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Throwback Thursday: The greatest Nintendo DS games
Ninty’s clamshell handheld turns 10: here’s our favourite action games from the back catalogue.
Throwback Thursday: The greatest Nintendo DS games
© Nintendo / Activision
Time flies when you’re having fun. It’s hard to believe, but the Nintendo DS arrived 10 years ago tomorrow, changing the way we played games on the go thanks to its dual screened skills and touch input, giving you plenty more options to play. Many games gave you brilliant, quirky and – sometimes – disturbing ways of utilising the handheld’s hardware, and its polygon powers gave you better-than-N64 graphics in the palm of your hand. That meant plenty of brilliant titles made its way to Nintendo’s quirky handheld, and to celebrate the DS turning old enough to become a Pokémon trainer, we’ve picked out some of our favourite games that got our adrenaline running here at Red Bull Games. Are there any we’re missing?
Tony Hawk’s American Sk8land
Tony Hawk’s long-standing series of skateboarding games made its debut on Nintendo’s plucky dual-screen handheld in 2005 with American Sk8land, the handheld counterpart to the console American Wasteland, giving you a cel-shaded romp through seven skate parks and street courses complete with a punk soundtrack. While it plays much like previous entries in the series, it takes advantage of the handheld’s two screens by displaying a map on the bottom, and you can even design your own skateboard with the stylus to use in the game. Essential for kickflipping on the go.
Kirby: Canvas Curse
Nintendo’s pink fluffy Kirby was only going to be a match made in heaven with the Nintendo DS’ touch capabilities, and that was realised with Kirby: Canvas Curse. It’s a challenging platforming romp through Kirby’s world, forcing you to make the most of what the DS had to offer with its stylus controls, and its bosses still prove to be a real test even today. Throw in bright visuals, an epic soundtrack and full use of the handheld’s capabilities, and you’ve got one of the best games to grace the DS.
Mario Hoops 3-on-3
Mario’s appeared in plenty of sports games since his initial debut as a plucky plumber taking on Donkey Kong, but one of our favourites has to be Mario Hoops 3-on-3. Combining the fast and frantic gameplay of basketball with our favourite heroes from the Mushroom Kingdom makes for plenty of epic battles on the court, and you’re free to unleash a wave of special abilities, unique to each character. Final Fantasy makers Square Enix were behind the sports mash-up title, and it also includes a handful of characters from the RPG series – each with their own special ability too. Still to this day, there’s nothing like nailing a three pointer with Princess Peach’s special Heart Shot.
Mario Kart DS
Nintendo’s Mario Kart franchise is still going strong to this day, but one of the best titles in the series remains the DS edition. The shift from the sprite-based GBA Mario Kart to the full 3D edition with Mario Kart DS was a huge leap at the time, and its solid gameplay was unmatched by any other racing game on the handheld. Firing up the engines, powersliding around corners and nailing your foes with a green shell is still satisfying even today, and ad hoc multiplayer with several of your friends with just one Mario Kart DS cartridge is simply brilliant.
Metroid Prime: Hunters
You might not think the Nintendo DS is the ideal console for a first-person shooter, but Metroid Prime: Hunters proved otherwise. Nintendo’s futuristic space series made the Spin Jump to the DS with a first-person adventure game that put a firm focus on multiplayer too, and its assortment of control schemes let you play the shooter in any way you wanted. Smooth, fluid and tight gameplay, combined with brilliant graphics and online multiplayer (complete with voice chat too) made it an essential pick-up.
Tony Hawk’s Proving Ground DS
Tony Hawk’s American Sk8land opened up the gates for the skateboarding series to land on Nintendo’s handheld, but it wasn’t until Proving Ground that it really upped the ante. The previous game in the series, Downhill Jam, had a focus on downhill racing, but Proving Ground returned to the open-world nature of the later games in the console series. American Sk8land’s cel-shaded graphics looked great for the time, but Proving Ground strived for a bit more realism and came out better for it, and brought even more variety, plenty of customisation and better multiplayer to make it the best skateboarding game on the DS.
Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars
Who would have thought Rockstar’s notorious GTA series would hit a Nintendo platform, let alone its handheld? Well, Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars hit the Nintendo DS back in 2009, and was followed by PSP and smartphone ports, and later launched on mobile, but the touch-friendly, dual-screened version still remains our favourite. Liberty City’s at your fingertips, and an epic story that dives into the underbelly of the Triad crime world is something we’ve only revisited recently with Square Enix’s Sleeping Dogs. It was a breakthrough at the time, and we’d love to see GTA make a resurgence on the 3DS, or even the Wii U. Get the best gaming stories delivered straight to your inbox with the Red Bull Games newsletter.
