game I ever failed to finish, by the 50% mark I just lost all inspiration.

[manatworks]

The DS and 3DS are, IMO, the best portable consoles ever made. I agree with Jonathan's list but I'd also suggest:


Nanashi no Gemu is also p damn cool but it's JP only.

there's an english patch floating around for a while http://www.ds-scene.net/?s=viewtopic&id=4008

also, i never play this but can't resist to put it here

[BrianC]

DSiWare recommendations:

-Mighty Flip Champs (fun puzzler with good use of both screens and some killer music)
-Art Style Pictobits (nice puzzle game where you form pictures by making matches)
-Metal Torrent (fun bullet mayhem shmup and not much like it on DS)
-Pinball Pulse: The Ancients Beckon (from developers that worked on Pro Pinball and Metroid Prime Pinball. Nice physics and table design. Good stuff)

I also like Mr. Driller Drill 'Till You Drop, which has a good amount of content for 5 dollars, but is missing stuff from the EU/JP versions of Mr. Driller Drill Spirits. However, it seems to be a different game, though the amount of rehashed content from previous games makes it hard to tell. Not sure if I can outright recommend, but the game is just so addictive and it's nice to have an on the go version without putting a cart in.

[RNGmaster]

Best thing on DSiware in Shantae: Risky's Revenge. No contest. Metal Torrent is cool too.

[BrianC]

Best thing on DSiware in Shantae: Risky's Revenge. No contest. Metal Torrent is cool too.

I don't know. I would say X-Scape is up there too. I actually beat Risky's Revenge on iOS, but, even with the higher price, I would definitely recommend getting the DSiWare version over it since it is the same game with better controls. It was definitely good enough for me to double dip.

Is the Sonic Collection for DS recommended? I heard emulation isn't perfect, but it sounds much better than that terrible GBA port. I also heard it's DSi enhanced and runs better on DSi and 3DS.