Not necessarily the completest ‘best’ collection, but some of the more notable games, applications and emulators that have grabbed my attention long enough to stay on my DS.
Category – Games
Genre: Board Game
Description: “ChessNET allows you to play chess online in a “play-by-mail” style, where each time you make a move, the information is sent back to the server and stored (for days) until your opponent loads up their game, receives the data, and makes their move. It continues in this ping pong fashion until the game ends. Up to 128 simultaneous online games are supported per DS. There is also a local single-DS mode, where you and a buddy can just hand off the device between moves.”
Web: http://www.neoflash.com/forum/index.php/topic,4978.0.html
Genre: Shoot-em-up [PC Port]
Description: “Tyrian is an arcade-style vertical scrolling shooter. The player controls a space ship fitted with different weapons and other equipment. Money is earned by destroying enemies and grabbing bonuses, which is then used to purchase upgrades such as weapons, shields, energy generators, and different ships from interlevel menus. The game is fast-paced and presents a variety of enemies and bosses.
While an arcade-style shooter, Tyrian also added the credit system and shields from Raptor: Call of the Shadows. Consequently, the game is less tedious that arcade contemporaries, as the player’s craft can survive repeated hits due to shields/armour and as select powerups can be purchased and/or picked up. Tyrian was also a departure from many “serious” shooters that attempted to look as realistic as possible, having a more cartoonist artwork and varied powerups including coins, gems, and fruit.”
Web: http://vespenegas.com/tyrian.html
Genre: Gamebook
Description: “For those who didn’t know about Gamebooks, they were novels which had a nice success during the 80′s, and which were allowing the readers to choose their own path by jumping from one numbered section to another, in a fun and interactive way. They were introducing the concepts of inventory, enemies fights, random dice results, and other nice ideas which were the precursors of what we find today in role playing video games.
The philosophy behind the port of the Lone Wolf books to the DS is to let the console handle all the rules related to combats, stats and so on, so the player can be really immersed in the story and doesn’t need to bother with the gameplay elements.”
Web: http://www.projectaon.org/staff/frederic/index.php
Genre: Physics Toy
Description: “I really like the idea of the popular mini game Crayon Physics: You draw an object on the screen and it instantly becomes physical and interacts with other objects. The first thing that sprung to my mind when seeing it was “This would be awesome on the DS!” And Pocket Physics is what I came up with after two weeks. It isn’t really a game, but more of a physical construction kit for your pocket. You can design scenes freely by drawing things with the stylus. Things can be solid, like ramps and floors, or dynamic, like balls or boxes. Like in The Incredible Machine, you can reset the scene, change it, and start the simulation again. It’s even more fun if you have a DS Motion, which can be used to control gravity!”
Note: The lastest version (v0.6) includes massive speed optimisations making things run smoother and faster than ever.
Web: http://www.tobw.net/index.php?cat_id=3&project=Pocket+Physics
Genre: Puzzle [Amiga Port]
Description: Lemmings DS is an open-source port of the classic Amiga action puzzle game Lemmings for the Nintendo DS.
Featuring:
All 120 levels from the original Amiga Lemmings
All 100 levels from Oh-No! More Lemmingsand now
All 72 levels from Xmas Lemmings ‘91, ‘92, ‘93 and ‘94
Web: http://www.mrdictionary.net/lemmings/
Genre: Puzzle
Description: WordUp! Is a highly addictive block falling puzzle game, you must make blocks vanish by connecting blocks together to make words of three or more letters.
Web: http://www.superpanic.com/wordup_download.html
Genre: Puzzle
Description: Another ridiculously addictive little puzzle game. A simple tile matching game at heart with a twist. The goal is to remove all the tiles on the screen by connecting two
tiles that have the same color and the same symbol. The link between
the two tiles can have at most two corners.
Web: http://stravingo.over-blog.fr/article-12423925.html
Genre: Sim
Description: Port of the popular Tranport Tycoon (OpenTTD) for DS, although coming along very nicely it’s still quite buggy at the moment.
Web: http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=35306
Genre: Puzzle Compilation
Description: “PuzzleManiak is a port of the marvelous Simon Tatham’s Portable Puzzle Collection on Nintendo DS.”
Featuring:
27 games: Tents, Dominosa, Mines, Bridges, Light Up (aka Akari), Pattern (aka Picross), Net (aka Netwalk), Untangle (aka Planarity), Sudoku (aka Solo), Galaxies, Slitherlink (aka Loopy), Blackbox, Mastermind (aka Guess), Map, Filling, Solitaire (aka Pegs), Sixteen, Fifteen, Slant, Rectangles, Netslide, Samegame, Unequal, Flip, Inertia, Twiddle and Pyramid (adaptation of Cube).
Support of graphic themes.
Daily challenge downloadable via wifi.
Score submission via wifi.
Global ranking computed from all scores submitted available on NDS/Website.
Web: http://www.puzzlemaniak.com/
Genre: Organiser/Web Browser/IRC Client/Homebrew Downloader
Description: So what is it?
“It is currently capable of storing daily and hourly memos, addresses,
todo lists and simple scribbles. It also includes a full file browser
and calculator. The file browser is capable of displaying images and
playing back many audio formats as well as launching homebrew and
viewing/editing text and html. Internet capabilities of DSOrganize
include an IRC client, an online homebrew database, streaming audio
support, and a rudimentary web browser.”
Simply put, one of those applications you NEED on your flashcart.
Web: http://www.dragonminded.com/?loc=ndsdev/DSOrganize
Genre: Music
Description: “NitroTracker is a FastTracker II style tracker for the Nintendo DS. With NitroTracker, you can carry your XMs around in your DS and compose whenever and wherever you feel like it. “Tracking on a handheld console? Sounds like a pain in the ass.” You might say. But because of the touchscreen and stylus of the DS, it’s quite easy. You can compose your melodies using an on-screen keyboard, directly edit your patterns by making selections, copying and pasting – all with the stylus. And that’s not where it ends: If you don’t have any samples at hand, make your own with the DS’s microphone. You can even replace the samples in existing songs with your own recorded ones.”
Web: http://nitrotracker.tobw.net/
Genre: Graphics
Description: “Colors! is a simplistic digital painting application for Nintendo DS based on modern painting-techniques developed for drawing tablets in programs like Photoshop. Bytaking advantage of the pressure sensitivity of the DS touch-screen it becomes a perfect portable digital sketch-book.”
One of the best homebrew applications for the DS, even includes pressure sensitivity. Some of the things created with this have to be seen to be believed.
View the online gallery here: http://colors.brombra.net/
Web: http://www.collectingsmiles.com/colors/
Genre: Util
Description: This utility lets you back-up your retail game saves, or restore them to the cartridge.
Usage tutorial here: http://www.scdev.org/forum/index.php?topic=9915.0
Web: http://frodo.dyn.gno.org/~brettk/savsender
Category – Emulators
Format: GB/GBC
Description: “Best GBC emulator for DS, hands down. Near perfect compatibility, great sound, and it has RTC for Pokemon G/S/C.” Features: GB/GBC and SGB compatibility, Save States, Two screen sizes (Original and Scaled)
Web: http://lameboy.nutki.com/
Format: NES
Description: “Simply the BEST NES emulator for DS there is. 98/99% Compatibility for
NES games, so you’ll be happy to know, it will probably play ALL your
favorite classics. The L button activates the ‘Rewind’ feature. Which
basically rewinds the gameplay of the ROM you’re playing. Say, you die
in Megaman, you can hold the L button to rewind before the point of
death. Cheap, right? To speed up gameplay, hold the R button.
Unfortunately, there isn’t Automatic SRAM saving, so you will have to
tap the ‘Save SRAM’ button on the bottom screen to actually save your
game. There is also the feature to Save/Load states! You can only use
one state at a time though.”
Web: http://www.cs.utah.edu/~tew/nesDS/
Format: SMS/GG
Description: “This emulator has 99/100% compatibility for SMS and Game Gear games.” Also features, Save States and Action Replay support.
Web: http://www.portabledev.com/pages/ds/jeuxdev.-perso/dsmasterplus.php
Format: MD/GEN
Description: “Best Genesis emulator for DS. Hands down. Awesome compatibility, I haven’t found a game that doesn’t work yet. Save/Load states, and tons of settings to fix game compatibility. There’s the ability to scale the screen just incase something gets cut off. Amazing emulator.”
Web: http://www.workingdesign.de/
Format: SNES
Description: A very playable SNES emulator for the DS, a lot of games have minor graphical glitches but overall compatibility is great. Only problems are that a lot of games don’t run at full speed, and although there are various scaling options cutting off part of the screen is often unavoidable.
Web: http://www.snemul.com/ds/
Format: SCUMM based games and similar.
Description: “ScummVM is an interpreter that allows you to play many point and click adventure games from the 80s and 90s on modern computers. I didn’t write ScummVM, that honour goes to the ScummVM team. ScummVM runs games from Lucasarts that were created using the SCUMM system (hence the name) but it has also been expanded to run games from many other developers too. ScummVM is written in portable C++ and has been ported to many differnet platforms, and I have made a port of it to the DS. This means that you can play all these classic games on the DS with full sound. ”
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