10 overlooked Nintendo DS games you need to play as soon as possible

Ten years ago--yes, a whole decade ago--I published a post here about five Nintendo DS games you should have played, but probably didn't. That write-up highlighted titles like Daigasso! Band Brothers, Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light, and Kirby: Canvas Curse.

I stand by those picks today, of course, but I also can't help but feel like they're just the tip of the iceberg as far as overlooked and underappreciated Nintendo DS games are concerned. Hence the creation of the post you're reading now.

A Kappa's Trail

This is a Nintendo DS game--a DSi game, to be exact--but you'll need to buy it via the Nintendo 3DS eShop these days. And even then, you'll need to hurry, what with the eShop closing its virtual doors in March 2023. Why should you bother? Because this Brownie Brown-made title is easily one of the best to ever hit the DSi service. It's an action-puzzle game that has players lead the titular kappa from each lengthy stage's start to its finish using the system's stylus and touch screen. As you can probably imagine, there are countless obstacles along the way--not the least of which is a purple disembodied hand that follows your path and prompts a "game over" if it catches up to you. In short, A Kappa's Trail is unique, tense, fun, and doesn't overstay its welcome.

A Kappa's Trail

Again

You've heard of, if not played, Hotel Dusk and Another Code (Trace Memory in North America), right? Well, Again was developed by the same team that made those well-regarded releases. All three are point-and-click adventure games that task players with solving a mystery. You could think of Again as the ugly duckling of the trio, but don't let that keep you from giving it a try. It lacks a lot of the charm that fills both Hotel Dusk and Another Code, but even so Again features an intriguing whodunit that puts Nintendo's unique hardware to ample use. It even has you hold your DS or 3DS system sideways like it's a book, just like Hotel Dusk and its sequel, Last Window, do.

Alice in Wonderland

If you're looking for a Metroidvania that strays a bit from the norm, track down a copy of Alice in Wonderland. Despite its rather hideous cover art, the game itself, made by a company called Etranges Libellules, is a beaut. Its art style is equal parts The Nightmare Before Christmas and Okamiden. Don't worry, I'm not recommending Alice in Wonderland simply because it looks great. Its gameplay is alluring, too, thanks in large part to the partners who join and assist you in your journey through Wonderland. Alice in Wonderland isn't without fault, I'll readily admit, with the main culprit being the occasional tussles that tend to annoy rather than thrill. The overall experience should prove intriguing enough to make up for it, though, if you're anything like me.

Boxlife

Boxlife

Skip Ltd., otherwise known for blessing the world with Chibi-Robo! and Captain Rainbow, produced a ton of brilliant, bite-sized games for the GameBoy Advance, DS, and Wii back in the day. Boxlife (Hacolife in Japan) is among the cream of the crop, in my humble opinion. It's certainly among the most unique--and not just when compared to Skip's other releases from the era, but also when compared to other puzzle games, period. Of course, what else would you expect from a puzzler that tasks you with cutting pieces of paper and then folding them into boxes? Unfortunately, Boxlife contains just two modes, and both can get pretty tough pretty quickly. If you go into this one thinking of it as a mobile game you'll play for a few minutes here and a few minutes there, rather than something you'll play obsessively for hours on end, though, you'll probably get a lot more enjoyment out of it.

Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime

For a long time--too long, really--I ignored Rocket Slime because I assumed it was a Zelda ripoff starring everyone's favorite Dragon Quest enemy. Boy, was I wrong. In reality, this game is a tank-battle simulator--albeit a cute tank-battle simulator. During said battles, which occur quite frequently, you race around your fantastical vehicle, pick up ammunition, and toss it into one of a pair of onboard cannons, which then launch the ammo at the opposing tank. This tends to be a frantic affair, but it's nearly always enjoyably frantic, so keep that in mind. Also, the game's tendency toward hyperactivity in this area is balanced by the sense of calm that pervades the sections that sit between the tank-on-tank tussles. Here, you happily hop around a lively overworld and gather materials to use in your next, inevitable skirmish. Combined, these disparate components produce a whole that's far more engaging than they have any right to be.

Ghost Trick

Ghost Trick

This Shu Takumi-directed, Capcom-developed release is one of the most compelling Nintendo DS titles around. Ghost Trick is part adventure game and part puzzler, if you can believe it. And the puzzle sections don't play like Tetris or Puyo Puyo, as you might imagine; instead, they basically involve connecting dots. I know it sounds boring, but believe me when I say it's surprisingly captivating and gels perfectly with Ghost Trick's story. Speaking of which, the game's story is a winner, too. It's centered on a guy--or, rather, a former guy who's now a ghost--named Sissel who can't remember who he was or who killed him. Your job while playing Ghost Trick is to help him solve both mysteries. Doing so is a joy, especially when you factor in the game's gorgeous art and music.

Pictobits

If ever a puzzle game could be called an inverse Tetris, this Skip Ltd.-made offering is it. To be honest, Pictobits' gameplay is a smidgen too chaotic for me, but I still appreciate and recognize that it's an interesting puzzler loads of people are likely to enjoy. This is especially true when you consider its overtly NES-talgic visuals and soundtrack. Something to note here is that Pictobits (Picopict in Japan and Europe, Pitcopict in Australia) is a DSiware title, just like A Kappa's Trail mentioned earlier. So, if you want to buy and play it these days, you have to do so via a 3DS (or a hacked DS, I suppose).

Ripened Tingle's Balloon Trip of Love

Ripened Tingle's Balloon Trip of Love

This Vanpool-developed point-and-clicker may be the most bizarre game Nintendo's ever published. For starters, it stars Tingle, the loveable weirdo from The Legend of Zelda series. That alone is a major eyebrow-raiser. Then there's the fact that its story skewers that of The Wizard of Oz. That Ripened Tingle's Balloon Trip of Love is an old-school adventure game not unlike LucasArts' best efforts from back in the day is just the cherry on top.

The World Ends with You

Much like several other DS games discussed in this post, I dragged my feet on playing The World Ends with You for an embarrassingly long time. Don't be like me. If you haven't played this thoroughly modern RPG and you still own a DS or 3DS, get it now. Controlling two characters at once (one with your system's touch screen and stylus, the other with its directional pad or face buttons), as you do while playing The World Ends with You, can be awkward and confusing at first, but you should eventually come to grips with it enough for it to feel something at least approaching exhilarating. The game's controls aren't the only thing that make it stand out from the JRPG pack, by the way. The same can be said of its visuals, soundtrack, setting, and cast, too.

Time Hollow

Time Hollow

Time Hollow is yet another mystery-centric adventure game for the DS, though this one is a decidedly different beast from the ones mentioned elsewhere in this write-up. A key case in point: Time Hollow allows you time travel (to a limited degree) by drawing circles on the screen that open portals to the past. It's clunkier than it could be, not as thrilling as it sounds, and doesn't prevent the game from being fairly linear, but even so I enjoyed the time I spent with Time Hollow and don't at all regret adding it to my collection.

Honorable mentions: A Witch's Tale, Contact, Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo Tales, Soul Bubbles, and Super Princess Peach

See also: 10 overlooked Nintendo 3DS games you need to play as soon as possible

One sentence about each of the 21 games I finished in 2021

I somehow managed to finish 21 games this year. I say "somehow" here because for all of 2021 it felt like I played fewer games than I did in 2020.

Actually, it's possible I did play fewer games in 2021 than I played in 2020. And I surely spent less time with the games I played in 2021 than I did with the games I played in 2020, as my next post will make clear.

As for this post, it features—as the header above hopefully suggests—one-sentence "reviews" of each of the 21 games I completed this year.

Also, they're organized according to when I completed them. So, Shiren the Wanderer 5+ was the first game I "beat" in 2021, while Umrangi Generation Special Edition was the last.

Shiren the Wanderer 5+ (Switch)

I didn’t realize just how much I’ve always wanted to pillage towers at extreme threat of violence and even death until I dug my teeth into this beautifully complex roguelike.

Captain Toad (Switch)

Captain Toad is a cute and (mostly) chill puzzle-action game that I can honestly say I enjoyed more than I've enjoyed any of the proper Mario titles that have been released over the last few years.

Princess Debut (DS)

A fluffy and rather childish otome game that features a barebones rhythm component—via simple ballroom dance sequences—and attractive, manga-inspired art.

A Kappa’s Trail (DS)

An instant-classic, hidden-gem, touch-controlled, puzzle-action game from some of the same devs who gave the world Mother 3, Magical Starsign, and Fantasy Life.

Pikmin 3 Deluxe (Switch)

Exploring the game’s beautifully realized environments while capturing towering "enemies" and corralling similarly giant pieces of fruit is great fun; doing all of those things while watching a clock tick toward zero is not.

Bravely Default II (Switch)

Yes, it’s yet another RPG about those damned “four heroes of light,” but this one tweaks the formula, gameplay (the battles, especially), and aesthetics just enough to make it all seem fresh and exhilarating.

Gnosia (Switch)

I started this game expecting it to be little more than Raging Loop set in space, but what I got was an addictive Werewolf simulator with a thrilling drip-feed story—the opposite of RL’s, basically—and a swoon-worthy OST.

Poison Control (Switch)

Poison Control is a curious and snappy mashup of a dungeon-crawler, a third-person shooter, and Taito's classic quartermucher Qix, all set to a surprisingly dark assortment of stories and a subtly brilliant soundtrack.

Labyrinth of Refrain: Coven of Dusk (Switch)

Come to this dungeon RPG for the 40-member parties (kind of, but kind of not), stay for the in-the-end-touching story and the interesting traversal elements.

Famicom Detective Club: The Missing Heir (Switch)

An attractive and captivating whodunit that occasionally frustrates due in large part to a clunky interface that sticks a little too close to its late-1980s roots.

Famicom Detective Club: The Girl Who Stands Behind (Switch)

Another modern remake of an old adventure game that originally graced the Famicom Disk System, though this one is more suspenseful and has a slightly more appealing setting and story.

Ripened Tingle’s Balloon Trip of Love (DS)

A point-and-click game starring everyone's favorite emotionally stunted oddball, Tingle, and sporting a story that's a silly riff on The Wizard of Oz; believe me, it's every bit as great as it sounds.

Gravity Rush (Vita)

Although its increasingly nonsensical story and always-aggravating combat regularly attempted to take my attention away from it, I don't think I've ever felt more like I'd stepped into the shoes—or spandex jumpsuit—of a superhero than I did while playing this gorgeous "gravity action" game.

Tearaway (Vita)

Tearaway is a breezy, Kirby-esque platformer that makes impressive and creative use of the Vita hardware and, as such, feels more like an amusement-park ride than a video game.

Airship Q (Vita)

Take Terraria, make the protagonist a cat, add a save-your-catnapped-sister story, and toss in a few honest-to-goodness, pull-your-hair-out-by-the-roots moments of jank-prompted frustration, and you have Airship Q.

Deltarune Chapter 1&2 (Switch)

This Undertale follow-up may or may not be a better game than its predecessor, but either way, it's a joy to play thanks to its wall-to-wall witty and silly text and its decision to fully lean into bullet-hell gameplay.

Mon Amour (Switch)

If you've ever wondered what Flappy Bird would look, sound, and play like if the creative geniuses at Onion Games (Black Bird, Dandy Dungeon) had made it, here's your answer.

Dungeon Encounters (Switch)

It's best to ignore how Dungeon Encounters looks, especially before you actually play it; instead, think of it as a minimalistic, top-down Etrian Odyssey that has you solve riddles to find new abilities, party members, treasures—even the final boss.

SaGa Frontier Remastered (Switch)

Although the stories that hold SaGa Frontier together are on the simple side, every other element of this Japanese role-player is out of this world: the eye-popping array of party members, the exotic enemy designs, the extraterrestrial locales, the electrifying battles, and—last, but certainly not least—the extraordinary soundtrack.

Liquid Kids (Switch)

This side-scrolling Bubble Bobble—basically, though the protagonist is a roly-poly platypus rather than lime-green dinosaur—is an arcade game through and through, with cheap deaths around every other corner, but it's also a blast to play thanks to how fun it is to throw "water bombs" everywhere and at everything.

Umurangi Generation Special Edition (Switch)

If Gnosia is a Werewolf simulator, Umurangi Generation is a document-the-end-of-the-world-using-a-DSLR-camera simulator—and a damn good one, at that.

See also: one sentence about each of the 24 games I finished in 2020

My favorite games of 2021 that weren't actually released in 2021

Although I played and loved a lot of games this year that were actually released in the last 12 months, I also played and loved a lot of games that came out before 2021.

In particular, I played more Vita games in 2021 than I have in years—three of which are highlighted below. I also played a handful of DS games.

A Kappa’s Trail (DS)

This Nintendo DSiWare game is a breath of fresh air for several reasons, though the most noteworthy are that it makes full use of the DS system's touch screen (in fact, the machine's directional pad or face buttons are disabled during play) and it forces players to figure out what to do right from the word go.

Granted, I'd hardly call this digital release one of my favorite games of 2021 if all it offered were a lack of handholding and slick, stylus-centric controls. On that note, A Kappa's Trail is also quite a looker, no shock given the wizards at Brownie Brown (of Mother 3 and Magical Starsign fame) made it. Its lead-a-big-headed-kappa-to-the-end-of-each-winding-stage-while-avoiding-myriad-pitfalls-and-perils gameplay is unique, too, not to mention tense, thanks to the creepy disembodied hand that slowly stalks you and threatens to cut short your otherwise jaunty journey.

Don't worry, the latter isn't overly off-putting; instead, it injects the game with a welcome dose of drama that elevates the experience beyond "pleasant but boring."

Airship Q (PC/Vita)

When I imported my copy of this game many moons ago, all I knew about it was that it was supposed to be Terraria with cats. In reality, that description isn't entirely accurate. Airship Q is a far more straightforward title than Terraria, though this doesn't mean it's constricted. On the contrary, it's as open as you could hope for it to be; however, there are times you'll be forced in a particular direction to advance Airship Q's rather meager story.

Now to throw some cold water onto this little "review": Airship Q is a bit janky. In particular, its block- and physics-based world regularly does its best to spoil your progress and fun by trapping your craft or keeping you from reaching your intended destination. This usually induces laughs rather than rage, but don't be shocked if it causes the occasional fit. It shouldn't prompt you to huffily pull the plug on your playthrough, though, or at least it shouldn't if you do like I did and think of this aspect of the game as charming instead of irritating.

Gravity Rush (PS4/Vita)

Gravity Rush is one of those games that are filled with brazen, brilliant ideas that never fully gel. The characters (Kat, the protagonist, especially) and steampunk-ish setting fascinate, and its soundtrack alternatingly soothes and soars. Speaking of soaring, dashing and falling through the air as the aforementioned Kat is one of the more exhilarating experiences I've had in a game in eons.

Dashing and falling into one or more of Gravity Rush's low-key nightmarish enemies, on the other hand, tends to be tiresome rather than breathtaking, and it didn't take me long to both dread and even detest such tussles. Fulfilling the game's many missions gets old quickly, too, though not as completely as its battles.

Perhaps appropriately, the story in Gravity Rush veers wildly between riveting and ridiculous—almost like it exists to meld the game's positive and negative attributes. It leans toward the former more than the latter, though, and that was enough for me.

A ringing endorsement, right? Maybe not, but the fact is I'm still thinking of my time with Gravity Rush, and I'm also already contemplating taking another stab at it. In other words, its pros outweigh its cons, or at least they did for me. Considering how bold Gravity Rush is overall, putting up with its handful of quibbles isn't such a difficult task.  

Labyrinth of Refrain: Coven of Dusk (PC/PS4/Switch)

I avoided starting Labyrinth of Refrain: Coven of Dusk for ages because screenshots of it intimidated me. Specifically, the number of party members depicted in said screens got me thinking this dungeon-crawling RPG would be far too convoluted for my feeble brain. After finishing and putting more than 75 hours into it, I'm glad to report it's not. In fact, its multi-character battles are far more conventional than initial impressions suggest.

Which isn't to say Labyrinth of Refrain: Coven of Dusk is traditional to a fault. It actually offers up several innovations that make it seem surprisingly fresh. Two standout examples: you can jump over pits while exploring its many maze-like dungeons, and you can break through walls to examine previously inaccessible areas.

Building and customizing your party, which can eventually include as many as 40 members (each of whom are puppets, not humans), provides a similarly unique thrill. Unfortunately, it's a bit too deep to delve into here. The game does a decent job of explaining it as you go along, thankfully.

Another area in which Labyrinth of Refrain: Coven of Dusk excels is its story. Hell, a dungeon role-playing game having anything more than a barebones backstory is worth noting, but the one included here wouldn't be out of place in your typical JRPG. That it ends up being rather poignant only adds to the allure.

Ripened Tingle's Balloon Trip of Love (DS)

Ripened Tingle's Balloon Trip of Love is such a bizarre mashup of ideas that I'm frankly amazed the powers that be at Nintendo greenlit its development. It's a point-and-click game that stars everyone's favorite jumpsuit-wearing oddball, Tingle, and sports a story that parodies The Wizard of Oz.

Actually, there's more to Ripened Tingle's Balloon Trip of Love than just pointing and clicking. You solve puzzles, complete mini-games, and even woo some ladies, too.

Whether or not you tend to enjoy this genre, it's worth checking out—in large part because it was developed by the talented crew at Vanpool, an offshoot of the renowned Love-de-Lic (known for cult classics Moon: Remix RPG Adventure and UFO: A Day in the Life).

Spelunky (PC/PS4/Switch/Vita)

Admittedly, my obsession with Spelunky began after I bought the Switch port that released this past autumn. I quickly moved over to the Vita version, though, and that's where I spent most of my time with this masochistic title.

That I enjoyed it enough to play it for more than 20 hours is a near-miracle, I must say. This type of platformer has never been my cup of tea for all sorts of reasons I won't bore you with now. What's different about Spelunky? For starters, I feel like I'm at least slightly more in control of my destiny while playing it than I do while attempting similar efforts. Also, dying in Spelunky rarely devastates me. And even when it approaches doing so, I still typically end up laughing at the comedic cruelty of it all before moving on to just one more run.

If you're wondering why I or anyone else would willingly go through such hell over and over again, well, my only answer is that I like the challenge of it. Success, at both the individual stage and overall game level, always seems within reach—if only I could do this next time, or not do that. It's easy to blame yourself, rather than the game, for failing, though never so harshly you give up and move on to something less taxing. 

See also: my favorite games of 2020 that weren't released in 2020