Early in the lifetime of the DS, before the 3ds had even been mentioned, a ton of JRPGs released for the platform seemingly in a bid to become the next earthbound or chrono trigger. Most of them were very mediocre, but to this day Contact (published by atlus) and The World Ends With You (square enix) stand out as stellar titles to me. They represent opposite ends of the jrpg spectrum; contact is a grinding game with a very floaty story, whereas TWEWY has an intricate story and a penalty-free swappable easy difficulty setting to help new players cope with the (initially) awkward combat system. Both of them are stand-out in their own ways, with memorable settings and characters supporting the mechanical depth they offer.
Both of them are games that take advantage of the DS’s unique features, not the microphone but the touchscreen. While Contact is pretty easy on the gimmicks, only requiring you to occasionally peel a sticker or something simple like that, TWEWY’s combat flow has you use buttons to control the top screen while simultaneously doing multiple touch screen gestures, making the game difficult to master on the actual DS and unbelievably hard on an emulator.
TWEWY has since had a remaster and a sequel, but contact is seldom mentioned anywhere when I see the DS talked about. Worth a look!
I was going to mention Contact being a unique game, glad I’m not the only one who remembers it fondly. The reviews upon release where not great but I thought it was a pretty good game.
It’s so hard to describe contact. It’s like a more exploratory Rune Factory with no farming sim element and swappable jobs like the final fantasy MMOs. I feel like the audience for the game wasn’t targeted well, as it fell in that era where “core gamers” stopped being a popular target audience (we hardly use the term at all these days).
I also think that the marketing failed hard. I don’t remember seeing any ads for the game, and the marketing in Japan made it seem like a bait and switch for Mother 3. It also released pretty close to the Japanese mother 3 release as well.
This was my early high school days. My friend and I would play Mario 64 DS wirelessly across the hall because we were in different classes but close enough for a WiFi connection. Great times. Also, the Metroid demo included with the console was a fun multiplayer experience.
My first system I could call my own (not sharing with siblings) was the fat Nintendo DS. It will always be my favourite out of nostalgia.
But my primary DS is my New 3DS, does everything want and plays everything.
For me the DS is the Pokemon machine, from the mainline series to the spin offs. Such a good time to be a fan of Pokemon. Even the knockoffs were fun like Fossil fighters.
The DS was also a good rpg power house the first system I beat Chrono Trigger on.
Then there was the slog of platformers, from new Mario bros, to license of game dubious quality, nicktoons unite anyone?
The 3DS was just an overall disappointment in comparison, game selection was limited and 3rd parties just didn’t give it the time of day. Don’t get me wrong love my 2d Zelda and Metroid revivals on it, but outside of Nintendo games, it didn’t offer me anything.
How do you stand image scaling on 3DS? It’s either poststamp sized or horribly mangled by non-integer scaling on a very low res display. It’s the reason I keep DSi along NN3DS.
Honestly since the New 3DS screen is so small, the slight blurring is negligible to my eyes. So long as there isn’t certificating in the image, like shimmering and or screen tearing, I don’t noticed it.
The people in here complaining about getting a full campaign along with PvE and PvP updates over two years for $60 are the reason we’re in this free-to-play, season pass, paid cosmetic hellscape.
The DS series was the peak handheld generation for me. I like that the console’s design encouraged creative game mechanics, and it has some of my favourite games of all time. I have a DS Lite, a 3DS and a new 3DS, though I think the original DS line had the better game library compared to the 3DS. The camera and 3D effect were rather gimmicky and didn’t add much value for me.
I think the game that best encapsulates what I love about the DS is The World Ends With You, a JRPG set in modern Tokyo that used both screens at once in its action combat system - to control two different characters. The character on the bottom screen would have you use touch gestures to trigger attacks, while you needed to do button combos to control the character on the top. It was insanely fun!
Other games I liked from the early DS era are Hotel Dusk, a detective game that is played in “vertical mode” so you hold the console like a book - and Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan!, the original Japanese version of Elite Beat Angels, a rhythm game.
I also played all romance/otome games that were available in English for the DS, my favourite was Tokimeki Memorial Girl’s Side.
The DS figured out touch-based interactions way better than smartphones which are like the main touch-based “handheld” nowadays. That is because you could dedicate the entire touchscreen to gameplay input, since you still had the top screen to show relevant game information. Smartphones on the other hand need to utilize the entire screen both for input and displaying stuff, which just doesn’t work as well imo.
I got a 1st Gen 3DS second hand some time ago. What I like:
Pokemon, Zelda, and Animal Crossing.
The 3D effect and dual cameras are neat, though a little gimmicky.
What I don’t like:
The heavy reliance upon internet connectivity. I can’t change the details of the account on it without losing access to the downloaded games. I can’t even change it anyway, because the online store is closed.
The control stick sucks. It’s good for a very flat control stick, but it doesn’t feel nice to use.
Proprietary power connector.
The viewing angle on the screen is pretty shallow.
I have a Steam Deck, and it’s just better in all respects. I get that it’s comparing a very new device against an old device, but I don’t really see a reason to pull out the 3DS when I could have a better experience on the SD.
My hands are pretty medium sized, and I think it’s the most comfortable portable device I have ever had in my hands. It is however a bit heavy. It’s also not a pocket device like the Gameboy was, although most DS are not very pocketable either.
I upgraded to a New 3DS XL for Monster Hunter because I needed the control nub for camera control. The viewing angle with eye tracking is SO MUCH BETTER.
I did rip out the control nub and replace it with a PSP joystick, improving it vastly.
I bought a Steam Deck just to support the most important thing that ever happened to Linux gaming, but mine has actually just been gathering dust. It's far too big to really be a handheld, doesn't fit in my pocket, and does not fill the role that Nintendo's handhelds served for me. The main thing I do end up using it for is taking Deck + dock to FGC events for a portable setup.
Last year I bought a Miyoo Mini Plus, a little emulator handheld, as an impulse buy because it was on sale super cheap. I ended up putting far more time into it than I ever did with the Deck.
My ultimate dream would be to someday get SteamOS running on a DS-sized form factor. Doesn't need to be beefy, just needs to fit in my pocket and run my favorite 2D indie games.
Now that Satisfactory came out of early access and is now 1.0, I’m starting a new playthrough. I’ve got 1400+ hours in the game, 30 or so in my new save.
I didn’t know about this game until today when an interview with the dev popped up on my podcast subscription feed, it looks good! I might have to go in blind
I did not know this one was so close to release! I am glad to see that it is awesome, and now I don’t want to know anything else about the game because I want to be surprised!
The DLCS aren’t cosmetic - they’re “additional” storylines.
Why are you defending the practice of selling incomplete games with the option to pay to play the entire game ON DAY 1?
What? Is it additional storylines or part of the main game? Who fucking cares, dont buy it if you dont want to. I only recently played the yuffy story on ff7r and it didnt add shit to my experience.
According to a friend who had the displeasure of looking at the file size, he claims it’s 170GB when all is said and done… Stupid Sony square refusing to let steam preload…
170 GB is insane. Publishers should really get punished for making larger than average deliveries. Most of that size usage usually comes from poor optimization.
They’re typically optimizing for fidelity and performance ahead of install size. Multiple LODs can balloon an install size quite quickly, but they’ll give you better bang for your buck in other areas, and storage space is a concern that dissipates more in time, as you upgrade to newer machines.
I have seen this theory floated a few times. The problem is that reading uncompressed files from disk can often be slower than reading less data and decompressing it on the fly efficiently. Would be interesting to see actual studies of this for common game data.
It was faster to load the higher resolution data back in the early 2010s on HDDs, so I don’t imagine it got any better for using compression now that we’re on SSDs.
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