For reasons I can’t quite put into words, the Nintendo DS was one of the definitive homes of JRPGs during the early-to-late 2000s. Elaborate JRPGs had fallen somewhat out of style during the brown shooter years, at least in the west, so perhaps it was a defensive measure to keep them from having to compete with the likes of Call of Duty. It certainly worked; some of the best JRPGs of the era came out on the ol’ two-screen wonder.
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The rise, the fall, and the resurgence of JRPGs in Nintendo history.
Unfortunately, due to the DS’s inherently proprietary nature, many of those excellent JRPGs remain trapped inside its proverbial corpse. Rescuing them would require either emulating two screens simultaneously for a port or remaster, or rebuilding the entire game from scratch for a single screen, and sadly, not every publisher is willing to cough up the cash for that these days. Even some of the games that managed to jump ship over to the 3DS ended up finding themselves in the lurch once again when that console perished as well. The DS is truly the rusty bear trap of handheld game consoles: grabbing on and never letting go.
10
Infinite Space
Everyone Wants their Own Space Fleet
The DS’s touchscreen had a certain thematic flavor to it, perfect for rendering futuristic computer screens like the radar in Metroid Prime Hunters. You know what has a lot of futuristic computer screens? A spaceship. You know what has a lot of spaceships? Infinite Space, a JRPG developed by Nude Maker of Shinji Mikami’s Steel Battalion and Bayonetta developer PlatinumGames.
Infinite Space has you on a cross-cosmic voyage on a fleet of massive space dreadnaughts, occasionally encountering enemy fleets and space pirates as you progress the story. Space combat is in real time, though obviously, you’re not the one doing the fighting. You need to issue orders to your ships, advancing, changing formation, and deploying weapons as necessary to fight off opponents, using a rock-paper-scissors-style affinity chart to exploit weaknesses.
As you progress, you can unlock more ships via blueprints and composite parts, building up your own custom fleet catered to your playstyle. This was also a major component in the game’s online multiplayer.
9
Radiant Historia
Time Shenanigans
Atlus developed and published a hearty number of assorted JRPGs and JRPG-adjacent games during the DS’s tenure, some in its major franchises, and some entirely new. One particular game in the latter category is Radiant Historia, which featured developmental muscle from both the Megami Tensei franchise and another JRPG, Radiata Stories.
Radiant Historia primary shtick, both mechanically and thematically, is time manipulation. The story unfolds over the course of a branching timeline, which you can hop around on to critical points and junctures. Depending on the choices you make as the story progresses, you may encounter dead ends, forcing you to jump to a different timeline to continue, carrying over items and information in the process. Some timelines can’t be progressed without vital info from others, kind of like the Zero Escape games. In turn-based combat, party members and enemies are placed on a large grid, with the turn order displayed on the top screen. Certain skills and attacks will knock enemies further away from you, making it harder for them to do damage, as well as throw the turn order out of whack, delaying their actions.
Radiant Historia received an enhanced 3DS port in 2018, Perfect Chronology. Unfortunately, the 3DS is just as dead as its predecessor, so that doesn’t really solve the problem, now does it.
8
Golden Sun: Dark Dawn
This Series Can’t Catch a Break
Golden Sun is one of those JRPG series that just can’t quite seem to escape from the periphery of the greater gaming consciousness. The two GBA originals are beloved by those who’ve played them, but total unknowns outside their spheres of influence. While those games have managed to resurface thanks to Switch Online, the series’ third game, Golden Sun: Dark Dawn, remains in the dark.
Dark Dawn carries over most of the mechanics from the previous Golden Sun games into a more technologically comprehensive package, courtesy of the DS’s fancier hardware. It’s a fairly straightforward JRPG adventure, following the descendents of the first game’s protagonists as they travel the world, getting into battles, exploring dungeons, solving puzzles, and learning all kinds of nifty psychic abilities with the power of Psynergy.
Dark Dawn also brings back the Djinn system, allowing you to collect and raise a variety of little elemental critters, which can then be assigned to your party members to power them up. It’s a fun, content-packed game, but until there’s some kind of DS collection for Switch Online, I don’t know how it could escape its confines.
A Mysterious, Meta Adventure
The DS was a pretty experimental console, what with its two screens and touchscreen and all, so it follows that it would be home to some equally-experimental games. One of these games is Contact, which came courtesy of Grasshopper Manufacture, developer of such off-kilter titles as Killer7 and The Silver Case.
Contact is a pseudo action-JRPG, with our protagonist, Terry, automatically battling enemies while you pitch in from the background, swapping weapons and using abilities. Interestingly for a JRPG, experience gain isn’t cumulative. That is, rather than getting a lump sum at the end of a fight, you get a little bit of XP with every attack you land. This way, even if you botch an encounter, you don’t walk away empty-handed. You can also customize Terry’s stats using swappable costumes and stickable decals, which add extra modifiers and skills as well.
Contact has a very metatextual story, revolving around Terry’s efforts to locate the crashed spaceship of an unnamed Professor. The Professor is always milling about on the top screen, directly addressing you, the player, and casually asking you not to divulge your own existence to Terry. It’s got a similar vibe to Earthbound in that regard.
6
Mega Man Battle Network 5 Double Team DS
The Best Version You Can’t Play
Right now, you’re probably thinking, “wait, Mega Man Battle Network 5 was in the big Battle Network collection that was released back in 2023! That’s not trapped on the DS!” Well, that’s only half-true. Yes, the Game Boy Advance versions of Battle Network 5, Team Colonel and Team Protoman, are available to play, but that’s not the version I played growing up. I played the upgraded, combined version, Mega Man Battle Network 5: Double Team DS, which still remains out of reach.
The DS version of Battle Network 5 includes both the Team Colonel and Team Protoman versions in their entirety, but also adds a bunch of new and updated content to the both of them. This includes new Battle Chips, some extra battles, online multiplayer, and a lot of bugfixes and quality-of-life improvements. You can even switch playable NetNavis in regular battles, something you’d normally only be able to do during Liberation Missions.
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The DS version also ups the presentation significantly, adding canned voice acting from the Mega Man NT Warrior anime and improving the music. The GBA version of the battle theme does nothing for me, it has to be the DS version.
5
Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey
Demons in the Antarctic
The Shin Megami Tensei franchise had a brief, yet comfortable home on the Nintendo DS in the late 2000s, early 2010s. Two of the most prominent spin-offs on the platform were the Devil Survivor games, but before either of those, there was Strange Journey, which was a little more in line with the traditional MegaTen formula.
Strange Journey tells an original MegaTen story following a U.N. task force sent into an Antarctic singularity that’s slowly consuming the world, recruiting demons in the otherworldly realm and, in typical MegaTen fashion, working their way up to shooting a god in the face. You explore dungeons in first-person, gradually mapping them out as you go in a manner similar to Etrian Odyssey, and occasionally scrapping with demons you can either kill or persuade to your side. Rather than the usual Press Turn system, combat uses a follow-up system, where weak point hits have your demons automatically deliver follow-up attacks.
Strange Journey is another game that temporarily managed to escape the DS only to be pulled back into darkness, receiving a 3DS remake, Strange Journey Redux, that remains equally inaccessible.
4
Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story
One of the Best Mario RPGs
After getting its start on the GBA with Superstar Saga, the Mario & Luigi series of JRPGs migrated to the DS, starting with Partners in Time. That was a pretty good game, but the true high point of the series, and one of the best Mario RPGs ever made overall, was what came next: Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story.
Bowser’s Inside Story is a two-pronged adventure in which the Mario Bros., having been inhaled by Bowser after eating a weird mushroom, explore his guts and try to find a way out, while Bowser himself skulks around on the surface, pummeling villains trying to horde in on his turf. Both the Brothers’ and Bowser’s unique turn-based mechanics keep the game consistently interesting, aided by some pretty hilarious writing.
Much like with Radiant Historia and Strange Journey, Bowser’s Inside Story did technically manage to escape the DS, specifically with the 3DS remake, Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story + Bowser Jr.’s Journey. Three problems with that, though: the new content isn’t interesting, I don’t like the redone art and music, and again, the 3DS is also dead.
3
Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days
Only the Cutscenes Escaped
Kingdom Hearts is one of the most disjointed franchises out there, and I’m not talking about the story. It’s had games major and minor release across the spectrum of platforms, and while most of the portable platform titles like Chain of Memories, Birth by Sleep, and Dream Distance have managed to escape their confines through remakes and ports, there’s one that didn’t get quite so lucky. To this day, Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days remains trapped on the DS.
358/2 Days is a side story, set in the background of Kingdom Hearts, Chain of Memories, and Kingdom Hearts 2. It shows how Roxas got drafted into Organization XIII and what he got up to during Sora’s adventures and subsequent sleep, hunting Heartless to collect hearts and getting to know his coconspirators. It recycles a lot of worlds and models from the console games, though for a DS title, it was surprisingly fancy in both the graphics and gameplay departments.
While the game proper remains inaccessible, a single chunk of it has managed to slip through the prison bars: its cutscenes. The first major series collection, Kingdom Hearts -HD 1.5+2.5 ReMIX-, features HD remakes of the game’s cutscenes with full voice acting. It ain’t much, but it’s something.
2
Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies
The Missing Piece of the Mainline
The vast majority of mainline titles in the Dragon Quest series are console affairs, primarily Nintendo and PlayStation. In the late 2000s, though, following the very well-received Dragon Quest VIII, Square Enix decided to throw a curveball with its next numbered entry, making Dragon Quest IX a DS exclusive.
Dragon Quest IX takes a few cues from Dragon Quest III in its design sensibilities, focusing on a single, customizable protagonist’s story instead of a whole party of named characters, then letting you create the other members of the party from scratch and assigning them vocations to specialize their skills. It was the first game in the series to use on-field enemy symbols instead of random encounters, a major improvement that would go on to be the norm for the series.
One of Dragon Quest IX’s hallmark elements is its multiplayer, wherein you and friends either nearby or online to accrue items and experience. When your DS is asleep, passing nearby players would earn you gifts and greetings, a system that would go on to inspire the 3DS’s StreetPass framework.
1
Pokémon Black & White
Gen 5 Remake Any Day Now
As the years have gone by, Nintendo and the Pokémon Company have made a very important discovery: people liked the old Pokémon games. It’s shocking, I know. This is why we’ve been gradually receiving remakes and ports of the early-gen games, very slowly working their way through the consoles. I hope we can keep this trend up, because I’m still waiting for Pokémon Black and White to make a comeback.
As the fifth generation Pokémon game and the second on the DS, Black and White featured some of my favorite additions to the wider Pokémon formula, from fully-animated battle sprites to meta elements like hidden abilities, not to mention a full seasonal cycle with yearly weather changes. It also had a great story, introducing one of the franchise’s most beloved villains, N, leader of Team Plasma.
While Diamond and Pearl was the duo that brought Pokémon to the DS, Black and White showed what the franchise could really do with the improved hardware over the GBA, and it left a lasting impression. Hopefully, if and when we do finally get our gen 5 remakes, they’re better than Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl…
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