pac4life
11-03-2009, 04:48 AM
I know, five years isn't really retro, especially when the system in question is still on track to become the best-selling game device ever, and a new model was announced a couple of hours after our anniversary feature went live. (Thanks so much for that clever trick of timing, Nintendo.) But the five-year anniversary of the DS hits me in a curiously nostalgic way nevertheless, so I figured it's worth writing about... just not for Retronauts.
The DS was the first system announced after the launch of 1UP.com. We knew about the PSP going into the site's tentative October 2003 debut, but the DS caught us off-guard a few months later. The whole thing was actually kind of depressing, to be honest. Nintendo was at its all-time low, having actually lost money (for the first time ever?) in a recent quarter. The memory of their limp 2003 E3 presentation, in which the company tried to hype up GameCube/GBA connectivity -- a feature pioneered by the failed twin dynamos of Dreamcast and Neo Geo Pocket, which was hardly the most positive association -- as the next big thing in gaming, burned in our minds. The hardcore gamer had abandoned GameCube in favor of the Xbox, and things were looking bad. Now the PSP seemed likely to crush GBA, Nintendo's last bastion of profitability... so news of the DS -- less than three years after GBA's debut -- wasn't entirely surprising.
But that first announcement painted an unhappy picture of a relentlessly gimmicky rush job, and the ghost of Virtual Boy was invoked by just about everyone. With no images to accompany the news, we were left to improvise and imagine what it could possibly look like:
Yeah, we all dogpiled the system pretty hard. But it wasn't with any particular joy or venom; DS just seemed like a desperate last gasp of a company about to go the way of its old rival, Sega. I didn't want to see Nintendo wither and die (I actually liked the GameCube quite a lot!), but the DS didn't seem like a good answer to the Sony PS2/PSP juggernaut. The system's first E3 showing didn't do much to inspire confidence, either; the unit on display was incredibly cheap-looking, and the game were OK but did little to make use of the system's unique features.
Still, my cynicism began to fade when I went up to Seattle in October 2004 for a DS pre-launch press event. It was short on hype and long on playable demos, and the demos weren't too shabby at all. It was nice to see a game of Mario 64's quality in a portable form, but I was more impressed by the variety of titles. The improved quality of the final units was reassuring, too; the original DS was still pretty ugly, but it was miles beyond that tacky piece of junk from E3. I was officially interested in the system, although I expected it to be a short-lived epilogue to Nintendo's career due to general apathy on the part of the world at large. And in fact, when the system launched, no one at 1UP or any of our magazines seemed to give a rat's ass about it. I ended up reviewing a bunch of the games simply because no one else wanted to be stuck with the task, and even took 1UP's shared system home with me over Thanksgiving and Christmas breaks because no one else cared to use it.
A funny thing happened over that Christmas break. While I was out of the office, the PSP launched, and an import unit arrived at 1UP HQ. Everyone here oohed and ahhed over it, posting gushing blogs about how incredible it looked. Meanwhile, I let my three elementary school age cousins play with Super Mario 64 DS, and it was a revelation. They thought the core game was OK, but they became instantly obsessed with the minigames. The bite-sized challenges were accessible for them, but more importantly they loved the touchscreen controls. Normal D-pad controls were a little clunky for their tiny hands, especially my two youngest cousins, but they took an immediate shine to using a stylus or even their fingers. The huge disconnect between what we fanatical gamers in the press adored in the PSP and what gaming newcomers saw in DS was striking, and I realized that Nintendo really was angling for a new approach to selling games.
But would anyone buy it? The DS had potential, but in order to realize it Nintendo would have to articulate their new vision, which was a tall order. When I flew up for Nintendo's Mario Kart preview event a few months later, I was happy to see that the division between hardcore and casual gamers was the very crux of Reggie Fils-Aime's presentation -- his talk of the Blue Ocean and all that. Meanwhile, right about then was when the floodgates opened and Nintendo and its third parties began delivering great traditional gaming content -- Mario Kart DS, Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow -- along with a lot of games that would only work on DS, like Kirby: Canvas Curse and Nintendogs. The system began to gain traction, and Nintendogs was basically a flag planted in the hearts of people who wouldn't normally care about games. To Nintendo's credit, the company managed to recognize its unconventional success and exploit it for all they were worth.
The DS continues to surprise me. I had a soft spot for the system, but mostly in the sense that I thought it was a charming and canny idea that Nintendo launched much too late to make a difference for its flagging fortunes -- the swan song of a fading friend. To my amazement, not only did the system prove not to be the ill-conceived wreck that first impressions suggested, it managed to convince a massive audience of its potential in a way that I never expected, let alone conceived. When I read about games like New Super Mario Bros. topping 20 million units sold, I wonder if even Nintendo expected the system to do as well as it has. But I certainly won't complain about its success; the DS didn't just keep a major industry player in the game, it's also been an amazing platform for software of every variety. And it's portable, which means I can actually find the time to enjoy its games -- no easy task with a schedule as packed as mine.
So, here's to the DS. Whatever the future holds, it's given us five years of surprises, and five years of fantastic games. Of course, a lot of my fellow gamers still turn their noses up at the platform, but the DS has also proven that there's a lot more of them -- that is, people who are more concerned with fun, accessible entertainment -- than there are of us. Ultimately, I think the DS's legacy won't be saving Nintendo but rather saving the medium from itself, by preventing videogames from becoming an insular race to the bleeding edge of graphical prowess at the expense of creative design. It's always nice to see the good guys win.
Read it. Comment below. Interesting to get a mini-scoop on some of that stuff.
And he's right about the initial reactions of the DS. Who woulda thunk it'd be on the top of the gaming word right now? I initially supported the PSP head on @ first, but man oh man did I regret it several months later. (Not that the PSP sucks or anything; now it has a great arsenal of solid games) but overall, the DS gives more gamer-bang-for your buck. Once the DSlite came out, I was sold. The thing has too many good games to count, but my favs have to be:
- Castlevania DoS
- New Super Mario Bros
- Mario Kart DS
- Elite Beat Agents
- Castlevania OoE
- Castlevania PoR
- GTA: Chinatown Wars
- Advance Wards: DoR
- Moon
- Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney
- Professor Layton & the Curious Village
- Ninja Gaiden DS
- CoD WaW DS
- Lunar Knights
- Brothers in Arms DS
- Zelda: Phantom Hourglass
- Dementium
- Hotel Dusk
- FIFA 09
- Kirby Super Star Ultra
- Retro Game Challenge
- Scribblenauts
- Rhythm Heaven
- Sonic Rush
- Sonic Rush Adventure
- Trauma Center
- Trauma Center 2
*deep breath*
And I have Mario & Luigi 3, Kingdom Hearts, World Ends with Youthe other phoenix wrights, pro. layton 2, trace memory and etc... to still touch.
And all those other hidden gems. Looking forward to Zelda sequel, Dementium 2, CoD MW Mobilized.
The DS was the first system announced after the launch of 1UP.com. We knew about the PSP going into the site's tentative October 2003 debut, but the DS caught us off-guard a few months later. The whole thing was actually kind of depressing, to be honest. Nintendo was at its all-time low, having actually lost money (for the first time ever?) in a recent quarter. The memory of their limp 2003 E3 presentation, in which the company tried to hype up GameCube/GBA connectivity -- a feature pioneered by the failed twin dynamos of Dreamcast and Neo Geo Pocket, which was hardly the most positive association -- as the next big thing in gaming, burned in our minds. The hardcore gamer had abandoned GameCube in favor of the Xbox, and things were looking bad. Now the PSP seemed likely to crush GBA, Nintendo's last bastion of profitability... so news of the DS -- less than three years after GBA's debut -- wasn't entirely surprising.
But that first announcement painted an unhappy picture of a relentlessly gimmicky rush job, and the ghost of Virtual Boy was invoked by just about everyone. With no images to accompany the news, we were left to improvise and imagine what it could possibly look like:
Yeah, we all dogpiled the system pretty hard. But it wasn't with any particular joy or venom; DS just seemed like a desperate last gasp of a company about to go the way of its old rival, Sega. I didn't want to see Nintendo wither and die (I actually liked the GameCube quite a lot!), but the DS didn't seem like a good answer to the Sony PS2/PSP juggernaut. The system's first E3 showing didn't do much to inspire confidence, either; the unit on display was incredibly cheap-looking, and the game were OK but did little to make use of the system's unique features.
Still, my cynicism began to fade when I went up to Seattle in October 2004 for a DS pre-launch press event. It was short on hype and long on playable demos, and the demos weren't too shabby at all. It was nice to see a game of Mario 64's quality in a portable form, but I was more impressed by the variety of titles. The improved quality of the final units was reassuring, too; the original DS was still pretty ugly, but it was miles beyond that tacky piece of junk from E3. I was officially interested in the system, although I expected it to be a short-lived epilogue to Nintendo's career due to general apathy on the part of the world at large. And in fact, when the system launched, no one at 1UP or any of our magazines seemed to give a rat's ass about it. I ended up reviewing a bunch of the games simply because no one else wanted to be stuck with the task, and even took 1UP's shared system home with me over Thanksgiving and Christmas breaks because no one else cared to use it.
A funny thing happened over that Christmas break. While I was out of the office, the PSP launched, and an import unit arrived at 1UP HQ. Everyone here oohed and ahhed over it, posting gushing blogs about how incredible it looked. Meanwhile, I let my three elementary school age cousins play with Super Mario 64 DS, and it was a revelation. They thought the core game was OK, but they became instantly obsessed with the minigames. The bite-sized challenges were accessible for them, but more importantly they loved the touchscreen controls. Normal D-pad controls were a little clunky for their tiny hands, especially my two youngest cousins, but they took an immediate shine to using a stylus or even their fingers. The huge disconnect between what we fanatical gamers in the press adored in the PSP and what gaming newcomers saw in DS was striking, and I realized that Nintendo really was angling for a new approach to selling games.
But would anyone buy it? The DS had potential, but in order to realize it Nintendo would have to articulate their new vision, which was a tall order. When I flew up for Nintendo's Mario Kart preview event a few months later, I was happy to see that the division between hardcore and casual gamers was the very crux of Reggie Fils-Aime's presentation -- his talk of the Blue Ocean and all that. Meanwhile, right about then was when the floodgates opened and Nintendo and its third parties began delivering great traditional gaming content -- Mario Kart DS, Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow -- along with a lot of games that would only work on DS, like Kirby: Canvas Curse and Nintendogs. The system began to gain traction, and Nintendogs was basically a flag planted in the hearts of people who wouldn't normally care about games. To Nintendo's credit, the company managed to recognize its unconventional success and exploit it for all they were worth.
The DS continues to surprise me. I had a soft spot for the system, but mostly in the sense that I thought it was a charming and canny idea that Nintendo launched much too late to make a difference for its flagging fortunes -- the swan song of a fading friend. To my amazement, not only did the system prove not to be the ill-conceived wreck that first impressions suggested, it managed to convince a massive audience of its potential in a way that I never expected, let alone conceived. When I read about games like New Super Mario Bros. topping 20 million units sold, I wonder if even Nintendo expected the system to do as well as it has. But I certainly won't complain about its success; the DS didn't just keep a major industry player in the game, it's also been an amazing platform for software of every variety. And it's portable, which means I can actually find the time to enjoy its games -- no easy task with a schedule as packed as mine.
So, here's to the DS. Whatever the future holds, it's given us five years of surprises, and five years of fantastic games. Of course, a lot of my fellow gamers still turn their noses up at the platform, but the DS has also proven that there's a lot more of them -- that is, people who are more concerned with fun, accessible entertainment -- than there are of us. Ultimately, I think the DS's legacy won't be saving Nintendo but rather saving the medium from itself, by preventing videogames from becoming an insular race to the bleeding edge of graphical prowess at the expense of creative design. It's always nice to see the good guys win.
Read it. Comment below. Interesting to get a mini-scoop on some of that stuff.
And he's right about the initial reactions of the DS. Who woulda thunk it'd be on the top of the gaming word right now? I initially supported the PSP head on @ first, but man oh man did I regret it several months later. (Not that the PSP sucks or anything; now it has a great arsenal of solid games) but overall, the DS gives more gamer-bang-for your buck. Once the DSlite came out, I was sold. The thing has too many good games to count, but my favs have to be:
- Castlevania DoS
- New Super Mario Bros
- Mario Kart DS
- Elite Beat Agents
- Castlevania OoE
- Castlevania PoR
- GTA: Chinatown Wars
- Advance Wards: DoR
- Moon
- Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney
- Professor Layton & the Curious Village
- Ninja Gaiden DS
- CoD WaW DS
- Lunar Knights
- Brothers in Arms DS
- Zelda: Phantom Hourglass
- Dementium
- Hotel Dusk
- FIFA 09
- Kirby Super Star Ultra
- Retro Game Challenge
- Scribblenauts
- Rhythm Heaven
- Sonic Rush
- Sonic Rush Adventure
- Trauma Center
- Trauma Center 2
*deep breath*
And I have Mario & Luigi 3, Kingdom Hearts, World Ends with Youthe other phoenix wrights, pro. layton 2, trace memory and etc... to still touch.
And all those other hidden gems. Looking forward to Zelda sequel, Dementium 2, CoD MW Mobilized.