a year or two prior, i’d sold my gba to buy a gp32. but with the promise of new sonic and new castlevania, i traded in my gp32 for a ds. at that year’s christmas meet for the anime forum i was posting on at the time, people had heard from my irl friend who was also on the forum that my mum had decided i was too old to get presents anymore, so they’d all got me a little present each. one of the presents was a copy of project rub, the weird sonic team silhouette romance minigame collection!
pictochat become a modernised version of passing note in class for my friends in college (by which i mean the uk definition, where teenage dropouts go to finish high school and/or avoid having to get a job (because back in the 00s, the government would pay you a weekly allowance for staying in education past 16), not university), and a lot of break times were sent playing mario kart, bleach 2, and the surprisingly good versus mode in lunar knights.
i also remember a summer afternoon with the aforementioned anime forum members sitting around in some mostly empty public building, after we’d been on a group shopping trip, playing 8-player bomberman.
post fond memories of the best nintendo console itt
i remember doing a long continuous drawing between people in pictochat at a con. mario kart and metroid prime hunters were great for single cart sessions
i don’t think anybody else at school brought a ds, but i remember playing twewy in particular on breaks and being very invested in building nekus courage to crossdress (no modified sprite for clothes, booo)
also remember later on playing ace attorney 3 in a japanese hotel room because i was too anxious to go out and explore more than i already had. kind of a mistake but good game.
i played it for the first time this year when i tried snake eater 3ds. i found it ergonomically unfriendly and the controls poorly mapped to a game with such dense and intricate mechanics and when i tried the 3D it made me hate life. i’d like to play ghost trick eventually.
There are a handful of games I really liked for this system but it was the first system that ever really made me feel my physical limitations because it was hell on my hands
I have some very fond memories of the DS. Pokemon Diamond was a good time despite the slowness, Animal Crossing Wild World introduced me to the series and was absolutely delightful. Custom Robo Arena was and is one of my all time fave games, just an absolute blast to tinker with my little robot until it could just destroy all other robos in fights. And there was a weird little beat em up with online pvp I was a huge fan of called Draglade that had an even cooler looking sequel that never made it’s way out of Japan to my great annoyance as a teen lol.
was just thinking about emulating the phoenix wright games in my living room and playing thru them w/ my hannigram-shipping roommate they went crazy w/ the fujobait dynamics in these
It was my go to console back when I had to do 7 hour rail commutes while i was doing my PhD. Got through a lot of legacy stuff and the weirder stuff in the catalogue. Flower Sun and Rain whilst also on holiday myself was a pretty great experience.
I think it was the only time I ever played Chrono Trigger or FF4 as well.
oh yeah, after i got a flash cart i got the original freeware colors for it (which i can’t find any more now that its paid official software for nintendo machines)
the ds is not a great drawing pad but at least colors made it nicer than art academy. some of those paintings should be on my drive somewhere
My first real console I owned and one that was bought from one of the Insert Credit/Selectbutton folk as I was heading out to university. I still have the big fat thing, a nice brown sticker across the top and still probably capable of playing carts if I gave the battery a charge. It was a rugged handheld, good quality and I was glad for its presence during lectures. Lot of memories grinding through farming in Harvest Moon or souls in the Iga Castlevanias absent-mindedly in between writing notes.
Mario Kart DS
Meteos
Tetris DS
Kirby Canvas Curse
Peggle
Dragon Quest IV: Chapters of the Chosen
Scribblenauts
Bangai-O Spirits
Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime
Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia
Korg DS-10
Electroplankton
Sonic Colors
Pokémon White
Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor
Yoshi Touch & Go
Etrian Odyssey
The original DS was so ugly but the DS Lite was damn cool and now just screams late 2000’s tech. The DSi as well but was let down by the removal of the GBA slot and region locking.
I didn’t go to cons so I missed out on epic Pictochat battles.
Almost everyone I knew had a flashcart, even those of my friends who only played games casually. Piracy had to have been so rampant on this thing.
my parents got me one for my birthday near launch and i remember my dad calling it a “nintendods” which i always thought was funny and have never heard since
the ds was a cute and fun time, i remember navigating the onboarding for playing online with ppl here like ordering the wifi dongle or finding different friend codes for different games or whatever it was. the only time i’ve had jury duty i mostly just played mario kart ds in the waiting room and a guy wanted to try it out so i let him. ouendan still has my favorite rhythm game final stage. fun silly lil handheld.
ive told this story but whatever. when i went to japan in 2004 i wasnt playing videogames at all, i was over them. i was done bringing games into my house. i was sad about the n64 becuase everyone was so mean about it so i quit games. i was like 12 when i quit games at home! i used to be much more of a baby you see. i only really played arcade games at nickel city and golfland, or if i was hanging out at a friends house and the activity was Videogame
but then i saw warioware twisted and oendan like next to eachother and i fell in love with wariowares packaging and of course the thought of Osu wasnt in anyones head yet so seeing a TAP TO THE MUSIC game with silly songs activated my dance maniax neuron
AND PLUS
they had pink fat 3dses. i really liked that pearly princess pink and i played the shit out of it all the itme. i never really pictochatted except for a couple times with my partner who also had a ds. so we both got one, because they were ridiculously cheap compared to the states and like i said PINK (his was red)
i had it for about 3 years and i used it every damn day until i fell asleep with it and it fell out of my bed and then my boyfriend got up out of bed and stepped directly on it while it was open just shattering the whole thing to shit. i was posting on sb1 then and splatterhouse was about to come out but it was all bloom and gloom and not my thing so i made a joke post where i was like RAGING about it adn i said LOOK I BROKE MY DS IN PROTEST and took pictures of me hitting my broken ds with a bat . i still have that bat! its lasted through many tantrums, fake and real. fort 90 thought i really destroyed my ds and had to rage about it on his private forum. gotcha. pranked. swerved. PUNKD
i replaced it really quickly with a not quite as magically pink ds lite and ive always had some kind of form of ds AT LEAST ONE since then. right now i have a ds lite and a 3ds xl. i use the ds lite to play my gba flashcart and i use the eshop on my 3dsxl
its my favorite console ever and i consider alll of them the same from ds fat to 3ds xl. like an 90s grandma calling every videogame a mario, any nintendo console that i can designate with a ‘ds’ in any way is my favorite
At that time The rings on the Gamecube sticks were killing my thumb but the NDS ergonomics never bothered me
In 2008 my then girlfriend and I slept in different rooms and we’d communicate via Pictochat sending drawings then adding details and little hearts to the other’s pictures then send them back. Then I’d play a Castlevania or dungeon crawler! Cool system
remember buying a ds + two games from play-asia (cringe) on japanese launch for about £120… a friend bought a psp at the same time and i thought i’d bought the wrong one for about eighteen months when all the custom firmware and emulation stuff dropped
crazy you could get a console and two games for £120
I never see original model DSs around. I almost want to get one but DSs are expensive! A deal will get you one for 40 bucks.
Anyways here is another Japan story and question for the forum because I figured out the answer eventually. Around 2018 I saw a white guy and boredgirlfriendwife in a bookoff and he was pulling out every single DS game on the shelf. This was when the DS section was still huge. It isn’f anymore. I do wonder where all the DS games went.
He clearly couldn’t read Japanese and he had the determination of someone looking for something. What Was He Looking For?