The Nintendo DS today is quite the sensation for Nintendo. Even in weeks where there are no major game releases, the machine outsells every other piece of gaming hardware week after week in Japan. Here in North America, stories of the DS being just as unavailable due to holiday sellouts as the brand-new Wii may not have been making headlines, but they were there.
Today, DS' power is a result of its killer software. Titles like New Super Mario Bros., Brain Age, Animal Crossing: Wild World and Nintendogs move scores of units to a wide swath of demographics. But there was a time when DS was nowhere near as attractive; a time when conventional media wisdom was that DS was a last-gasp effort in the face of Sony's unstoppable (and far, far sexier) PlayStation Portable.
Contrary to what a recent DS convert might think, though, this was actually a very interesting time to be a DS owner. It seemed Nintendo themselves were feeling the heat from Sony, and what resulted were a host of very interesting games that challenged the long-held notions of just how a game should be played. Many of these centered around the DS's touch screen; some used the microphone. Some made for great games in their own right, though some tended to fall flat in their ultimate execution. Most weren't terribly successful saleswise, especially by today's standards. But they were all very interesting, and at least a little of their influence can be seen in DS titles even today.
I'd like to take you on a little retrospective tour of some of the more important titles from that era. I still own copies of all these games; they hold a special place in my own heart. A few I had actually sold, then rebought from eBay or some such; they are often hard to find in stores these days, making room for the more successful comers. If you, too, are new to DS, you might want to check a few of these out. Some may have made greater impact than others on the DS software scene, but I think they're all worth taking a look at.
Released: March 14, 2005
Developer: Nintendo
Yoshi Touch & Go had its genesis in a DS technical demo on display at E3 2004, titled Balloon Trip DS. Baby Mario fell from the sky in this demo, and it fell to the player to draw paths of clouds for him to slide along, guiding him away from enemies and towards coins. Yoshi Touch & Go expanded on this, adding to the sky-dropping mechanic (relegated to the status of an intro) a side-scrolling level where Yoshi, carrying Baby Mario on his back, was always walking, and it was up to the player to keep the pair out of danger.
In addition to the player-drawn clouds, which not only provided paths for Baby Mario and Yoshi but could also corral threatening enemies or Yoshi himself (for a time), there were several other mechanics added. Drawing a circle around most enemies would encase them in a bubble and turn them into a coin which you could then toss at Yoshi or Baby Mario by swiping it away with the stylus. Bubbles—even empty ones—could also be tossed into the sky to knock coins out of the claws of passing Shy Guys. Tapping incoming projectiles (such as Spinies thrown by Lakitus, or ammunition from Snifits) would make them disappear in a puff of smoke. You even had limited control of the always-in-motion Yoshi; tapping him would make him jump (and again to flutter-jump), and tapping anywhere else on the touch screen would make him toss one of his supply of trademark eggs. By time you've gone several thousand yards in Marathon mode, you're juggling almost all these mechanics constantly to try to stay ahead of the increasing barrage of threats.
This core gameplay was applied to four different game modes which made Touch & Go sound perhaps more like a puzzle game than a platformer. And indeed, the title didn't look like any Yoshi platformer anyone had ever seen; while the different scenarios Baby Mario fell through and Yoshi trudged through were indeed lovingly crafted challenges, they were instead randomly presented to the player in lieu of a traditional level structure, asking players to go for high scores instead of sending them on a mission to beat the ultimate boss. This decision seemed to hamper the acceptance of an otherwise highly inventive and fun game, which was rather unfortunate. Another gameplay decision which drove even the most hardcore of Touch & Go players nuts was the single life Yoshi had: it was highly frustrating to have a long play session ended by a single errant enemy.
None of this changed the fact that guiding Yoshi through these levels was just plain fun, especially competing against a group of friends for high scores in the popular Marathon mode. To this day, I still pull out Touch & Go from time to time to see if I've still got what it takes to get myself up on that high score list. I don't, but playing it is still a lot of fun. There's just something about playing a game so deceptively complex like this entirely with pen strokes that keeps me coming back, no matter what else is coming out on the DS.
Released: November 16, 2004 (launch title)
Developer: Sega (Sonic Team)
One look at the cover and you perhaps see why Feel the Magic: XY♥XX didn't exactly do so well among the DS launch titles: it almost completely managed to miss its target audience. What's contained within isn't a game for girls at all, but rather an irreverently packaged set of crazy games tied together with a wacky story, all only possible on the DS. I recall that leading up to the DS launch, myself, I wasn't even giving Feel the Magic a second look until I read more about it online. I eventually opted to get it alongside Super Mario 64 DS, and didn't regret it one bit.
As it really is a collection of minigames, the best way to describe it is simply to list some of the more memorable games within. On your way to the finale, you'd be doing the following:
Among those who did pay attention to the title, a lot of people seemed to be put off by it being "just a collection of minigames" (the recent success of the Wii version of Rayman Raving Rabbids suggests that might not be a concern today). They were probably missing the point: these were some of the freshest, most fun minigames ever packaged up. And if that wasn't enough, extra modes were added for completionists that let them play the game again with higher difficulty, go for perfect runs with no losses, and hunt for "hidden rabbits" in the minigame intro scenes. Maybe it was that there wasn't much else on the DS at the time, but I personally didn't let up till I'd accomplished everything the game had to offer.
Despite the relatively poor sales, Sega did actually put out a sequel (The Rub Rabbits) which one-upped Feel the Magic on almost every level. And that sequel did even worse.
There's just no justice in this world.
Released: April 26, 2005
Developer: Namco
Shigeru Miyamoto himself liked to call attention to this little gem from Namco when talking about the possibilities DS offered to developers. The idea had apparently been in the works for some time: a game based on drawing Pac-Man, who would then come to life. Only problem was that Namco had nowhere to put the idea—until the DS came along.
Pac-Pix's premise is fairly simple: chomp all the ghosts in each level with Pac-Men that you've drawn on the screen. Line, line, curve, let it go—and Pac-Man charges across the screen. On each level, you've got a limited number of the little yellow guys available to you, so you must keep them from running off the screen by drawing walls that redirect them in a different direction when hit. As you progress, you'll find yourself confronting switches that open barriers for a limited time, ghosts that can only be chomped from behind, and other obstacles. Later in the game, you'll gain the ability to draw arrows that fire when you let them go, and bombs that explode when your drawn fuse burns up; both of which will of course be matched with appropriate puzzles. Managing multiple Pac-Men through all this and trying to steer one to get a high combo score by chomping multiple ghosts rapidly becomes frantic sketching fun. Top it all off with boss encounters, played in a similar fashion, and I had a certifiably addicting time with the whole package.
Where Pac-Pix began to fail is that it didn't seem to know when to quit. I had actually set out at one time to achieve all S ranks in the game, but abandoned that plan rather quickly when it became evident that it'd be more frustrating than fun in the higher levels, because there was simply too much going on in the tiny touch screen. "That's because you're not hardcore," you'll tell me, but the real problem was that Pac-Man would often unpredictably get trapped between unchompable obstacles, and the game ejects him from the screen when this happens—something you don't want to happen if you're trying for an S rank score.
If you put this aside, though, simply playing through Pac-Pix is a joy. It was a truly innovative stroke on Namco's part, and probably one of the most interesting things to happen to the Pac-Man franchise in a long time.
Released: June 13, 2005
Developer: HAL Laboratories
The little pink puffball's first appearance on the Nintendo DS was a truly inspired one—and ended up being one of the best-received out of the titles profiled here. Kirby: Canvas Curse showcased a truly unique style of gameplay only possible on the DS.
It was a "real platformer", with a franchise-traditional level structure and even Kirby's trademark copy powers, but it was one the world had not seen before. Kirby had been deprived of arms and legs, and so it was up to the player, possessor of the magic paintbrush, to draw rainbow paths on the screen for the now completely-round Kirby to roll along. Special moves included Kirby rocketing out of a loop or being tapped to dash forward, both of which could be used to knock out enemies and steal their abilities (if any). Enemies could also be defeated by tapping them to stun them and simply rolling into them—and the stun mechanic was used to great success in some of the gauntlets Kirby had to run. The drawn rainbows were not just confined to giving Kirby a path to follow but were also made use of to block incoming fire.
On top of the satisfying main game, Canvas Curse had a host of unlockable challenges including the ability to play main game levels in time trial and ink trial modes (the latter ranking you on how little you used the magic paintbrush) and a set of challenge levels featuring the same type of trials. Canvas Curse was quite a satisfying experience all around, and many still fondly remember it as one of the DS's early successes. I'd sold my original copy off some time ago, but reacquired a copy thanks to a trade I did with a friend, and playing through it again, a year later, convinced me the game is simply timeless—playing no small part in inspiring this very retrospective and getting me thinking about how much fun it would be to see the game revisited sometime in a sequel.
Sadly, it seems Nintendo thinks Canvas Curse was a one-shot wonder: instead of eventually offering a sequel, it instead went back to the old Kirby platformer formula with Kirby Squeak Squad in 2006. Canvas Curse's unique gameplay will definitely be missed.
Released: June 27, 2005
Developer: Q Entertainment
Meteos first flew onto my radar because it was the first title offered over-the-air in downloadable demo form. An amateur flash demo offered a look at the basic gameplay, and I was hooked. I needed this title.
Meteos, the brainchild of Super Smash Bros.' Masahiro Sakurai, is a game that can really only be done on the DS. The notion is that single blocks of various types are falling into the playfield well, and the player must use his stylus to slide them around, arranging them into rows or columns of three-to-five of the same type to make them fire, incinerating them into faceless black bricks and launching them and any blocks atop them into the air. Here, physics comes into play: your matches only provide you with a certain amount of thrust, and if you don't have enough thrust, the blocks will fall right back down again. (Different boards that you play on will have different physics to them, giving you a slightly different challenge in each one.)
To solve this problem, you have a couple of strategies at your disposal. First, if you continue to make matches before the incinerated blocks revert to normal blocks, you'll combo up—increasing both your score and the power of your thrusts. Second, you don't have even have to wait for the blocks to settle before making more matches; you can grab them and slide them around in mid-air, if you're fast enough. I learned to "juggle" large stacks like this for quite a long time, and it's very satisfying. Simply put, it was the coolest combo mechanism I'd ever had the joy of playing with in any puzzle game.
Meteos suffered a bit from one criticism I found hard to substantiate: that the game could be broken by simply madly scribbling on the touch screen. Since matches weren't made when you lifted your stylus but rather immediately when a tile was slid into a position that made a match, misfires were rather common if I wasn't paying the strictest of attention. I'm hard-pressed to say the game was actually broken, though; Meteos sped up rather quickly (rare was the match that lasted more than five minutes) and you needed to stay constantly on your feet when the blocks started falling faster.
Meteos actually had a sequel of sorts released recently: Meteos: Disney Magic. Instead of being published by Nintendo in its original form, the game is now Disney-published and Disney-themed throughout. Thanks to a handful of gameplay changes, it presents an interestingly different experience. Time will tell if the Disneyification is enough to get it in the hands of a wider audience than other titles in this retrospective managed.
Today, DS' power is a result of its killer software. Titles like New Super Mario Bros., Brain Age, Animal Crossing: Wild World and Nintendogs move scores of units to a wide swath of demographics. But there was a time when DS was nowhere near as attractive; a time when conventional media wisdom was that DS was a last-gasp effort in the face of Sony's unstoppable (and far, far sexier) PlayStation Portable.
Remember this beast? The DS, circa E3 2004
I'd like to take you on a little retrospective tour of some of the more important titles from that era. I still own copies of all these games; they hold a special place in my own heart. A few I had actually sold, then rebought from eBay or some such; they are often hard to find in stores these days, making room for the more successful comers. If you, too, are new to DS, you might want to check a few of these out. Some may have made greater impact than others on the DS software scene, but I think they're all worth taking a look at.
Yoshi Touch & Go
Developer: Nintendo
Yoshi Touch & Go had its genesis in a DS technical demo on display at E3 2004, titled Balloon Trip DS. Baby Mario fell from the sky in this demo, and it fell to the player to draw paths of clouds for him to slide along, guiding him away from enemies and towards coins. Yoshi Touch & Go expanded on this, adding to the sky-dropping mechanic (relegated to the status of an intro) a side-scrolling level where Yoshi, carrying Baby Mario on his back, was always walking, and it was up to the player to keep the pair out of danger.
In addition to the player-drawn clouds, which not only provided paths for Baby Mario and Yoshi but could also corral threatening enemies or Yoshi himself (for a time), there were several other mechanics added. Drawing a circle around most enemies would encase them in a bubble and turn them into a coin which you could then toss at Yoshi or Baby Mario by swiping it away with the stylus. Bubbles—even empty ones—could also be tossed into the sky to knock coins out of the claws of passing Shy Guys. Tapping incoming projectiles (such as Spinies thrown by Lakitus, or ammunition from Snifits) would make them disappear in a puff of smoke. You even had limited control of the always-in-motion Yoshi; tapping him would make him jump (and again to flutter-jump), and tapping anywhere else on the touch screen would make him toss one of his supply of trademark eggs. By time you've gone several thousand yards in Marathon mode, you're juggling almost all these mechanics constantly to try to stay ahead of the increasing barrage of threats.
None of this changed the fact that guiding Yoshi through these levels was just plain fun, especially competing against a group of friends for high scores in the popular Marathon mode. To this day, I still pull out Touch & Go from time to time to see if I've still got what it takes to get myself up on that high score list. I don't, but playing it is still a lot of fun. There's just something about playing a game so deceptively complex like this entirely with pen strokes that keeps me coming back, no matter what else is coming out on the DS.
Feel the Magic: XY♥XX
Developer: Sega (Sonic Team)
One look at the cover and you perhaps see why Feel the Magic: XY♥XX didn't exactly do so well among the DS launch titles: it almost completely managed to miss its target audience. What's contained within isn't a game for girls at all, but rather an irreverently packaged set of crazy games tied together with a wacky story, all only possible on the DS. I recall that leading up to the DS launch, myself, I wasn't even giving Feel the Magic a second look until I read more about it online. I eventually opted to get it alongside Super Mario 64 DS, and didn't regret it one bit.
As it really is a collection of minigames, the best way to describe it is simply to list some of the more memorable games within. On your way to the finale, you'd be doing the following:
- Make a man regurgitate goldfish he'd accidentally swallowed by pushing them up and out of his stomach with strokes of the stylus.
- Defeat giant otherworldly candles by firing breaths from a row of people at them with swipes of the stylus. Blowing into the mic yourself gets everyone to exhale at once.
- Bowl a man rolled up into a ball across a busy street to knock over folks waiting for the bus, by picking him up and swiping with the stylus.
- Color graffiti on a wall with spray paint (directed by the stylus), making sure not to get hit by people jumping down off the wall.
- Flick scorpions off a girl with a stylus before they bite her. Don't actually touch her, though...
- Battle a giant robot. Deflect its incoming missiles with well-placed taps on their heads, and fire back by slicing at it with stylus strokes at its weak point.
Despite the relatively poor sales, Sega did actually put out a sequel (The Rub Rabbits) which one-upped Feel the Magic on almost every level. And that sequel did even worse.
There's just no justice in this world.
Pac-Pix
Developer: Namco
Shigeru Miyamoto himself liked to call attention to this little gem from Namco when talking about the possibilities DS offered to developers. The idea had apparently been in the works for some time: a game based on drawing Pac-Man, who would then come to life. Only problem was that Namco had nowhere to put the idea—until the DS came along.
Pac-Pix's premise is fairly simple: chomp all the ghosts in each level with Pac-Men that you've drawn on the screen. Line, line, curve, let it go—and Pac-Man charges across the screen. On each level, you've got a limited number of the little yellow guys available to you, so you must keep them from running off the screen by drawing walls that redirect them in a different direction when hit. As you progress, you'll find yourself confronting switches that open barriers for a limited time, ghosts that can only be chomped from behind, and other obstacles. Later in the game, you'll gain the ability to draw arrows that fire when you let them go, and bombs that explode when your drawn fuse burns up; both of which will of course be matched with appropriate puzzles. Managing multiple Pac-Men through all this and trying to steer one to get a high combo score by chomping multiple ghosts rapidly becomes frantic sketching fun. Top it all off with boss encounters, played in a similar fashion, and I had a certifiably addicting time with the whole package.
If you put this aside, though, simply playing through Pac-Pix is a joy. It was a truly innovative stroke on Namco's part, and probably one of the most interesting things to happen to the Pac-Man franchise in a long time.
Kirby: Canvas Curse
Developer: HAL Laboratories
The little pink puffball's first appearance on the Nintendo DS was a truly inspired one—and ended up being one of the best-received out of the titles profiled here. Kirby: Canvas Curse showcased a truly unique style of gameplay only possible on the DS.
It was a "real platformer", with a franchise-traditional level structure and even Kirby's trademark copy powers, but it was one the world had not seen before. Kirby had been deprived of arms and legs, and so it was up to the player, possessor of the magic paintbrush, to draw rainbow paths on the screen for the now completely-round Kirby to roll along. Special moves included Kirby rocketing out of a loop or being tapped to dash forward, both of which could be used to knock out enemies and steal their abilities (if any). Enemies could also be defeated by tapping them to stun them and simply rolling into them—and the stun mechanic was used to great success in some of the gauntlets Kirby had to run. The drawn rainbows were not just confined to giving Kirby a path to follow but were also made use of to block incoming fire.
Sadly, it seems Nintendo thinks Canvas Curse was a one-shot wonder: instead of eventually offering a sequel, it instead went back to the old Kirby platformer formula with Kirby Squeak Squad in 2006. Canvas Curse's unique gameplay will definitely be missed.
Meteos
Developer: Q Entertainment
Meteos first flew onto my radar because it was the first title offered over-the-air in downloadable demo form. An amateur flash demo offered a look at the basic gameplay, and I was hooked. I needed this title.
Meteos, the brainchild of Super Smash Bros.' Masahiro Sakurai, is a game that can really only be done on the DS. The notion is that single blocks of various types are falling into the playfield well, and the player must use his stylus to slide them around, arranging them into rows or columns of three-to-five of the same type to make them fire, incinerating them into faceless black bricks and launching them and any blocks atop them into the air. Here, physics comes into play: your matches only provide you with a certain amount of thrust, and if you don't have enough thrust, the blocks will fall right back down again. (Different boards that you play on will have different physics to them, giving you a slightly different challenge in each one.)
To solve this problem, you have a couple of strategies at your disposal. First, if you continue to make matches before the incinerated blocks revert to normal blocks, you'll combo up—increasing both your score and the power of your thrusts. Second, you don't have even have to wait for the blocks to settle before making more matches; you can grab them and slide them around in mid-air, if you're fast enough. I learned to "juggle" large stacks like this for quite a long time, and it's very satisfying. Simply put, it was the coolest combo mechanism I'd ever had the joy of playing with in any puzzle game.
Meteos actually had a sequel of sorts released recently: Meteos: Disney Magic. Instead of being published by Nintendo in its original form, the game is now Disney-published and Disney-themed throughout. Thanks to a handful of gameplay changes, it presents an interestingly different experience. Time will tell if the Disneyification is enough to get it in the hands of a wider audience than other titles in this retrospective managed.