💌Like retro gaming news? Join our free newsletter to receive a weekly round-up from our team of nerds.
Handhelds have always been one of our greatest passions. Some of our earliest memories were with the Game Boy DMG and the Game Gear, eating through AA batteries like some sort of
I personally liked the GBA SP better than any other handheld and I was not a fan of the DS at all. The only positive of the DS for me was that it was relatively easy to write homebrew games for (though not as easy as the GBA).
There’s a lot I love about the DS but it suffered immensely from the gimmick problem. Games that had no business being touch focused were forced into it. Zelda was probably the worst example, but the metroid game that used it for an fps was also up there.
I love the DS for my nostalgia of it, but any replaying of it is as uncomfortable as the wii
I thought Metroid did it pretty well. Hunters at least, not sure if there was another you might be talking about.
Both are good examples, but the one that probably bothered me the most was Dawn of Sorrow. The castlevania game that would force crappy stylus patterns to finish off a boss, but otherwise had no touch usage. I swear I had to kill some of the later bosses 4-5 times because of the touch not working right.
I mean, at the time it was not a competition at first. I loved the gba, then the gba sp even more.
And when the DS (grey first model) came out, imo the games were a dry spell for at least a year!
Anyhow, given the opportunity I would love to bring you closer to the DS games catalogue and I am very convinced I could bring you to change your mind.
Most times I’ve seen the DS being massively underestimated is because of not being aware of the massive amounts of gems of games there are, just a few popular ones and lots and lots of shovelware (akin to Wii) which e.g. we in Germany had in the stores. That selection sucked mostly!
I am EXTREMELY familiar with the DS, you cannot “bring me close to the DS games” lmao. If anything, I am pissed that so many excellent games are trapped on it and will never get ported.
Hm, I don’t like getting laughed at but still apologies for the misunderstanding. Would love to show you my collection 🤷
Sorry, I wasn’t meaning to laugh at you as a person, more that I literally wrote games for it and played many, many DS games and thus showing me games would definitely not change my mind on the system. I am more than a little salty about the DS and it’s evil gimmicks. It is one of the only systems that I ended up selling (the Wii is also in this short list).
Thanks for explaining!
I felt the same way about the Wii. Several games that would be great are almost unplayable for be because of this and at the least unenjoyable which defeats the purpose.
So Wii… Yeah. At that time I always feared Nintendos next gimmick.
But why the DS? I thought there are enough games that are not gimmicky annoying.
Without going into too much detail I would be interested in examples (and possibly go ‘hey yeah that was bad!’).
There are certainly games on the DS that don’t have the stylus gimmicks, but here are the biggest/most dissapointing ones that come to mind:
The thing is, it isn’t just the games that use the stylus that are the gimmick. The entire second screen IS a gimmick. Instead of a single better/bigger screen, you get two lower res medicore screens. You now have to look at two screens, you now have a heavier handheld that feel awkward (to me) to hold in the correct position, especially if you end up needing the stylus. The fact that the PSP came out in the same month as the DS and was better in many ways did the DS no favors.
Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow ended up causing me severe wrist pain and I had to stop using the console entirely and sold it. The fact that there ARE good games on the system is actually more annoying. Because of weirdness of the DS, all the games were difficult, if not impossible, to port to other systems. Much like the Wii, it essentially orphaned a whole generation of games from future ports without a ton of work to change how the game works.
Interesting, thank you!
Since I’m no Zelda fan there was no pain there (although I collected the games for my collection). I have fond memories of all 3 DS Castlevania games.
I do recall the tacked on stylus rune crap but that didn’t leave any lasting impression. Still, I agree!
Prime hunters as well as Mario 64 have crap control, full stop. At that point I’m even more angry at the 3DS for getting analogue control (with ‘new’) and then not using it! (kid icarus)
Anyhow, thank you for elaborating.
You’re welcome, thanks for letting me vent! The 3DS repeated the sins of the DS and added their whole new gimmick. And yet again, it trapped an EXCELLENT Zelda game (Link Between Worlds) on the system as well as the 3D Mario Land (I don’t recall the exact title). I had decided not to bother buying one even though the Zelda game is the sequel to one of my favorite games of all time, but my friend gave me his when he got one of those larger XL models so I picked up the aforementioned Zelda and Mario. I quickly saw why he got the larger model, my hands cramped using those teeny tiny controls. It now belongs to my daughter, so it worked out, but it’s funny, I still have a working OG Gameboy and GBA SP and those feel fine to use. Nintendo just lost me with their controllers. Even now, I only play the Switch using a Sony DS controller using the 8Bitdo adapter. Their first party controllers are nigh unusable to me.