When you’ve got the Ainsley Harriot Fitness universe clogging up shelves, it’s easy for the real DS gems to get lost. Here, then, are some Nintendo DS hidden bangers that you should check out, even if you have to go to some dark parts of the net to experience them.
The Dark Spire
The Dark Spire is a deliberate throwback to the kind of wireframe dungeon crawlers most people stopped having the patience for decades ago. It wears its Wizardry influence very openly. There’s first-person exploration, grid-based movement, and a feeling that the game would quite like to cut you into a million pieces and display you in a box, a glass box on its mantle.
You can switch between a clean, slightly modern presentation and a stark wireframe mode that looks like it’s running on a terminal from the early ’80s. It’s not a simple visual gimmick either—it reinforces how stripped-back the whole experience is. There is also very little in the way of guidance beyond what you figure out yourself.
Progress is slow and often punishing. Mapping the dungeon, managing your party, and surviving encounters all require attention, and mistakes tend to suck. A lot. It’s unapologetically old-school, which is both its biggest strength and its main barrier from more casual players picking it up.
Stick with it, though, and this is another Spire-type game that will probably absolutely gobble up your spare time. Nobody’s been to B&Q and chucked yellow paint on everything here.
The Wizard of Oz: Beyond the Yellow Brick Road
If you want to be genuinely surprised by just how good a licensed game can be sometimes, look no further than The Wizard of Oz: Beyond the Yellow Brick Road. Or I dunno, Spider-Man 2 if you want a slightly snappier title?
The Wizard of Oz might be one of the most iconic films ever made, based on the absolutely unhinged series of novels by L. Frank Baum, but its video game track record hasn’t been all that great. Remember the SNES platformer? If you don’t, you’re luckier than James Franco when he got the lead role in that Oz reboot sequel…thing.
Beyond the Yellow Brick Road takes a different tactic by opting to be…good. With gameplay restricted entirely to your touchscreen, the game sees Dorothy and her friends tasked with destroying four evil witches, in exchange for finally granting their wishes. Haven’t they been through enough?
Apparently not, and it’s your job to defeat these witches, gather up a bunch of magical eggs, and bring them back to the Wizard, where surely good things will finally happen for Dorothy and her pals. Either way, this is a surprisingly engaging, well-told story with turn-based RPG mechanics and bright, evocative graphics.
It’s also a deeper game than you might imagine, with a sizable 20+ hour RPG quest that adds some satisfying additions to a well-loved story.
Aliens: Infestation
While games based on the beloved Alien film series are a mixed bag with some truly remarkable titles amongst the absolute garbage, Aliens: Infestation doesn’t get mentioned very often in conversations about the good games. Anyone play Dark Descent? I really liked that one.
That’s too bad, since Infestation is an extremely entertaining side-scrolling action platformer with just enough Metroidvania thrown in to make you feel like you really are trapped on a ship that’s crawling with xenomorphs and similar nasty bastards, and it looks lovely as well.
Developed by WayForward during a very, very weird year for them, Aliens: Infestation will have you constantly fighting for your life, but the game controls well and balances the furious gunfire with exploration. You’ll often find yourself backtracking to previously explored portions of the ship, and it becomes apparent that for a pretty straightforward action game, Aliens: Infestation has some nice surprises waiting for players. And some not so nice.
Set between the events of Aliens and Alien 3, you’ll have a team of marines to run through the game with, but keep in mind that death is permanent here. If you lose a character, they’re not coming back. There’s a real sense of consequence to this one, and that goes doubly for your wallet. Really not many people picked this up back in 2011.
Aliens: Infestation is a tense, often relentless experience, and one of the most underrated games on the DS. It’s enough time to make you long for a simpler time.
Nostalgia
If you were a fan of RPGs in the 2000s, the Nintendo DS had a lot to keep you busy. Nostalgia got a little lost in the shuffle, and that’s too bad for a game whose co-developer in Matrix Software also worked on the 3D graphics for the DS versions of Final Fantasy III and IV.
In other words, Nostalgia is an absolutely gorgeous game, with bright, vivid characters and backgrounds in an alternate reality steampunk-soaked version of the 19th century. There’s a lot of old-school JRPG charm being combined with then-modern enhancements and quality of life features in Nostalgia, and it’s a must-play for genre fans.
While most of Nostalgia sticks to your turn-based JRPG expectations, there’s a visual flair to these characters and their world that will make you want to explore this universe from top to bottom. It can get a little grindy at times, but longtime RPG players aren’t likely to mind too much.
And while the main story is suitably epic, it’s when the game lets you fully explore your surroundings with a zeppelin that Nostalgia really starts to show off its uniqueness. You’ve never seen a version of New York or London like you’ll see in the world of Nostalgia. It’s not the greatest game of all time, but it is well worth seeking out.
Fossil Fighters
As the wise Booker T once said:
In Fossil Fighters, you can. And then you can make dinosaurs batter each other.
But it would be categorically unfair to dismiss Fossil Fighters as a Pokémon clone. It doesn’t even have Mr Mime in it. You’d be missing out on a game with a rich story, compelling characters, and the admittedly very cool ability to bring dinosaurs back from the dead and square them off against one another in turn-based combat.
Instead of chasing down and catching monsters in the wild, Fossil Fighters is more about finding, you guessed it, fossils on the exotic, varied Vivosaur Island. There’s over 100 different dinosaurs to revive, referred to in the game as vivosaurs, and the designs for the dinosaurs are excellent across the board.
Outside of collecting creatures and basic RPG mechanics, Fossil Fighters easily stands on its own. The process of getting the creatures in of itself establishes a different relationship to your monsters than in other similar games. You found them and essentially brought them back to life. Isn’t that neat? The characters and dialog aren’t on the level of larger, more ambitious RPGs, but any game with time travel and dinosaurs has to be worth a look right.
Fossil Fighters finds its own ways to make its gameplay addictive, including the fact that you’ll be using the stylus for the excavation portion of the game. Fossil Fighter doesn’t become so much of a grind that you stop having fun. The game has charm enough to keep you coming back, and if you like it enough, there’s even a couple of sequels to dig through.
999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors
Nine people seemingly find themselves participating in a horrific life-and-death game. Don’t give Netflix any ideas, people. They will probably get there themselves.
Released under the title Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors, players begin the nightmare as young Junpei, who wakes up on a sinking cruise liner with eight other people. These poor bugger will have to work together to survive, and 999 is particularly good at giving you a constant sense of dread, mystery, and death at every corner. This isn’t overtly a horror game, but it’s an intense experience on the Nintendo DS nevertheless.
999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors is mostly a visual novel, with players making careful narrative choices to unlock one of the game’s six dramatically varied endings. The dual-screen is used interestingly here, with characters and dialog taking up the top screen, while the bottom screen has detailed feelings, thoughts, and even actions from the game’s narrator.
When you aren’t making choices in the text, 999 has point-and-click adventure elements that are surprisingly challenging in places. This really knows how to use the strengths of its genre, pulling you into a game that feels like getting to host the bleakest new game show you’ve ever seen. 999 is a dark ride, but it’s one that’s hard to put down. When you do, you can pick up the sequels. You’ll be well red after.
Little Red Riding Hood’s Zombie BBQ
As the title of the action rail-shooter Little Red Riding Hood’s Zombie BBQ implies, you’re Little Red Riding Hood, and you’ve got a massive arsenal to help you obliterate the relentless and ravenous hordes of the undead.
Let’s get to work.
Set in a storybook world that also features public domain fairytale characters like Pinocchio and the Three Little Pigs, Little Red Riding Hood’s Zombie BBQ sees you teaming up with Momotarō, the Japanese folk story character, in your quest to save the world.
There’s a significant degree of challenge waiting for you in this relentless shmup, as you mow down zombies with weapons like shotguns, laser beams, and flamethrowers. The story goes roughly the way you think it will, but there’s also a game that’s easy to get into, with the plot managing to wring some surprises out of a mad premise. I kinda don’t want to spoil it, but for international copyright laws, it is not Godzilla.
It’s all about the execution of a concept, and Little Red Riding Hood’s Zombie BBQ is an arcade-style shooter that will probably butter the biscuits of Rapid Reload and Wild Guns fans. With a name like Little Red Riding Hood’s Zombie BBQ, you’re either going to get a hidden gem or a crushing disappointment. Good news, this game is the former. Let’s shuffle on to the next game of today.
Away: Shuffle Dungeon
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_CpNfA0luI
Coming from the legendary Hironobu Sakaguchi, Away: Shuffle Dungeon takes a familiar setup and warps it into something that feels slightly ahead of our ADHD ridden times.
You see, each floor is split into rotating segments that shift in real time, meaning routes open and close constantly while you’re moving. You’re waiting, watching, and timing your steps so the layout lines up in your favour. It gives the whole thing a slight puzzle-driven feel, or like Mr Beast’s newest sociopathic experiment. Sorry, social experiment. Social.
The structure ties into its story as well. The town of Weblog is stuck in stasis after a disaster, with its residents frozen in time. Venturing into these unstable dungeons is how you gather energy to restore them, which gives the loop a bit more purpose than just clearing floors for loot. The system creates a unique blend blend, even if the moment-to-moment combat stays fairly basic.
That simplicity can work against it, mind you. Fights don’t evolve much, and the repetition creeps in over longer sessions. Still, the constantly shifting layouts keep it engaging in short bursts. It’s fun to pick up and play between bouts of your parents shouting at each other.
It’s a strange, slightly awkward experiment, but one that feels tailor-made for the DS.
Theresia
This psychological horror story involving two narrative paths, one of a young girl in an abandoned prison, and the other involving a man trying to escape from an orphanage, is pretty brutal at times. It is after all one of only eleven (yes, 11) games that received an M rating on the Nintendo DS, but it’s also one of the best horror games on the system.
Coming from the now defunct WorkJam with the soundtrack scored by the composer behind Shenmue, movement in Theresia mode has your character navigating dangerous, mysterious surroundings while searching for different rooms, and Observational mode involves deeper investigations of specific areas to help you beat some fiendish puzzles.
While all these gameplay elements are pretty solid, with the game being maybe slightly wonky during its dungeon crawling segments, Theresia perhaps shines best with its storytelling, sense of pacing, and overall atmosphere. The game draws from its visual novel strengths to create something that feels like the kinda eerie, barely for human consumption game for the PS1 that never left Japan.
Just be warned that this is one of the darkest stories you’ll ever encounter in a video game. It’s as heartbreaking as it is deeply creepy, but not as heartbreaking as what it will do to your wallet.
Moon
Moon is a decent game on the Nintendo DS? Always has been.
Moon is a first-person shooter that deliberately avoids most of the things people associate with handheld FPS games. Instead of constant firefights, it’s more about slow exploration, light puzzle-solving, and a mystery. You’re investigating a mysterious signal on the moon, moving through abandoned structures that feels kinda slightly like a more survival horror-y Metroid Prime.
It’s not on that level, but it is good.
Technically, it’s pretty impressive stuf f for the hardware. Renegade Kid had already shown what they could do with Dementium, but Moon feels like them cracking their knuckles a bit. There are larger environments, smoother pacing, and fewer moments where the DS seems like it’s about to give up. It actually manages to hit 60fps, which is nuts. The touchscreen aiming holds up well, which is half the battle for a handheld FPS, but obviously you do need to get used to it these days.
Combat is present but you don’t need to do any slide cancelling against the mice stealing all the moon cheese or anything. You’re not constantly under pressure, and that gives the game space to build atmosphere through discovery rather than just constant loud noises.
It didn’t make much of a splash at the time, but it later resurfaced as Moon Chronicles for 3DS, a reworked episodic version with updated visuals and expanded content that was also pretty overlooked.
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