Forgotten and Weird Nintendo DS Games (NDS) 

Download Naraka: Bladepoint for free on all platforms gsght.com/c/sijj41 and celebrate the game’s 2nd anniversary! Join the discord group: discord.gg/narakabladepoint We've done just about every other Nintendo platform, why not give the DS a try? What's a strange or forgotten Nintendo DS game you've played? Lemme know! Also HELLO, AVENGERS WILL BE OUT IN THE NEXT TWO WEEKS. MY FINGERS ARE TURNING TO DUST.

I love how Mario Hoops 3-on-3 is still listed on Soken's bio when promoting FF16. Dude's rightfully proud of it

It’s not really forgotten but the best DS game imo is 9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors

Favorite hidden gem on the DS has got to be "Big Bang Mini." A shmump where you fling fireworks into enemies who drastically change art style doesn't seem like it'd work, but it really does.

My best friend passed away over a year ago and his mother gave me all of his games. One of them was Mario Hoops 3 on 3 and I have never heard of that one before. So seeing it brought up in this video reminded me of him

You're spoiling us with the constant stream of uploads, Austin. This is amazing.

Dragon Quest IX, the forgotten entry in the series. Honestly one of my top games of all time. Great story, 4 way multiplayer, and so much content! Also that Little Red Riding Hood zombie game might be connected to that Wiiware title Zombie Panic in Wonderland. Had that Momotaro, Snow White and Dorothy shooting the undead and bosses in fairytale areas.

Glad to see at least a few seconds of Radiant Historia here. Easily one of my favorite DS games. Funnily enough, it feels like every DS game I adore got a remaster for 3DS/home console or is likely to get one (Pokemon says hello).

Pokemon Conquest is probably one of the most underrated Pokemon games. Fun strategy, endless campaigns and ways to play, and so addicting! Plus you get to fight Nobunaga! Stupidly overpriced but no one played it back in the day!

One of the cool things about Solo to Robo is when it feels like you "beat" the game basically the game starts up again with a new intro movie and you essentially get to play a sequel right there and then. It honestly felt like two games in one.

Contact will always be at the top of my list. An RPG made by Grasshopper Manufacture, it really took advantage of the system's two screens with each one in their own style as two characters interact. Just so unique and I just don't hear it talked about like at the time I expected it would be. I guess it's something rather different from Grasshopper so that also plays into it I am sure.

I don’t know if this really counts as a ‘Forgotten’ gem of the DS/3DS but Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey is a surprisingly harrowing game and I really love it. I love the Schwarzweld and think it’s tied with Nocturne for my favorite setting in the series. We got Deep Strange Journey/Strange Journey Redux on the 3DS, but that original is just so *chef kiss*.

Three DS games I'd never even heard of before a few years ago have turned out to be my favourite ones of the whole lineup. Radiant Historia, Contact DS, Infinite Space Last Window (the sequel to Hotel Dusk) is another one because it didn't get a UK release, so it was only ever sold via US imports. Along with the sister series; Code R. It's kinda weird just how many hidden gems get less spotlight than their GBA counterparts.

Phantasy Star Zero is hands down one of my favorite games on the DS. Definitely a must play for classic PSO fans. Not as much content as PSOBB, obviously, but it's a stellar expansion of some of PSO's ideas without going overboard like PSU or doing a 180 like in PSU. I just wish playing online on a DS/3DS wasn't such a pain due to the DS's encryption limitations :/

Shoutout to Lost Magic, an RTS game with monster catching where you draw combinations of runes on the bottom screen to cast spells. The spell system was weirdly in-depth, but you would be often restricted by how much mana you have. Good game.

NO JOKE- When Austin asked what kinds of forgotten and obscure DS Games we've played the first one that came to my mind was Trace Memory, and HE BROUGHT IT UPPP! Such a good one, I have such nostalgia for that game

I know it's Jp exclusive, but my main nom for a forgotten DS title would be Sigma Harmonics from SQEX/Think Garage. A turn-based RPG you hold like a book, written and directed by Hiroki Chiba inspired by Showa-era mystery novels, with character art by Yusaku Nakaaki, and music by Masashi Hamauzu. It just looks and sounds phenominal!

solatorobo is an excellent inclusion, but i can't be a little disappointed that lost magic wasn't on this list anywhere. it really is a shame, it's one of the better forgotten titles. banger video on one of my favorite consoles of all time, though. thanks for that.

For me, that one obscure DS game I fell in love with was Magician's Quest: Mysterious Times (aka "Tongari Boushi to Mahou no 365 Nichi" in Japan, or "Enchanted Folk and the School of Wizardry" in Europe). It's pretty much an Animal Crossing type game made by Aquria and Konami, but with a heavy fantasy theme, with unique mechanics like learning magic spells and investigating supernatural events. It's kinda like if Animal Crossing: Wild World was set in Halloween Town, and I *love* the art style that comes with it. It's definitely got some jank (and the localization wasn't the best), but I adore it so, so much. It's a big comfort game for me, and I could play it any day at the drop of a hat. It was even popular enough in Japan to get a handful of sequels on the DS and even the 3DS, but the similarities to Animal Crossing probably doomed it overseas. Didn't help that it was released months after Animal Crossing: City Folk in both North America and Europe, either. But it still means a lot to me, and I'm glad I found it.

I was hoping you would mention Hotel Desk. Beautiful visuals. Stellar story telling. Clever puzzles. It's what I wish Visual Novels still were. Creative and really outside the box.

I really loved Lost Magic for the DS. It was unnecessarily hard but still fun

I don't know if Trauma Center's considered forgotten nowadays. That said, you want to go under the radar with surgical sims, there's Life Signs. It had the surgery stuff but also a lot of other minigames involved. Plus the story could be affected depending on how quickly you did certain surgeries. Pity the translation was janky, honestly. That and the one we got was a sequel to one that was a fair bit more crazy anime hospital.

ds games i personally miss: The Legendary Starfy and Magical Starsign! it's a real shame the Densetsu no Starfy series is pretty much unknown outside of Japan because this was the only game localized

Fossil Fighters Champions is one of the most weirdly good looking games on the DS, it's also really fun if a tiny bit shallow all things considered. It's a shame they never improved on the system with future games, instead deciding to completely upend what was already working in the last sequal they got to make.

I missed the entire DS generation since I was busy working at the time. It's just unbelievable how many good games are on this system. I will definitely have to check some of these out!

My personal favorite weird DS game is Daigasso: Band Bros, and the sequel - DX. They were fully featured MIDI music makers. They got me into music production, and were great rhythm games to boot. DX even let you connect to the internet and download other people's creations or upload your own.

One forgotten Nintendo DS game I'm surprised you didn't talk about is Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword. Whenever people talk about the modern Ninja Gaiden games, they're always referring to the trilogy on consoles. But there was also one made exclusively for the Nintendo DS, and it's surprisingly fun, if a bit easy compared to the home console entries. It's also the only modern Ninja Gaiden game to use the classic Act Intro jingle from the original 8 bit trilogy, and I really wish that was mainstay for the rest of the series.

27:06 Fun fact: The DS version of Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing got a downgraded port for iOS and Android. You can see that through the polygon count and the fact that it had the unique DS versions of some tracks like Shibuya Downtown, which are way different than the console/PC versions. The iOS version was the only version of the game that got released in Japan.

I love The Sims 2 for DS. Running a hotel in Strangetown, fighting mafia goons and robots as the Ratticator. Using a water gun to defeat aliens. Meeting Bigfoot in the basement and playing the casino card game for hours on end. Getting all the arcade machines to play a variety of mini games. Dissecting aliens for money. There's so much to it and it plays in real time akin to Animal Crossing.

On the DS, there are so many games that are ok at best, but there’s such a level of charm from them! I definitely didn’t know about some of these, and I think it’d be fun to check them out sometime!

My little brother and I absolutely LOVED Mario Hoops on the DS🤩 I can't believe it's been over a decade since the system launched: where has the time gone?

I played a lot of this game called Dinosaur King on the DS. It's basically a Pokemon-like RPG where you collect and battle with dinosaurs. Apparently it has an anime and manga too, but I was unaware of that until I just looked it up to remember the title.

I'd say my most obscure ds games that I own is probably Avalon Code, the worlds ending and you get some magic book to document the things in the world before its destroyed. people, plants etc. smack everything with the book. I was pretty adventurous during the ds era, game prices were just so low and I got so many good games for $20-30.

Another point about solatrobo (that luckily didn't get entirely lost to time) are the free downloadable quests. They are all just neat mini-stories, but thanks to the old nintendo ds online system being 100% dead, the only version that has them without any workarounds is the US release, which had all of them installed from the get-go since it released a bit after the european and japanese versions. Still, despite the limited (and a bit repetitive) combat, the story, setting and characters still make me love it to death. If you want to help make the combat even faster, invest in the hydraulics and attack stats for the robot.

Shin Megami Tensei Strange Journey is severely underrated.

I remember really liking the "Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure" remake on DS, changing it from a tactical RPG to a more streamlined turn-based one. Another month or so and I can finally play the 2 sequels that have been sitting in Japan for like two decades. 👴

When it comes to the DS, I've got plenty of obscure games I don't think I've ever seen or heard brought up anywhere else. "Hoshigami"? "A Witch's Tale"? "Jigsaw World"? "Legend of Kage 2"? A ton of stuff. I was thinking of "Glory of Hercules" as well but that actually got a mention. But both "Windy X Windam" and "Izuna" got brought up so I now feel obligated to talk about the one other game "Izuna" was somehow involved with, "Rondo of Swords". There isn't much about it out there, at least there isn't a complete walkthrough or LP of it on RU-vid. The only reason I even know about this game was that it was gifted to me by a now ex-friend who had a copy since one of their friends was a localizer who worked on it. Yeah. It's an SRPG...best comparison I can think of would actually be "Fire Emblem". A medieval fantasy setting with similar stage structure and can be surprisingly difficult if you don't know what you're doing. Also like "Fire Emblem", it has some rather obscure secrets that are easy to miss. Though that said, it is also pretty unique. Has this interesting combat mechanic in that you move through enemies to attack them, at least with melee units, and moving through allies gets you various buffs. So positioning ends up being very important, even more than usual in SRPGs. There are even stuff like skills meant to intercept or counterattack melee units to stop them in their tracks. So as mentioned earlier, the reason I'm bringing this up is cause of "Izuna". Izuna, as well as Shino, are both secret characters in the game you can recruit. But they can be a pain to actually get. Also, another secret character you can get is Cotton from, well, "Cotton". You know, the side-scroller shooter series? Cause why not? Funnily, "Rondo of Swords" was actually what introduced me to both "Izuna" and "Cotton".

My personal favorite hidden DS gem will always be Fossil Fighters. It's dead, but it has a "Saturday morning anime" vibe that I just adore and I mean using dinosaurs to fight is really cool. I'm so glad you talked about it, but you really should check out the sequel which is really good.

There was an official Demake of Xenosaga 1+2 made exclusively for the DS that makes it look like a SNES or ps1 JRPG

Did anyone ever play Lost Magic? I thought the concept was super cool with the spell fusion and drawing out each of the symbols. I never finished it but want to revisit it one day. Fantastic work as usual Austin! 👏👏

I ds game that I adore but never hear anyone talk about is the Touch Detective series. It follows a young girl detective who takes over her father's agency and solves cases to be renowned. It is like a point and click game where you solve puzzles (which was kind of criticized in the first game for having some moon logic ones). But I loved it as it had wacky and fun characters, her friends Chloe and Penelope are just fun characters who are always by her side (whether she wants them to or not) and she has a butler who looks like a robot but could be a vampire (I think). It's first two games is something I replay every year as how much I adore them. It makes me feel nostalgic.

I’ve been searching for Sideswiped for years now! I had no idea what it was called or even how to find it online, so thank you for having it in the video! I had an older friend who would always bring his gameboy and DS games over so that I could play them and Sideswiped was one that I had a ton of fun with. It’s been like, 10 years or something since then, so it’s been on my mind for a while. I gotta play it sometime

Devil Survivor and Devil Survivor 2 were some helluva fun games. Devil Survivor is still my favourite Megami Tensei game of all time, including Persona.

When I played Retro Game Challenge I originally thought that all of the games in it were Famicom games that didn't make it to the US, kind of a sneaky way of importing them. I was wrong and its awesome how much effort went into making each of the games.

@12:37 Fun fact. When Square was creating Final Fantasy, they knew they wanted the title to be 'FF'. They wanted to try Fighting Fantasy but found the trademark for the name already being used by the books mentioned her, leading to them using Final Fantasy instead.

Final Fantasy Tactics A2 is one of my all time favorite games. Last year someone gave me a DS Lite and I immediately went and bought a complete in box copy. So good. Edit: 7 minutes into the video and three games show up that I completely forgot about....

I'm so glad you mentioned Solatorobo and Phantasy Star 0. Both are games I picked up on a whim and still love to this day, and yes playing 0 online with friends back then was amazing.

Finally, a mention of Solatorobo on one of these lists that isn't just a cursory glance with "oh it's an expensive DS game" and nothing further.

The Mario Basketball game was a lot of fun. I played it on my Wii U and works well enough for me to think that a sequel on Wii U would have worked!

10:52 full respect for someone who just straight up puts a screenshot of Vimms Lair in your video lol

i just homebrewed my 3ds and was trying to find good strange ds recommendations a week ago, and checked if you had made vid cause i knew you’d know the good stuff. thank you for responding to my google search so quick!

Also, Attack of the Saiyans is a Phenomenal game. Like legitimately one of the best DBZ games, aswell as one of the best RPG's on the ds IMO. Would love to see you cover it. Much Love Homie

Away Shuffle Dungeon is a near unheard of hidden gem and I think it deserves a spotlight

Avalon Code, the adventure RPG where you hit things with a magic book in order to modify their magical genetics. My World, My Way, a turn-based RPG starring a bratty princess who can bend reality by pouting about it loud enough. Rondo of Swords, a Tactics game featuring both Izuna the Ninja and Cotton the Witch in which you attacked by passing through enemies rather than stopping adjacent to them. Henry Hatsworth, half-platform game, half-puzzle game starring an elderly explorer. And the list of niche games I've owned goes on...

Bangai-O Spirits is another hidden gem. A Treasure action game where you fly around 2D stages as a mech and shoot hundreds of missiles at once. Gameplay focuses around dodging bullet hells and making your own. It actually had a level editor and sharing function that encoded your level into a sound clip that others could pick up with their DS mic. No story, just a collection of stages and a chaotic good time.

Soken made the FRIGGIN MARIO BASKETBALL GAME OST!? Lmao, that's my favorite funfact of the day. Thanks Austin!

Not sure how “forgotten” it is, but The World Ends With You is a classic DS title for me. It’s a hectic action JRPG set in modern Tokyo where you’re trying to control two characters at once, one on the bottom and one on the top, with completely different control schemes for both. Also has really fun characters and story.

When you said “think about a game no one else has played”, i instantly thought of Glory of Heracles. Man, what a beautiful under appreciated gem!!!!!

Love this video, the DS/Wii era was the last time Nintendo really blew me away. I've owned far too many DS consoles in my day, each one worth it.

Sideswiped is really fun. It's a clone to Burnout that adds features that makes it stand on its own. You can buy cars but majority of the quests can be done with the two default cars. The game is packed with a bunch of addicting modes including using your car for bowling, jumping between trampolines to pop balloons and crashing into everyone in a demolition derby mode. Watching others got flipped in the air and then explode after enough damage is really exhilarating.

A few of my favorite lesser talked about DS games were the legendary starfy and the Drawn to Life games

I love both Glory of Heracles and Phantasy Star Zero. I'm actually a Phantasy Star lore nerd and this game is a blessing, I affectionally call it Phantasy Star meets Wild Arms aesthetic.

The sheer fact that Lil Red Riding Hood: Zombie BBQ was mentioned just made my night.

I've got a couple weird games like GTA: Chinatown Wars, OkamiDen, 999, The World Ends with You, Ghost Trick, the first 4 Professor Layton games, all the Kirby games, & Dragon Quest 5&9. Don't know if he's talked about Radiant Historia, but THAT is the proudest piece of my DS library.

The Nintendo DS was my first console I bought with my own money after saving for one year from my salary, and for all those that have not played and beat the Hotel Dusk and Last Window games, do it, is one of the most unique and awesome stories and experience I have ever had the pleasure of having I think about those games a lot, Great video Austin and thank you for your work, great SMT4 joke tho

I loved Mario 3 on 3 Hoops as a kid and still have a copy. I also like Bleach: Dark Souls as a fighting game that has seemingly been forgotten on the platform. Even today it still oozes style.

Another great video, I love the Nintendo DS and PSP, the DS really does have a plethora of unique and overlooked games. Thanks for making this Austin 🤙

Anyone I’ve ever asked about Spectrobes looked at me like I was crazy, I don’t know how well it aged but playing it as a kid was great

As a DS fan, this makes me happy

I loved Elite Beat Agents so much that I had to import the sequel!

Elite Beat Agents, Trace Memory, Contact, and Away Shuffle Dungeon are some pretty banging games. I still have my original carts for them too ^^ I wish Away got more press cuz its a really cute dungeon crawling game and you build up your village the more you go in. I guess a sorta recent example would be Mononoke Forest for the 3ds.

My favorite weird games are the Domo games back on the DSI Store. I played the hell out of those games, especially the rafting one lol. Never heard anyone even acknowledge those

Always happy to see an Eyeshield 21 shout-out in your videos. It's one of my favorite Mangas, too, and I take time and reread it every couple of years. Honestly, if you did a video on the series, I would gladly watch that.

My first DS game wasn't even a DS game, it was a GB (GBA?) compilation of Spongebob episodes that I binged back-to-back

1:52 whenever the DS comes up in conversation I always bring up Knights in the Nightmare. It’s a SRPG with RTS elements that’s also a bullet hell shooter, all at the same time. It was made by Atlus developer Sting, who specialized in weird high-concept RPGs. (They also did Riviera the Promised Land for GBA, a favorite of mine growing up.) Knights sticks out in my mind for being a rare example of a game that requires a pretty high level of “game literacy” just to understand the gameplay, let alone master it. I should give it another try.

Solatorobo really is a gem all around, one of my favorites for the system. Sucks it's so pricey nowadays but I'm at least glad I got my copy at a normal price before it spiked up. Also yeah Phantasy Star Zero is great! I put so many hours into that one around the time it came out. Having a PS2 I grew up with PS Universe as a kid instead of PSO, so that's what I relate it to.

I'm sure others have played it, but a game i spent a ridiculous amount of time playing on the ds as a kid that I've never seen anyone else talk about is Magical Starsign which i just recently found is a sequel to a Japanese only released rpg on the gba

Alright thanks to you I found the name of "Orcs and Elves". I remember that game only because the rats scared me as a kid

I love the Nintendo DS. This video has inspired me to start collecting a few more games for the system. Thanks for highlighting some really cool titles, Austin. 😊

Magical Starsign is a game that I hold near and dear and it's criminal that not may people know of it.

High quality upload as always Austin! Loving it!

Solatorobo is probably one of my favorites ever if not my favorite at all. Two stories, awesome gameplay, great graphics, MUSIC! I love it!

Avalon Code is definitely my "hidden gem ds game" I went to look up the developer and they also made Nostalgia which i thought was a funny coincidence!

My ONE gripe with Jump Ultimate Stars is that we didn't get a 6-Koma Panel for Gohan that made him his grown up self (Also that one mission to unlock Anna from Shaman King but we're not talking about that ). Gohan's me favorite DBZ Character, but I like him more as an adult.

Austin bro, you are going IN with these releases Make sure you take time to take a rest, you deserve it. Not sure if you posted videos already on PSP and Vita stuff, but I'd love to see those too!

I'll give you a forgotten gem on the DS- Draglade, created by Dimps and one of the many gems published by Atlus here in the states. I found a copy of it once at a flea market and wish I'd never sold it, because it's _very_ expensive now.

Super Robot Wars OG Saga : Endless Frontier is one of my fav NDS games ever. That game was just shouting cool as hell

Till now the most helpful video I found on RU-vid regarding ds games, thank you so much for your work and great video 🤙

@austineruption Love all of your content. So many of your personal sharing has parallels to my own growing up and fandom. Thank you for what you do.

I've only played a few DS games under emulation, but one I enhoyed was Speed Racer. It's different than the PS2 game and the visuals aren't quite as flashy, but somehow I kind of like them better. It really suffers from not having analog control though.

Wanna throw out that the amazing Retro Game Challenge has a Fan Translated Sequel with (imo) some better mini retro games, but also some "re-released" versions of the games from the first one. Just don't make the same mistake I did and love the series so much you imported the third game for 3DS. Another hidden gem is Away: Shuffle Dungeon, a quirky little action RPG by Mistwalker and Artoon where you have to go between screen because every few seconds one of the screens "shuffles" and changes and you get lost in the dungeon and restart if you are on the screen when that happens. One that I never, ever hear anyone talk about is Glory Days 2, a side scrolling war like game where you control an aircraft to keep your soldiers on the ground safe so they can capture points. By doing bombing runs or as a helicopter picking up injured soldiers to escort them back, it is a sort of wacky little game. It doesn't help it's obscurity with that in America there is no Glory Days 1, it was called Super Army War here, so it is a mess a property.

6:38 Someone NOT dunking on Golden Sun Dark Dawn? Unexpected, but not unwelcome. 9:28 Mario Hoops 3 on 3 is an extremely forgotten Title for me. Mostly because I know the game as Mario Slam Basketball. It still super-weird how Square defined "Characters" for this game though. Three jobs and two species?!?

You are rolling with these constant uploads man, don't push yourself though! We love the content no matter how long it takes!

I think one of the most obscure and “stuck on DS” games is Sailor Moon La Luna Splende. Loved this video! :)

As a recent appreciator of Project X Zone 2 I would mention the Super Robot Wars OG Saga Endless Frontier games and their mix of traditional RPG format and juggle combos. The real missing link between NXC & PXZ.

I love Nostalgia! I should play it again. My most obscure DS game I think is The Dark Spire; it's a Wizardry style dungeon crawl, complete with a style choice between 8-bit graphics and music or "modern" ones.

Thanks for putting subtitles on this video!

Monster tale is a hidden gem. I love it. It incorporates both screen in a very unique way. It doesn't get talked about much at all. When I found it I think I paid $16 or so on ebay. I bought a copy for me and 2 more for my nephews.

RIP Cing. absolutely LOVED Hotel Dusk. Imported Last Window as soon as I could. Wish we'd get a remaster/HD version of the games. Loved the Take On Me artstyle...great jazzy music too! Elite Beat Agents was great too. Only wish it wasn't cover versions of songs, cause some of those covers were awful. But I get it, licensing is $$$. a fun-ish mini game compilation I enjoyed on the DS was Looney Tunes: Duck amuck. It took scenes from that classic cartoon short and made it mini games. Plus you could harass daffy.

Early in the video so maybe it will be covered. But my immediate thought for deeply hidden gem for the DS is "Feel the Magic XX/XY" what a weird little game that was. It highlighted a lot of the cool DS features and was weirdly addictive.