The Gamer's Quarter

[seryogin]

After a few days of thinking, I've decided to get a DS. This decision was made after seeing that both Phoenix Wright and Trauma Center seem to have received a rerelease of sorts.

So...I was wondering if anyone had any games that they really loved for this system. Everyone always talks about how progressive the DS is, but I can't really think of anything that I really ever wanted to play on it, save for the two titles mentioned above.

So far these are the games that seem worthy of attention:

Sonic Rush
Rocket Slime
Phoenix Wright
Trauma Center
Final Fantasy III (I have to get this, even though I probably won't even touch it).

Also, there are two GBA games which I find interesting at the moment and was wondering what you people think of them: Yggdra Union and Super Robot Taisen 2.

Thanks in advance.
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[elvis.shrugged]

I've been playing Elite Beat Agents for about three days straight. It's pretty amazing stuff.

EDIT: And Kirby: Canvas Curse is definitely one of the best games on the DS. It was the first game to show me the possibilities of the touch screen. Buy it.

[Shapermc]

Sonic Rush is probably skippable. I don't know if you still like Megaman games, but ZX was really excellent if you do.

Kirby's Canvas Curse is still one of the best damn games on the system if you can find it. So are most of the other games on your list.

As far as Yggdra Union and Super Robot Taisen 2, well, I already told you that I thought SRT1 was pretty much the perfect game for you after watching Gundam Wing. Yggdra is the (spiritual) sequel to Riviera... which is really hit or miss with people. I liked it quite a bit, so I would say go for it. I don't know how much of a sequel SRT2 is or if you can play it without playing the first one. If you can, go for it, as I understand everything is improved over the original.

Welcome back Sergei.
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“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"

[helicopterp]

Kirby's Canvas Curse
Meteos
Elite Beat Agents

Those are the three Must-Haves. Beyond those, I like New Super Mario Bros, Advance Wars, Trauma Center, Phoenix Wright. I hear Tetris and Rocket Slime are pretty good, but I haven't played them.
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Like you thought you'd seen copter perverts before. They were nothing compared to this one.

[dessgeega]

i don't like sonic rush, but a lot of people do. there should be a thread around here about it, if you want some detailed impressions from both sides.

i'm about to return my rented copy of elite beat agents. i havn't played in a couple days because i got bored with it.

i have a plastic case from hori on my ds that holds three games. these are the three ds games i would like to have on hand at any given time. the games currently in the case are:

point blank ds. port of an arcade lightgun gallery shooter, with the stylus in place of the lightgun. it works really well, and is a really fabulous procession of randomly-selected minigames. if you need to own a ds minigame game - and there are a few - it should probably be this one. the multiplayer is disappointing, though.

mawashite koron. the sequel to cameltry, one of my favorite taito games! only now you can use the touch screen to rotate the maze, which is much closer to the dial cameltry arcade cabs feature than the d-pad the snes port used. multiplayer is more focused than in that game - instead of racing the single-player maps, one-player at a time, in this game both players race simultaneously on dedicated two-player maps. there aren't a lot of them, though, and they're chosen at random.

meteos. meteos! meteos is absolutely delightful and you ought to play it with all your friends.

also recommended: dig dug. especially if you've ever played dig dug 2.

trauma center is a game i need to set aside some time to play more. the opening chapter put me off, because of how much of a douchebag the protagonist is. i hear it's a very good game, though.

and hey, rent phoenix wright if you can. (or split the cost with andrew toups.) it's a game you play once and never again, but it is worth playing.

none of these games are jrpgs, though. so i don't know if they'll be your thing, sergei. but i hope i've been helpful!
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[JasonMoses]

SRT2's story is going to be pretty tough to comprehend if you don't play the first game beforehand. That said, if you like big robots battling for honor and justice, you will probably be able to ignore the fact that the first game is ugly as hell and kind of cumbersome!

[Shapermc]

[Harveyjames]

Here are some proven crowd-pleasers. Maybe obvious to the point where they aren't really worth mentioning, and possibly not your bag, but in my opinion you can't go wrong with:

Warioware Touched (Pyoro T has infinite replay value!)
Animal Crossing
Brain Training
Mario Kart DS

Also you'll want Rhythm Tengoku, a recent GBA game which you can't really do without. Better than Elite Beat Agents (apparently. I haven't played Elite Beat Agents).

Oh yeah and Polarium. Also I always wanted to buy Electroplankton if I saw it cheap.

[dongle]

Ouendan/EBA, to me, show why abstract rhythm games don't work: they highlight the fact that you're not really doing anything other than memorizing and executing patterns, and tapping a screen is a lot less fun than jumping on buttons.

I second Electroplankton, Canvas Curse, and Phoenix Wright. Oh, and I'll add Contact for being excellently conceived and written..

[dessgeega]

[Shapermc]

I wasn't very happy with Wario Ware Touched! because... well, a lot of reasons really. I would recommend Twisted way over Touched, but that's not a DS game.

Also, I like Elite Beat Agents, but I would probably like it a lot more if I liked more of the music (some of which I kind of hate). I'm really glad I never broke down and got the Japanese game because a lot of the game is based on the lyrics, and even though I don't like some of the songs on EBA I at least knew them from excess radio play and being in movies as well as just saturated into pop culture.

Seriously, Megaman ZX needs more love. It is a great follow up to the X series (when it was still good).
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“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"

[dongle]

Oh, I love Rhythm Tengoku. I can say that it honestly helped me understand rhythm and mproved my real life drum pattern creation immensely. I also feel that Rhtyhm Tengoku was far more creative - each mini game has its own gimmick developing a particular skill. Polyrhythms, call and response, and so much more are covered in the array of games.

I guess the difference is that Ouendan is arbitrarily abstract for no discernible point (maybe to fit a rhythm game to the ds interface?), whereas each game in RT is an abstract representation of a particular musical concept.

[dessgeega]

yeah, touched! is disappointing, especially after twisted.

(i think for some weird reason twisted was released in america after touched, despite being released in japan a year before? i could be wrong.)

i recommend point blank over touched!, but twisted over the majority of the software that will run on the ds.
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[seryogin]

Thanks for you advice, comrades. I'll reappear in the next few days and let you know my thoughts.

Another question that concerns me is if the DS has a headphone jack?
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[dongle]

The Lite does have a headphone jack, and it's pretty well amped - it drives Ety ER4s headphones reasonably well, in fact

[Mr. Mechanical]

[Shapermc]

[Harveyjames]

[simplicio]

Twisted is maybe the best portable game ever made? At least in the top three.

And kind of a Wii precursor, if you think about it.

This all means that it's probably worth importing.

(Much like rhythm tengoku- I should get on that already)

[Gouki]

[dongle]

[Gouki]

[Harveyjames]

[Nana Komatsu]

I wouldn't really recommend Rocket Slime. It's fun, but it's simple, repetitive and you can beat it in a weekend rental.

Tetris DS is lovely although I wish they had an option to change the background music.

Puyo Puyo Fever is really cheap used online, and can do eight (?) player multiplayer on a single card.

[Gouki]

[Harveyjames]

Maybe they didn't think it was worth the expenditure, what with the cost of those tilt-a-carts and localization for all the European territories. Warioware must not be enough of a bankable property to make it worth the investment. Yoshi's Shit-And-Roll made it over here, though.

[Nana Komatsu]

Can't you just get an american cart? I'd be more than happy to mail you one if you'd send me the money.

[Fred]

I can't believe Meteos was only mentioned twice in this thread.

I mean seriously, I could in good conscience sell off all of my DS games right now except for Meteos. It doesn't have Internet play and it doesn't have a lot of options and it doesn't have any game mode that I haven't already beaten black and blue, but I still enjoy playing it from time to time. I don't see why it isn't packaged with new DS-en yet.

[dongle]

I played 1 cart multiplayer Meteos while standing in line overnight for a Wii and everyone was all, "damn this game is great! What is it called?" and kept playing despite receiving terrible thrashings.

I should play it again- still haven't purchased the final planet.

[Neal]

Castlevania Dawn of Sorrow is really good.....
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........

[helicopterp]

[Ketch]

I read in Games TM that Twisted! wasn't released in the UK because it uses a mercury tilt switch. I'm not sure if it was because of safety concerns, or due to tax reasons? probably health & safety.

[Rud13]

[elvis.shrugged]

[dark steve]

The trick to that one is cutting them all free before you start removing them.

Or using a second stylus.
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[grumbel]

I would recomment:

• Mario64, while only a remake, it is still probally the game with which I had most fun on the DS
  
• MarioKartDS, second best MarioKart after the one on SNES, nothing groundbreaking here eiither, but very good mix of features of past MarioKarts
  
• NewSuperMarioBros, not up on par with MarioBros3, but still a good solid 2D jump'n run
  
• Castlevania Dawn of Sorrow, pretty much just Aria of Sorrow with new graphics and levels, but still very good
  
• Trace Memory/Another Code, nice little point&click adventure, a little bit short and linear, but has some of the craziest uses of the DS I have seen so far
  

I am still waiting for something that is truely ground breaking and good at the same time on the DS. While Kirby is ok, it is far to easy to be actual fun, same so with many other "innovative" uses of touchscreen. There are of course also those games that ruin a perfectly good control scheme with the touchscreen for no good reason (StarFox), which I would recomment to stay away from as well.

[dark steve]

Yeah, but it's quicker overall if you use an off-hand to switch between instruments.
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[Mister Toups]

lost in blue, yo
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where were you when nana komatsu got a wii?

[wankerwitson]

That's sexist your sexist.

I'd plum for Catch! Touch! Yoshi!. The closet comparison I can offer is Mr Driller but wheras Mr Driller is fast and manic Yoshi! is slow and manic. Your enjoyment may increase if you can find a high score competitior.

Meteos is also neccessary. At first you may not like it but your brain needs to twist into the right shape. Then you can try playing with the R button held down most of the time ro try and lauch the whole screen as one huge block.

[Gouki]

[Cycle]

I bought Meteos but don't get it. Maybe I need to read the instructions or something, but I'm just not feeling it. Pretty dissapointed after all the hype!

Also, Shaper, I bought Megaman ZX based on dess recommending it based on your recommendation. I also think it's pretty swell, but I haven't bothered finishing it because I can't stand how the map is laid out. It takes me forever to find the new places I need to go since hardly any of it is laid out logically and I get bored running around a maze

[Pijaibros]

Hard mode makes ZX a worthy play. New attacks and it only takes 2 hits for any boss to kill me. Intense!

On Normal, it was one of the easiest Megaman games I've ever played.

The world layout is rather silly, (I don't even get why they put things where they did) but with the HX air dashing suit you can get from point A to point B in a minute or two.

[GSL]

Sergei!

I heartily endorse your decision to get a Nintendo DS. I do have a word of caution, though, one that will most likely go against the majority opinion here:

Try out both the DS and DS Lite before you buy one, if possible. I thought that the DS Lite sounded like an amazing idea, until my girlfriend picked one up. I put it through the paces, played a few DS and GBA games, and decided I really, really didn't like it. The design felt cramped, the buttons were mushy, and the triggers required an annoying but slight repositioning of my hands to reach accurately. I'd never give up my classic DS for a Lite now, brighter screens be damned!

(Also, I thought the brighter screens made some games look a bit washed out.)

Anyways, here are my must-haves:
Trauma Center
Phoenix Wright
Animal Crossing
Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow
New Super Mario Bros.

My personal must-haves which possibly vary by taste:
Nanostray Aside from being the only shooter on the system, it's a pretty damned good one, and quite challenging at that.
Trace Memory Okay, it's short, but the visuals always impressed me, and it's a clever throwback to the graphic adventures of olde.
Contact I hate name-dropping, but this game is seriously the spiritual sequal to Earthbound (and I'm not at all talking about the whole "OMG PROFESSOR LOOKS LIEK DR. ANDONUTS LOL" line of thinking, either). It would take a full essay for me to explain what exactly gets me about the game, but I guess I could start by tentatively say that it's a sort of meta-RPG, riffing on a lot of the familiar conventions while still firmly entrenched in them. God, I sound pretentious when I say it like that, though. Just give it a shot--rent it, buy used, borrow, whatever--and give yourself at least an hour of playing before you dismiss it. I'm hoping you won't, though.
Final Fantasy III You and I both know why you can't avoid getting this.

Also, I'm not sure if you were aware that the GBA has Final Fantasies I, II, IV, and V, but there it is. And while I haven't played Yggdra Union (want to get it, though), I heartily recommend Riviera. It, like Contact, does things with the JRPG formula that make me squeal with glee. Plus, the characters are just too engaging.

Oh, and I'm not sure if anyone answered this (I admittedly skimmed over quite a few posts) but the old DS has a normal headphone jack. Not sure about the new, though.

[Nana Komatsu]

[dessgeega]

contact is definitely a game to rent, not buy, if you need to play it.

so, what's the deal with nanostray's touch controls? in the european release, i've heard, you can use the buttons to swap weapons instead of needing to touch the screen. would it be best just to import?

i played a little of yggdra. definitely too cluttered for my taste, especially in design. they stack layers and layers on top of what is essentially a relatively simple game, but to some extent it transcends clutter and becomes kitsch, sort of like an srpg version of sanvein.
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[seryogin]

I saw a pair of Nintendo brand headphones for the DS and was wondering if they're worth getting?

Also, I can't find Contact on both Ebgames and Gamestop?! Is it out of print already? That would be a shame.
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[GSL]

If they're the Nintendo-brand headphones I'm thinking of, they're made and distributed by Majesco and aren't really worth the time. For one, the connector only lets you use them with a Nintendo DS or GBA SP. Also, the sound is pretty bad--I get better sound quality out of the cheapo Sony earbuds I've had for the past six years now. Plus, I can use them in other electronic devices.

The Gamestop (Software Etc./EB Games) website is ridiculously broken; don't rely on it any more than you have to. If a product isn't one of their consistent best-sellers, there's a 50% chance it just won't exist in the web database. Better to hit the physical stores; if as many people dislike Contact as it seems, you should have no problem scrounging up a copy. Alternatively, a fellow named Karoshi just happens to be selling one right now in the trading thread!

Dess, re: Nanostray's touch controls, I have no idea about the European weapon swap, but in the US version it's something you get used to. Basically, the game is structured so that, unless you REALLY want to be fancy, you're most likely not going to be switching weapons mid-wave; you're actually able to play through most levels on a single weapon type. The bosses often require a bit of mixing up, but the breaks in their attack patterns give you more than enough time to get the next gun ready. It's an annoying 'feature', but it certainly doesn't detract too much from the game. You just stretch over with your right thumb and tap the icon. (Personally, I hate touching the touchscreen, but trying to use the stylus is just downright cumbersome.) I mean, if the European version lets you swap via buttons, then go for it by all means--using the touchscreen in this manner is gimmicky and stupid--but the US version will almost certainly be cheaper, and is very playable despite the touchscreen 'feature'.

EDIT: Sergei, these are the headphones I was talking about. Stay the hell away from them!

[BalbanesBeoulve]

Elite Beat Agents is amazingly fun. Even when you're getting your ass kicked you're still having fun. The music is surprisingly good. When I saw the song list it seemed pretty shit. None of the songs were ones I actually liked in real life. But playing the game, I like most of them. The only one I really really hate is Skater Boi, though I'm also not a fan of Lets Dance and Believe.

[GSL]

I have yet to play Elite Beat Agents or its predecessor Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan, but Sergei, you should know that the tracklist for Osu! includes a decent cover of Linda Linda!

[Nana Komatsu]

I wouldn't call the cover good. But then I don't really like any of the covers in the game. Despite this, the morning musume song turned out okay because it's not like the original girls can sing anyway!