The Nintendo DS will be a decade old this November.

[Exhuminator]

I honestly don't get what separates DS gaming from mobile device gaming.

Also tons of exclusives.

[Luke]

I honestly don't get what separates DS gaming from mobile device gaming.

Also tons of exclusives.

Yup.

[aaron]

I fired up Mario Kart DS last night on my Ouya, mostly to see if it worked.

well, did it?

[fastbilly1]

It looks wretched to me. Nobody will agree because bigger is always better.

I may look worse, but it has an infinitely better dpad.

I fired up Mario Kart DS last night on my Ouya, mostly to see if it worked.

well, did it?

On retroarch, it techincally worked. On drastic it works surprisingly well:

[Exhuminator]

I may look worse, but it has an infinitely better dpad.

I've heard this before. I don't really understand what the issue is. I've never had any issues with the DS Lite dpad. And I've beat plenty of tricky platformers with it.

[fastbilly1]

I may look worse, but it has an infinitely better dpad.

I've heard this before. I don't really understand what the issue is. I've never had any issues with the DS Lite dpad. And I've beat plenty of tricky platformers with it.

When new, the lite's pad was very rough on your finger and mushy feeling. For many people this was a problem, but for some it was not. Apparently the later versions had a better dpad that was not as rough, but still mushy. If that didnt bother you, awesome. But it annoyed the hell out of me.

My XL ended up with more playtime than I care to admit since I use to leave it running next to my keyboard at my old job. Cant beat everything in Advance Wars DS and DoR any other way.

[darsparx]

I honestly don't get what separates DS gaming from mobile device gaming.

Also tons of exclusives.

Probably the biggest reasons I'd rather play a ds than a mobile phone any time. DS though it's not as novel as it used to be, it's still fun to play with the games that still exploit the second screen in some way than just using it for maps and such.

But I am glad I can say I have my ds lite still....I think I begged for it for at least a year or two it feels like before i finally got it when it was slowly being replaced by the dsi or whatever it was at the time(I can't recall how long ago this was ha ha). I only recently got the 3ds and still would rather play these systems sometimes. If only ds lite or if I had a original ds could play other gameboy games it would be great since it looks better...oh well ha ha. Heck the ds still has a great many games I don't even know about yet and it's done for the most part in the original carts anyways if not all the way. Oh well guess it'll be the next system to focus on once gamestop stops selling psp games...(next to my vita which hasn't gotten much love lately)

[Violent By Design]

I honestly don't get what separates DS gaming from mobile device gaming.

Also tons of exclusives.

Yeah..but you kinda ignored the must play portion. Which of those games are actually great games? Some of the Atlus games could be cool, but other than that most of those games seem like shovelware or are passable at best (I played Elite Beat Agents for example, it's decent, but nothing too memorable).

A lot of the games on the DS are puzzle, RPG and adventure games so the d pad thing isn't all that relevant, having a D-pad isn't exactly all that special in general either.

Really though, what games here actually stand with the best games of all time in your opinion? That's the one thing I never understood about the DS hype. I don't think I've really seen many games other than some strange games no one talks about like Knights in the Nightmare that gave me a gigantic boner.

[Exhuminator]

A lot of the games on the DS are puzzle, RPG and adventure games so the d pad thing isn't all that relevant

That's true, but despite being stylus controlled, many of those games utilized the additional screen in unique ways that you inherently wouldn't see on a smartphone.

Really though, what games here actually stand with the best games of all time in your opinion?

That's a fair question, and one I wouldn't mind answering. I don't have time right now but when I do I'll give my suggestions in the "DS hidden gems" thread Ninjainspandex started.

[Fragems]

About to start up the Blue Dragon series again. Picked up Blue Dragon Plus the other day so I have the complete series now. Kind of odd that they went the DS route for the two sequels after the first title was released on 360 but I'm just happy that the sequels exist .