The Nintendo DS was a two-screen, touchscreen, foldable handheld game console released by Nintendo almost 20 years ago. It would go on to be phenomenally popular, and at 154 million units sold remains the best-selling Nintendo product ever.
I bought two DS units on release day (11/21/04): one for me and one for KLS. In time I would own seven in total, six of which I still have. The above photo shows four of them: an original model (silver), a DS Lite (white, 2006), a DSi (black, 2008) and a DSi XL (maroon, 2009). All are in immaculate condition and still work perfectly.
The system is a little quaint to use today, since most of it’s features are vastly surpassed by our phones, but at launch it was amazing to have a touchscreen game system and many of the launch games exploited this. Only the bottom of the two screens was the touch screen, and the common mode was for games to use it for touch control while displaying action at the top (like Dark Spire, shown above). Unfortunately developers were mostly not up to the task of incorporating touch elements into games twenty years ago, and during the first year of the DS it was home to many poor games that tried to sell themselves solely on gimmick. Then Nintendo released two very clever ‘games’ – Nintendogs and Brain Age – that both became phenomenons, sales of the DS exploded, and it never looked back.
In addition to a touchscreen and the dual screens of the system the DS was the first handheld with communication features. Consoles could talk to each other via WiFi which enabled wire-free multiplayer games, and about two years after release an internet browser was released. The comparitively low resolution of the screen limited functionality, but this was before I had a cellphone that could access the internet so it was novel for the time. Sadly it seems defunct now: I tried it yesterday and the Opera-based browser failed to load everything I tried except for Google, and even then search results wouldn’t load.
I bought and still own more games for the DS than for any other system: 271 in total as of writing this. My first game (Super Mario DS) was purchased on release day, and my most recent (Fairy Tail Gekitosu) was bought about a year ago. During it’s era this was by far my most favourite console ever, and looking through my games as I did yesterday was an experienced drenched in nostalgia.
These three photos (the two above and one below) show most of my collection, which currently fills two large storage boxes.
The majority of the collection was purchased from 2006 to 2009, and for three of those years I averaged more than one DS game per week! The DS was officially retired (in favour of the 3DS) in 2011, but the 3DS was reverse compatible so I still purchased games for the original DS for a few more years until 2013 or so, when releases had mostly ended.
Notably, the DS was not region locked, and I purchased many Japanese games for it (most are shown above) during our travels. Indeed, I even have a (pink) DSi that i bought in Japan a few months before it was released in the USA 🙂
The above are most of my ‘collectors editions’ of DS games, which in those days almost always meant they came in a slightly larger box with a soundtrack CD or mini-artbook. Two of the above – Dark Spire and Super Robot Taisen – are amongst my favourite games for the system.
With such a large personal collection, it’s not surprising I have a few of the rarer games. The above is the rarest and most valuable I still own. Purchased in 2009 for a mere $20, this game (think of Animal Crossing meets Harry Potter) was released in small quantities sells for upwards of $200 these days. I don’t remember it being any good.
The above show a few other games in my collection that currently sell for $100+, and I have many more as well (most of the Pokemon games included). Generally speaking much of my collection is worth at least what I paid for it, and most of it is worth more, albeit not to the level some of my older collections sold for these past six years.
That said I did used to own the two rarest and most expensive DS games – Solatorobo and Shepherd’s Crossing – but I sold the pair together a few years ago for an impressive sum 🙂
Moving away from pricey and collectible games into the most treasured of my collection, the above shows the three Oeundan games: the two Japanese originals and the US installment named Elite Beat Agents. These are incredibly fun and playable rhythm-based music games that I became absolutely obsessed with for a year or so. I remember being competitive with Florence about these games as well, and I’ll choose to remember that she never beat my highest scores 🙂
The above are three DS Castlevania installments, and each are wonderfully playable exploration-based games that remain classics to this day. Ask me which is best and I’ll give you a different answer every time, and indeed I’m sure I’ll be replaying the trilogy again many times (as I recently did during the pandemic).
The Yggdrasil Labyrinth (aka. Etrian Odyssey) game series debuted on the DS as well, and I love them all. These Wizardry-like RPGs kickstarted a renaissance in dungeon crawlers that continues to this day, and a remake of these three came out for Switch earlier this year (which I own and have been playing).
The Puzzle Quest series also debuted on the DS. This is a clever match-3 RPG hybrid that spawned many sequels and clones (including a Magic The Gathering version on iOS) over the next decade or so. The first three remain the best, and are as much fun today as they were when they first came out.
If you look closely at the photos of my collection you’ll see many other great games, including the various Pokemon installments, Dragon Quest games, the Advance Wars series and some of the earlier Mario RPGs. During the heyday of the DS it felt like a great game was coming out every week, and as soon as I finished one I’d be immediately starting the next.
But apparently I didn’t play everything, since the above pic shows four sealed games I own! I would eventually buy and play Rune Factory 3 on Switch many years later, but the others I’ve never played. Will I ever? Perhaps 🙂
Before I wrap this up, a mention of the camera. The DSi model released a few years after the original included a camera, and it was a little sad yesterday to find photos of beloved Yossie that I had long forgotten I had taken. Yossie was with us during the DS era, and many, many hours were spent playing with her in my lap. Indeed she had a special ‘interest’ in the DS, or more particularly the charging cables:
Remember I said we own six DS units? What we don’t own is six charging cables! In fact we’re down to a mere three – one of which has been repaired as you can see above. Why so few? The answer is Yossie, who loved chewing through them. She did it many times and ruined half of them. I loved her dearly, so never held it against her, but those days taught us the importance of always making sure cables were away from the sight of kitties 🙂
As I mentioned above the DS was eventually replaced by the 3DS, which was an incredible handheld console. But that’s a story for another day…