Nintendo DS is 10! Share Your Fondest Memories

Yes! Fair enough if you imported it beforehand, but bollocks to that.

It was ten years ago that I skieved Higher History, traipsed into the next town over and planted £139.99 (approx. £1.2b in today's money) on a brand-spanking-new, just released DS Phat with WarioWare Touched and Project Rub.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4214913.stm

At first it was shite, but it turned out all right: share your DS memories!

Really fond of the DS. I spent a lot of time with its library of RPGs - Mario & Luigi, The World Ends With You, Final Fantasy 3... all huge timesinks, but timesinks I loved.

I once spent an entire plane journey from Florida to Manchester playing Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin too. Good stuff.

Blimey, that's a huge topic! Fond memories include:

1) Crying at Professor Layton and the Curious Village (risking the ire of Balla, mentioning this), Inazuma Eleven and Ghost Trick.
2) Dragon Quest IX. All-consuming, brilliant game, which lead me to other Dragon Quests. Dragon Quest V, for example, features the best story in any RPG I've finished (although FFVI may better it yet).
3a) Completing the Pokedex in Pearl. Gen IV has a bad rap, some of which is deserved, but it has a special place in my heart for that reason.
3b) Gen V! Join Avenue was a great experiment and one that captured a lot of my time.

This is a thread that I may well revisit many, many times! DS memories are still being made: I beat Sonic Rush earlier this year (albeit on a 3DS), for example.

DS was the first console I ever bought for myself and the first machine I ever got on day one of release. Loads of memories, I might write a big ol' thing about it when I have my broadband again.

I'll always remember when I went into HMV to put down my pre-order and was pleasantly surprised to see them have a demo station with warioware touched on it & I was instantly hooked after playing the orbit ball microgame.

I remember getting up early and then running down the road to go pick it up and get back home to give it a go before my dad got home

The_Jaster wrote:

I'll always remember when I went into HMV to put down my pre-order and was pleasantly surprised to see them have a demo station with warioware  touched on it & I was instantly hooked after playing the orbit ball microgame.

My local Gamestation had a pod in months before the proper launch, and I remember that WarioWare demo grabbing me by the bollocks in the same way as it did with you. My excitement was slightly dampened after playing Super Mario 64X4, with it's just-not-as-good-as-they-used-to-be controls. Pictochat was the real highlight of the pod though, and it started my long-term passion for drawing comedy wallopers.

The only real fond memory I've got is getting my American Import (remember when Nintendo made region free handhelds) with Super Mario 64 & Metroid Hunters Demo then having to wait ages for the UK release before I could buy any more games as the USA launch wasn't great as everything was dam expensive as well.

I can't think of any real standout games on it that I played either, I voted of course when we did the DS vote but Nintendo as whole passed me by with the DS & Wii.

The European launch had Zoo Keeper, and thus must be reflected upon as a massive success. Me and my mates shared a cart about and challenged each other's high scores. Quality game and a very fond memory all the same.

The DS really felt innovative as a handheld - even something basic as turning the console sideways like a book to play Hotel Dusk was a really novel idea.

pun absolutely intended

Oh gosh, such a topic. Such memories. I think this could lead the way for a really top-notch retrospective on Gintendo, if anyone (Cappa or Drunka, maybe) wanted to write it.

I have more to say (much, much more), but for now I'll say that I have mixed memories of ZK. While a nice enough little curio, I've never got on with pure high-score games, and its "campaign"-like mode was undermined by the inherent randomness of its gameplay.

Still better than Feel the Magic, though. What a load of tripe that was.

Project Rub was excellent which I bought on UK launch, the guy in gamestation looked at me as I went in at 9am and bought 1 game for the DS on the day of launch.

The Cappuccino Kid wrote:

The_Jaster wrote:

I'll always remember when I went into HMV to put down my pre-order and was pleasantly surprised to see them have a demo station with warioware  touched on it & I was instantly hooked after playing the orbit ball microgame.

My local Gamestation had a pod in months before the proper launch, and I remember that WarioWare demo grabbing me by the bollocks in the same way as it did with you. My excitement was slightly dampened after playing Super Mario 64X4, with it's just-not-as-good-as-they-used-to-be controls. Pictochat was the real highlight of the pod though, and it started my long-term passion for drawing comedy wallopers.

Aye even that thumb pad thing didn't make it much better but it still blew my mind having Mario 64 on the go, oh back to warioware for a second, I was down at my brothers a few weeks ago and my 4 year old Nephew was playing it on his 2ds & we played the table tennis game which had him laughing his head off.

He'd also select random microgame levels then hand it to me just to see how fast I could get it go, the game is such a classic.

The DS introduced me to Phoenix Wright, and for that I thank it from the bottom of my heart. I knew nothing about it and bought the first game as the 'spare' in a two games for the price of something sale at HMV with Super Mario 64 DS. Ended up playing it first, natch. Once I got to the start of the second case I was hooked. The childlike thrill of shouting "OBJECTION!" into the microphone has never gotten old.

The DS had a great launch, didn't it? It didn't even matter that XX/XY was disappointing - Zoo Keeper was grand, Wario Ware Touched was my first experience with the franchise and was an absolute belter, and then there was SM64 on a cart that could fit under your tongue (as I believe NGC termed it). Controls were rubbish, but I didn't even care at the time.

As for other great moments, nothing can really compare to Meteos, but I want to make sure that Henry Hatsworth gets a mention too. A really tough and characterful game that brought something new to the table, albeit by combining two old things.

I can remember driving in to Wakefield centre to visit the now defunct Ninja Games, in its second building of the three it occupied in its lifetime, to pick up my Jap DS, with Wario Ware Touched, and Madden 20-summat (which was promptly flogged on EBay) and MY WORD IT WAS GLORIOUS. Major highlights from then included Animal Crossing every day for about three years straight (eek), Final Fantasy 4 remake, and Europe finally getting Chrono Trigger. Of course there must have been plenty more, but it's been so long and I've slept/drunk since the launch.

Is it strange that the standout memory is having a Nintendo adaptor thing to connect the DS through the PC to get online, as wireless routers were just becoming a thing?

I had the blue DS console when it first released than moved on to having the DS lite lime green when it released because better colour choices for the handheld, was a lot better looking and liter to hold which I perfected. The DSi didn't interest me because I could live without the camera taking pictures lolz

Avalon Code was my favourite DS game because of the puzzle, adventure, story telling and could relate to all the characters
This has got to be the best RPG I have ever experienced on the DS and would love to start all over again with it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22rFlyQM88s

Rune factory is one of these games you need patience and more time in to it, it can become very additive so I try
not let me spoil my day of not trying others aswell, I give it at lest a hour or 2 timing to stop myself lolz
of course this has come to the 3DS of the 4th game so completely surprised and thrilled to see for fans of the series.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gI26ohe9B0

The end of Ghost Trick. When the cake is wheeled in. I can't say any more for the sake of spoilers; you'd have to play it. I sometimes moan that story-telling in games is given too much importance, given that a lot of it is ham-fisted. But this is genuinely brilliant - for a game about time-travelling ghosts to end up how it does is still a high-point in videogames.

That's one I hadn't really heard a lot about, but was brought to my attention through our DS voting thread. I really ought to seek it out.

Yes, Jay: Ghost Trick is a top game and deserves a damn good playing.

~~~

Oddly enough, Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes Of Light is one of my fondest DS memories. Given 55% by NGamer - for entirely valid reasons, I might add, not that they ever affected me that much - it's the last boss that I remember most clearly. I'd read that it levelled up as you did - in other words, it was always going to be as hard as it was - so I lumped on straight away. My team held their own for quite a while but once the boss upped his game they fell away until there was one man standing (that game's equivalent of Ringabel, as it happens) with no possibility of reviving the others. It got to the stage where it was kill or be killed: one more hit and I'd have been a goner. And... I wasn't! The last attack killed the final boss, after 40 minutes of concentrated play. What a relief!

I think you'd really enjoy GT, Jay. I mean, I think that most people would, but based on what I know of your taste in games, I think it's one you'd rave about.

Now to think of something to say so that it doesn't look like I'm ignoring Zero...






...nope, I got nuttin. After the 55%, that game was never on my radar, and the final boss sounds more annoying than fun.

I've got three words for Ghost Trick & Jay: GET. IT. PLAYED.

ZeroJones wrote:

Blimey, that's a huge topic! Fond memories include:

1) Crying at Professor Layton and the Curious Village

I remember very nearly crying about how unsatisfactory the ending to that game was.

DS is still my favourite console. My fondest memory was probably importing a Japanese one and receiving it about five days after its Jap launch. Took it to the extended family over the Christmas of that year and everyone was all like "Wow, what is this?" In retrospect, that was possibly a slur on how crap Project Rub actually is.

Just reading that BBC article, I find it amusing that after all the "hype", nobody gave a flying toss about the thing until the DS Lite came to be.

Stu_the_great wrote:

ZeroJones wrote:

Blimey, that's a huge topic! Fond memories include:

1) Crying at Professor Layton and the Curious Village

I remember very nearly crying about how unsatisfactory the ending to that game was.

Seconded. Also the bit about Feel the Magic. (Project Rub? You're from Yorkshire, Stu, not America!)

The confusion over that fudged one of the votes in the DS vote thread, if I recall correctly.