10 Underrated Nintendo DS Games You Should Seek Out

With over 2,000 games released during its lifetime, it stands to reason that some Nintendo DS games are simply going to fall through the cracks. When you get past the titles that almost everyone will agree are among the best Nintendo DS games, what’s left? Well, there’s a ton of Nintendo DS hidden gems that deserve far more attention and affection than they’ve received. Even if you consider yourself to be pretty well-versed in one of Nintendo’s best handheld consoles, there’s a good chance some of these hidden gems for the DS are going to surprise you.

 

1. The Wizard of Oz: Beyond the Yellow Brick Road

Developer: Media Vision
Publisher: Xseed Games

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. 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 very, very lucky.

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.

 

2. Monster Tale

Developer: DreamRift
Publisher: Majesco Entertainment

At first glance, you might guess that Monster Tale isn’t much more than a virtual pet sim with some additional bells and whistles. While it’s true that our young protagonist Ellie is joined by a monster named Chomp, who you can care for and keep by your side over the course of your adventures, there’s so much more going on with Monster Tale that deserves your attention. Combining a platformer with RPG and Metroidvania elements, this game is one of the most unique you’re going to find on the Nintendo DS. It’s bright, charming, and easy to pick up.

Monster Tale is undeniably adorable. Chomp in any form is a likable, distinctive companion, and overall this is one of the most vibrant sprite-based games on the handheld. It’s once you begin exploring a world the developers packed with loving tributes to other video games that you really begin to see the unique personality of Monster Tale. This is noticeable in the platformer portions having gameplay touches that evoke such games as Shantae and Mega Man. Helping your monster Chomp to evolve and become more powerful naturally reminds you just a bit of Pokémon. While there’s plenty of influence to be found, the way the developers mix it all together shows you just how singular Monster Tale really is. This is an underrated example of the Metroidvania genre, with a surprisingly rich, complex world to explore beneath an exterior and aesthetics that might make you think otherwise.

It might look like kids stuff, but Monster Tale is a challenging, memorable DS hidden gem.

 

3. Theresia

Developer: WorkJam 
Publisher: Aksys Games

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. Theresia 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.

Movement in Theresia mode has your character navigating dangerous, mysterious surroundings while searching for different rooms, while 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 particularly engaging during its point-and-click segments, Theresia perhaps shines best with its storytelling, sense of pacing, and overall atmosphere. These are the visual novel strengths the game draws from to create something that can stand alone in the horror genre. Just be warned that this is one of the darkest stories you’ve ever encountered in a video game. It’s as heartbreaking as it is deeply creepy.

 

4. Orcs & Elves

Developers: id Software, Fountainhead Entertainment
Publisher: EA

It’s a shame Orcs & Elves has become a little obscured over the years. This immensely satisfying turn-based adventure RPG makes good use of its first-person perspective, with an impressive amount of depth and detail to the dungeons you’ll explore and the monsters you’ll meet. It’s the sort of game that you can find yourself getting absorbed with very quickly. Orcs & Elves feels like a dramatic visual update to such first-person dungeon crawlers as Arcana. The character sprites and striking 3D environments can draw you in as much as the clever puzzles and enjoyable combat. This is very much a retro game, but one that reminds you just how much fun this genre can be.

You are a young elf who wants to take back your city from the orcs who showed up and decided it was theirs instead. It’s not the deepest story, as you might imagine, but with this game coming from id Software, the same people responsible for iconic games like Quake and Doom, the story is arguably secondary to the atmosphere and gameplay. And on those particular fronts, Orcs & Elves is a hell of a lot of fun.

Using grid-based dungeons, Orcs & Elves may remind some players of Dungeon Master or Eye of the Beholder. However, those games weren’t built on the Doom RPG engine, which gives Orcs & Elves the unique vibe of combining fantasy with the aesthetics of id’s more famous video game franchises.

 

5. Aliens: Infestation

Developers: WayForward, Gearbox Software
Publisher: Sega

While games based on the beloved Aliens 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. 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 creatures.

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. A sense of real consequences  is one of the ways the developers at Way Forward and Gearbox Software recreate the distinctive atmosphere of the films. It’s a tense, often relentless experience, and one of the most underrated games on the DS.

 

6. Ōkamiden

Developer: Mobile & Game Studio
Publisher: Capcom

A spiritual sequel to Ōkami that gives you just about everything that made that PS2 (later ported to just about every platform going) classic a must-play, Ōkamiden is graphically one of the most impressive achievements on the DS. That alone is worth appreciating, but Ōkamiden also brings to the table fantastic gameplay that makes good use of the stylus, a complex, moving story that focuses on the children of characters from the previous release, and a very similar sense of grandeur and discovery.

Ōkamiden utilizes the same Celestial Brush from the original game that allows you to fight enemies and solve puzzles by drawing symbols on the screen, and as you can imagine, this is where the DS stylus comes in. It’s a great mechanic that’s fun and easy to use, and you could even argue that the stylus gives Ōkamiden a slightly unique edge over its predecessor. There’s just something extremely satisfying about pulling off a symbol during a particularly frenetic moment of gameplay at just the right moment.

Ōkamiden is a beautiful, memorable reminder of the creative potential that has always existed within video games. It’s a DS game any newcomer to the handheld will want to play immediately, once they get over the initial shock of it actually existing. Nobody ever seems to remember poor old Ōkamiden.

 

7. Nostalgia

Developers: Matrix Software, Red Entertainment
Publisher: Ignition Entertainment

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 fuels a desire 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, where our protagonist Eddie hails from, like you’ll see in the world of Nostalgia.

 

8. Fossil Fighters

Developers: Nintendo SPD, Red Entertainment, M2, Artdink 
Publisher: Nintendo 

It would be categorically unfair to dismiss Fossil Fighters as a Pokémon clone. 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 compared to its contemporaries. 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 none of it feels like something lifted directly from other games.

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. This is how 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 the game enough, there’s even a couple of sequels to get through.

 

9. 999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors

Developer: Chunsoft
Publisher: Aksys Games

Nine people seemingly find themselves participating in a horrific life-and-death game in the fascinatingly singular action-adventure visual novel 999. 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 bastards 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 is a visual novel that 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.

 

10. Little Red Riding Hood’s Zombie BBQ

Developers: EnjoyUp, Gammick Entertainment
Publishers: Gammick Entertainment, Destineer

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. The game doesn’t overextend itself with cringey jokes or some sort of obsession with making the game sadistically difficult. 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 premise that with another developer might have come off as uninspired.

It’s all about the execution of a concept, and Little Red Riding Hood’s Zombie BBQ is an arcade-style shooter that uses the power of the DS to make everything about the game a little bigger and more exciting. With a title 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.

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